SENSS Passed

Just a short post for this week, as I've done recently.  This exam has completely consumed my time lately.  Because I had yesterday off, I scheduled my second attempt at the SENSS and nailed it this time with a score of 910.  Exams are a lot easier when you know what you need to know, aren't they?  This isn't a knock against Cisco's exam topics, I just didn't have a good idea of just how deep I needed to know certain things that didn't seem like they'd be covered as heavily which lead me to spend a lot of time on things that weren't really covered very much.  It was my first failed Cisco exam, and quite a humbling experience. Either way now I have a much better idea idea of what I need to do moving forward in the CCNP Security.

Next up, I don't know yet.  I plan to take a couple days to recover from that experience and give some thought to which exam I want to tackle next.  While the SIMOS looks like it'll be a lot more fun as it's very heavy in cryptography and VPNs, the SISAS may be more practical as ISE reared it's head multiple times already in the SENSS, and I doubt it won't be in the other exams as well. Besides that, the SISAS is the only exam with a certification guide, so getting to see a little bit of structure in exam preparation may be of use.

Either way, it's not going to be the SITCS this time.  There's no way I'll be able to knock out v1.0 before December 16, and I'd prefer to wait a little bit and let the community hash out exactly what v1.5 is before attempting it.  There was a lot of butt-hurt early on for all 4 of these exams from the early attempts and I'd hate to join the ranks.

Also in the near future will be the CISSP, which is the capstone of my Masters Degree, and the Upgrading Your Skills to MCSA Windows Server 2016 exam.  I haven't decided when I'll mix those two in yet either.  So for now I'll just be kicking the tires on Server 2016 and starting to tinker with ISE.  I've got a few SENSS related posts still in very rough form, so I'll probably get those presentable and post them here and there as well.