Passed My GPEN Exam Today

Wrote my GIAC Penetration Tester exam today and passed with 87%. Have to say this was the hardest SANS Certification exam I've ever done. Some tricky questions in it. Now onto studying for my CISSP this year! Hi mr\_clark, I'm always be curious about sans material, have you attended an online or a live course? How was the material? How was the exam structured? Thank you. Already saw this on your Twitter feed ;) Good job!! Well done! Any advice you would care to share with the rest of us looking to take the GIAC exam? I took the course live in Ottawa earlier in the year. The course was awesome. Small class of 6 people. The training materials are the usual SANS books. One book for each day of the class. The class was 6 days. 5 days of class and 1 day of actual breaking into a virtual network. That was a great way to learn. The exam was proctored at Pearson VUE. 115 multiple choice questions and you have 3 hours. 74% to pass. I believe I was done in just over 2 hours. Like all the other SANS exams I've taken they're open book. One nice feature of the exam is that after every 15 questions it gives you a percentage of what you have correct at that point. You can also skip a set number of questions if you're totally stumped but you have to answer them before finishing the exam. What I normally have done in the past is mark the book around the edges with yellow stickies to create a sort of index of each book. Some of the people in the class actually created their own index which they shared with me and I used. It helped a lot. You need to know the material (duh!) but I found myself often checking the books just to make sure I was right with my answers. Especially with those weird questions about a particular command line option. Was that '-a' or '-A' or you're stuck between two answers that both appear to be right. Only other tip is to read the questions at least twice and understand exactly what they're asking. I caught myself on a few questions thinking one answer was correct until I re-read the question and realized the wording was a little twisted so I would've been wrong. Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any further questions. I write at least one SANS exam every year as I have to renew all of them every 4 years. This is my 5th SANS certification. @mr\_clark .. congrats! hopefully going for my first in a few months. Question, I have a co-worker who has SANS material. In your opinion can I technically read his books, schedule a test, and actually have a chance of passing without doing the actual 6 day training? What has been hindering me is coughing up the money for the training. Its very possible. All of the answers are in the books. Although if you can afford it I'd recommend the course as the hands on training is excellent. Understood. Thanx for feedback. Congratulations ! and thank you for the feedback it'll help many people including me. mr\_clark first off congratulations! May I ask what sort of background you have and what pre-req knowledge is needed for this course/exam? Congrats man. That's awesome Congratulations @mr\_clark!:D Congrats mr\_clack! Great job. Congratulations! cpenn, I've been working in IT for about 18 years. Started in the network/support side when our department was two people and as the company grew so did our department and our responsibilities. For the last 7+ years my focus has been on IT Security. Personally, I haven't done a lot of pentesting myself. I always understood the basics but never did much hands on exercise. I've always been more 'blue team' side of things. Now I'm hoping to do more hands on work and set up a lab at home and hopefully branch into 'red team' work. Ahh mr\_clark excellent. I am in a similar position however I have just been offered and accepted a new IT manager role so I may be a bit busy over the next few months.....I may need to put some of my plans on hold WRT personal studies Cool. Great job. Welcome to the club Many thanks Ninja Master Hi mr\_clarck, Could you share your index? hello, thanks for the info & Congratulations! @mr\_clark congrats ;) Also, thanks for the tips Congrats @Mr\_Clark I took the coarse end of last year and have been struggling with time to get the test done (I thought the coarse had good material). Its my understanding that now or in the near future GIAC will actually be supplying the index with the coarse. Has anyone recently taken the coarse and is the index available? Is someone willing to share it? would save me a lot of time. Thanks Congratulations @mr\_clark , Can you people that have passed the exam give us the index and/or references to prepare the exam? I think in my country there isn´t a live course.. :/, and online one is very expensive..!! Thank you in advanced Well done! What were the hard bits for you? I can't recall which areas I found the hardest but I'd have to say the biggest challenge is that there is a LOT of information to cover. Even with an open book exam you better know your stuff or you're in trouble. Congratulations! Well done! Congratulation! best of luck for your future Congrats!! Would also appreciate any index "advice" Congrats Any advice to share what's the sans books title and index for GPEN studies? Thx Hey, Congrats Dear I am very happy for you :-) I also passed CEH certification exam and scored around 91%. I did this course from Koenig Solution Check it :- https://www.koenig-solutions.com/