Customer Reviews

CCSP SNPA Official Exam Certification Guide (3rd Edition)

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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?

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.

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.

This book is trash, it might work as a reference or review if you know the content already. It has multiple typos in each page (almost) even in the samples!

The samples are not explained enough. Through the first few chapters the book mentioned things assuming the reader knows it, causing a lot of confusion, but then those concepts are explained somewhat better later on.

If you want to learn new stuff then this book isn't for you.

I gave up on it while reading chapter 9, and decided to buy another book.
My recommendation to you is "ISBN: 1-58705-209-1". I started with the one and it looks awesome, besides it has great feedback.

Hope to get SNPA approved fast with this one.

It's certainly the worst Cisco Press book I've ever read. I find the number of errors, and how obvious some of the errors are to be shocking. It seems like they didn't even bother to re-read their work. When I started reading the book, I really wasn't that familiar with the topic, so I'm sure that I missed a lot of errors that I would catch now. I did pass the exam, but not with the help of this book. I used this book, and the accompanying CD of test questions (the practice exam has just as many blatant errors) as my primary resources for my first attempt at the exam. I was not successful (I'm a CCNP, and this is the first Cisco exam I haven't passed on the first attempt). I would strongly urge you not to waste your money on this, and to find another source for your information and test preparations. Seriously.

The updated third edition of the Cisco Press edition of CCSP SNPA Official Exam Certification Guide (1587201526 $59.95) is a 'must' study guide for any interested in the exam. Network security consultant Michael Gibbs shares preparation tips and test-taking tips and points out common areas of weakness and places where refresher information comes in handy. The companion cd-rom offers a testing engine for either individual topic areas or the overall, timed exams and allows readers to self-test their knowledge, while chapters survey VPS remote configuration, Cisco access control servers, and more. A top pick students will appreciate.

As anyone who has ever experienced a virus or network break in clearly understands, network security has become a major part of the management of any network that is exposed to the outside world. And I doubt that there is a major network anywhere that doesn't have at least some Cisco equipment. To go with the Cisco equipment has come an examination based certification procedure. This began with the CCSP (Cisco Certified Secure PIX firewall). As the equipment has progressed so has the examination. This book covers the current SNPA (Secure Network PIX ASA) exam, 642-522.

This third edition of this book builds on the successful format established with the earlier editions. Each chapter begins with a 'Do I Know This Already?' quiz. If you know the answers to these questions, you can skip or at least minimize your study of this chapter.

If you decide to study the chapter it is organized with a tell them what you're going to tell them, then tell them, then, tell them what you've told them and conclude with another quiz.

The CD supplied with the book contains an electronic copy of this book. (which I find very helpful to use on airplanes where I have to carry a laptop PC but can leave the heavy book at home.) There is also an electronic testing engine with a sample of the exam with more than 200 questions in various formats to prep you for the real test.

The earlier editions have develped an excellent reputation for successfully passing the exam. There is every reason to believe that this will continue with the current book.