How I Passed the GSEC Certification Exam
GSEC, SANS SEC401, and GIAC Advisory Board
I have passed the GSEC certification exam with 92% score after taking the SEC401: Security Essentials: Network, Endpoint, and Cloud training and become a member of the GIAC Advisory Board. Now I would like to share with you my experience and some tips.
My Background
Cyber security initiated a new chapter in my career development; a new world to be discovered. Within the first month on my new assignment, my mentoring colleague told me that I can attend a SANS training and afterwards take the GIAC exam. I checked the training locations and found one in Paris. Cool! So, I enrolled for the training and started to make travel plans. How naïve I was! At that time, I did not know what SANS and GIAC were. So, I started to search. In every article or video, there was a similar statement: SANS- has a very busy calendar, GSEC- very difficult to obtain, you must study hard.
Then, measures against the corona virus were taken into consideration, so the live training turned into an online one. Sorry, not this time in Paris! Eventually, I received 7 very tome books while working at home. Then, they told me that I have 8 months time to take the exam. The training would have taken only 6 days if it could have been held in Paris. Therefore, I was relieved and I thought that I had enough time to get prepared. I didn’t spend much time for almost 6 months. At the end of 6 months, I was still on the first book’s videos. I cannot tell, how boring they were! The lecturer was speaking always in the same tone. In the videos, only the slides from the books were displayed and sometimes the lecturer showed up. What was the purpose of the video then? At the beginning, it was okay. But as the training continues, there were too many topics to remember. As a visual learner, I could not do it by just looking at text heavy slides! Sometimes, I realized that I lost my focus during listening the video for a while and had to replay those parts. I started to worry because there was not much time left.
Luckily, my voucher’s validity had been extended! So, I had 1 more month to study.
Exam Preparation Steps
Things I did within 1.5 month preparation were as follows:
1. I took 5 days off from work in total.
2. Watched all the videos — I gave up trying to learn from the videos. Because I had wasted too much time on them. So, I quickly watched the remaining videos without any replay and by fast forwarding.
3. Finished all the labs at one time — I summarized each lab in a paragraph and assigned keywords.
4. Created an index and an abbreviation list — I put the lab summaries into the index with those keywords.
5. Read all the books in order — While reading, I marked the abbreviations. At the end of each book:
- Extended the index and the abbreviation list.
- Retook the related module’s quiz until get a full score. The questions changed every time, so it was also an opportunity to see different questions.
6. Took the 1st practice exam — I took it just 5 days prior the exam. I was very worried because I had not taken that before, so I had not shaped my study accordingly. I crossed my fingers and hoped my study methodology will fit the exam’s structure. Fortunately, I scored 88%! I am relieved!
7. Enhanced the index.
8. Took the 2nd practice exam — I took it 3 days before the exam. I scored 90%.
9. Enhanced the index again.
10. Took the exam — During the exam, I had to read the questions for multiple times. I was very tired because of the past busy days. I used almost the whole time of 5 hours and scored 92%.
My scores increased very consistently by 2% at each try. Since, my score is higher than 90%, I received an invitation from GIAC Advisory Board.
Creating the Index
Creating an index was an agile and crucial process. That was the phase, which I learned the most. Therefore, both creating the index and the resulted index helped me a lot. Besides, I am still using that index in my daily work. I highly recommend you to prepare your own index for the exam. Because it should be your right hand during the exam. I am very content with my index. So, I would like to share its structure and features, which are as follows:
- Assign a color for each book and stick the related colored mini-index stripes on the cover of each book.
- Minimize the number of columns — To be able to print the index in a human readable font-size, I preserved only 3 columns: Topic (keyword), Description, and Page Number (this column is colored according to the related book’s color)
- To speed up my searches during the exam, I sometimes added a summary about a term/topic into the index, so that I can find the necessary information directly.
- Most of the time, I used my native language in the descriptions to save time.
- In addition, I used emojis and icons (e.g., 😊 for advantages, ☹ for disadvantages, 🔨 for tools, and ⌘ for commands)
- I included the abbreviation list into the index.
- I sorted the index alphabetically.
- I highlighted the duplicated topics via Excel’s feature. It helped me to realize that an abbreviation has different meanings or the topic is explained in different pages or books. For instance, MAC can be either Mandatory Access Control or Media Access Control. And Mandatory Access Control has been presented in 3 different books.
- My index was 27 page long. To make the searching easy, I used mini-index stripes and indexed my index alphabetically (I know it sounds like inception).
- I also prepared a one-page hand-written cheat sheet for the diagrams that I expected questions about.
Closure
I hope my story would help you on your path to GSEC certification. I assume that you consider taking the certification as you have read the article till the end 😊. Good luck and THE END-
