CCSP SNPA Official Exam Certification Guide (3rd Edition) (Hardcover)

by Greg Bastien (Author), Earl Carter (Author), Christian Degu (Author), Michael Gibbs (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Assessment, review, and practice for CCSP SNPA exam 642-522

 

The official study guide helps you master all the topics on the SNPA exam, including:

• Firewall technologies
• Cisco Security Appliance translation and connection
• Access control configuration
• Modular policy framework
• Security contexts
• Syslog
• Routing protocol support
• Failover
• Virtual private networks (VPN)
• Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM)
• Content filtering
• Authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) configuration
• Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) and advanced protocol handling

CCSP SNPA Official Exam Certification Guide, Third Edition, is a best-of-breed Cisco® exam study guide that focuses specifically on the objectives for the Securing Networks with PIX and ASA (SNPA) exam. Network security consultant, Michael Gibbs, shares preparation hints and test-taking tips, helping you identify areas of weakness and improve your knowledge of firewall and Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) security. Material is presented in a concise manner, focusing on increasing your understanding and retention of exam topics.

 

This guide presents you with an organized test preparation routine through the use of proven series elements and techniques. “Do I Know This Already?” quizzes open each chapter and allow you to decide how much time you need to spend on each section. Exam topic lists and Foundation Summary tables make referencing easy and give you a quick refresher whenever you need it. Challenging chapter-ending review questions help you assess your knowledge and reinforce key concepts.

 

The companion CD-ROM contains a powerful testing engine that allows you to focus on individual topic areas or take complete, timed exams. The assessment engine also tracks your performance and provides feedback on a module-by-module basis, presenting question-by-question remediation to the text.

 

Well-regarded for its level of detail, assessment features, and challenging review questions and exercises, this book helps you master the concepts and techniques that will enable you to succeed on the exam the first time.

 

CCSP SNPA Official Exam Certification Guide, Third Edition, is part of a recommended learning path from Cisco Systems® that includes simulation and hands-on training from authorized Cisco Learning Partners and self-study products from Cisco Press. To find out more about instructor-led training, e-learning, and hands-on instruction offered by authorized Cisco Learning Partners worldwide, visit www.cisco.com/go/authorizedtraining.

 

Companion CD-ROM

The CD-ROM contains an electronic copy of the book and more than 200 practice questions for the SNPA exam, all available in study mode, test mode, and flash card format.

 

This volume is part of the Exam Certification Guide Series from Cisco Press®. Books in this series provide officially developed exam preparation materials that offer assessment, review, and practice to help Cisco Career Certification candidates identify weaknesses, concentrate their study efforts, and enhance their confidence as exam day nears.

 

About the Author

Michael Gibbs is the CTO for Security Evolutions, Inc., (SEI) where he is responsible for the overall technical management of SEI’s Cisco IT security consulting services.

 

Greg Bastien, CCNP®, CCSP™, CISSP®, is the chief technical officer of Virtue Technologies, Inc., and directs the actions of the engineering staff that supports several federal agencies.

 

Earl Carter is a member of the Security Technologies Assessment Team (STAT) at Cisco Systems where he performs security evaluations on numerous Cisco products.

 

Christian Abera Degu, CCNP, CCDP®, CCSP, currently works for Veridian Networks/General Dynamics as a consulting engineer to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

 

Product Details

• Hardcover: 768 pages
• Publisher: Cisco Press; 3 edition (May 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587201526
• ISBN-13: 978-1587201523
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #708,012 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good book with tons of errors, October 21, 2006

By	Zhenhui Liang (Alhambra, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It's a very good written book, but the shame is: too many errors in the book. And the worse part is, in ciscopress site, the errota didn't include any of them. The "Do I know This already Quiz" is terriblly written, and the answer keys are wrong all the time. Very funny the end of Chapter Q&A, same question, but the answer is one that's deemed to be wrong in the "Do I know this Already Quiz". The end of Chapter Q&A normally is the right answer.
Another ridiculous part is: For example, a question with for choices, A state this, B state that, D says both A and B correct. for this kind of question, the answer key sometime is ABD, sometime is AB, sometime is D. You got the point both A and B are right, but when you check the keys, you found you got wrong answer, it's super annoying.

Another major drawback of the questions is: too many trivial questions, like which model has how many interfaces etc. Is this really the purpose of this exam? and the answer seems to be yes. Because I just took the exam, passed it, and I saw a lot of such questions in real exam. Why should we mechanically memorize those models?

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A worthwhile study guide, November 29, 2006

By	James C. Voorhees (Kensington, MD USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

People studying for Cisco certification exams have always been able to get solid study guides directly from Cisco Press. Like its brethren, the third edition of the CCSP SNPA will give the student a well-mapped path for preparing for the certification exam.

The book, like the exam, covers the configuration and functionality of PIX 500 series firewalls and the ASA 5500 series Adaptive Security Appliances. It begins with chapters in network security and firewall technologies in general, then describes Cisco's technologies in particular. Subsequent chapters deal with controlling access; failover; VPNs; authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA); and intrusion protection functions together with rarer protocols. The book teaches concepts and CLI commands first and only gets to the use of the GUI, the Adaptive Security Device Manager (ADSM), later. It ends with a case study that brings everything together.

Each chapter begins with a set of multiple choice questions to enable readers to determine whether they know the material well enough to skip the chapter. Each chapter ends end with a summary section and another set of questions to reinforce what the student has just learned. These require short answers rather than simply choosing or guessing the right one. Students who can provide the answer to these without looking them up can be confident that they have mastered the material.

The book is not perfect. The vocabulary used for the overview of network security will be strange to many: how many people refer to vertical and horizontal scans, for instance? That may be less a problem with this book than with Cisco, but the difficulty created is needless.

One chapter, on VPNs, has a scenario, complete with fill-in-the-blank configurations, that may be as close to hands-on as a reader can get without opening a command prompt. Similar exercises to accompany other chapters would have been useful.

Some concepts could use fuller explanations. RIP and OSPF and the differences between link status and distance vector routing protocols in an early chapter, and then voice over IP protocols later are only touched on. As this is not a book on routing or VOIP, the editors may have considered it wasteful to spend more ink on these topics, but at least a reference or two to go to for fuller explanations would be welcome to many readers.

As with most Cisco books, the prose style is serviceable and generally clear. It gets the job done. Unfortunately, the text is marred by sporadic explosions of typos, which occur just frequently enough to be slightly jarring.

The CD-ROM contains an electronic copy of the book, copies of chapters of other Cisco Press books, a printable version of the appendix with the questions that appear in the text with their answers, and a test engine with 281 questions. The last is from BOSON, long the standard for CISCO practice tests. The questions include those from the text and 98 more. With the questions divided among 19 categories, this is a minimal amount that many will find inadequate, but more questions can be purchased through a link found on the CD.

Full disclosure compels me to note that I received my copy of this book as part of the Cisco Press Reader Review Program.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Title., September 5, 2006

By	D. Allen - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book only seems to prepare for about half the SNPA test and offer a lot of other information that's nice to know but not needed. One thing people might want to study is the stuff that has only one sentence written about it. For instance, that's great 5 pages might be written on phase 1 and 2 for VPN set up, but if there's one sentence written about how the "nat" command affects anything at all to do with VPN, study that.