Customer Reviews

CCSP SNRS Exam Certification Guide

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This Exam Certification Guide is intended for candidates preparing to take the SNRS Exam in pursuit of CCSP certification. The book covers all of the exam objectives posted on Cisco.com sufficiently. The accompanying CD provides the book in PDF format, as well as a practice test engine to help the reader validate his/her comprehension of the material. Like other Exam Certification Guides from Cisco Press, each chapter starts with a "Do I Know This Already?" and ends with a additional Q&A.

The book is divided into eight parts, with each part containing multiple chapters. The book begins by providing a good overview on security from both a technical and organizational perspective. The second part gets into router and switch management basics. Assuming that someone reading this book would already have a CCNA level of understanding, the sections on router configuration modes seem unnecessary. If the reader finds themselves needing this information, they might find the remainder of the book a little difficult. The third part covers AAA. This section does a good job of explaining the topics, and then provides configuration examples to backup learning. Also, the included troubleshooting section provides the reader with good examples of common mistakes. The fourth part is titled IOS Firewall Feature set. The material again does a good job of providing a surface overview, but might leave the reader needing to supplement their study for the exam. The chapter on Mitigating Layer 2 Attacks was particularly helpful, as this is an area that is often overlooked in production networks today. The fifth part, VPN, covers various ways to establish VPNs using Cisco IOS. My only complaint about this section is that while there are snippets of configuration throughout, there is lack of final configurations at the end of the chapters. I would like to information on GRE and DMVPN, but as these are not exam objectives, I understand their omission. Part six specifically covers management through SDM. I would have liked this section to be more in depth, but it does adequately cover the exam objectives. Part seven covers final scenarios. Again, the lack of final configs for each section is a negative to me. The final part is the appendix providing answers to all of the "Do I Know This Already?" and the end of chapter Q&A.

Formatting of the book could have used a little more attention. There are many instances where diagrams, examples, etc., are not on the same page as the explanation causing the reader to flip pages back and forth. While this is a small detail, and not related to depth of content, it is annoying.

While I think the book does a good job of meeting its intended purpose, preparing an individual to take the SNRS exam, it does not provide adequate detail to serve as a field manual or deployment guide.

Once again, cisco press has enlisted people who should not be writing books to write books. The authors, reviewers, and the editors have no clue what they are writing. I can tell they don't even know the subject well. They copied and pasted from the cisco's website and it has typos everywhere. Shame on the authors, reviewers, and the editors. Shame! Shame! Shame!

I've purchased numerous Cisco Press certification books over the years. This one is very disappointing from the editing stand-point. Command formats are listed in the text throughout the book and when the command is used in a configuration example, it differs from the format in the text. You are left to decide if there is a hyphen between words or a space. I found that I needed to consult Cisco's web page very often for clarification. This should not be required when you purchase a book that is supposed to prepare you for an exam. You're left feeling uncertain if what you've learned is correct and that's not what you want before an exam. The test engine that is included has even more errors than the book. The "correct" answers to numerous questions are blatantly wrong. There were several questions where you are told to make 3 selections and the test engine is expecting 4. Some questions wouldn't accept any answer, so the correct answer was no answer. Also, you are asked to determine the results of a configuration, but no configuration is displayed. Very disappointing. I haven't taken the exam yet, so I don't know if this book was worth the price/effort.

The CCSP consists of 5 exams that focus on security. This first exam revolves around the use of security on Cisco routers. The exam itself has traditionally been one that requires a very high pass rate and leaves very little room for error. This book addresses all the exam objectives and goes into enough detail on each topic to provide a foundation and guideline for preparing for this exam.
The book is divided into six sections. The first section is unique to Cisco Press exam guides. It provides several chapters on security basic and theory. While these topics are not listed in the exam objectives on Cisco's Web site, these chapters provide the building blocks for the remaining chapters. They consist of the general attacks, defenses and policies that are required to begin charting a secure environment.
Section II goes over the management and security of routers. Section III tackles Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA). This section provides detailed instruction on setting up routers to use AAA. The last chapter of this section introduces Cisco AAA server called Cisco Secure Access Control Server. The author gives examples in the form of screen shots to illustrate the appropriate pages on the ACS for AAA router configurations. Section IV goes on to discuss access-list, IOS firewall, CBAC, and IDS on routers. Again, examples of configurations are provided for each command. Section V provides detailed instruction on setting up VPNs. This part of the SECUR exam can be the most difficult and the author clearly lays out the commands as well as the reasoning behind them.
Section VI provides scenarios that allow the reader to review the content of the book in almost a lab format. The scenarios are broken down into tasks and each task has several subtasks that instruct the reader on what needs to be configured. The book then gives examples of the commands required to complete each task. This section really pulls the book together. It provides examples of configurations that the reader may be presented with either during a Cisco written or lab exam or while on the job in his day to day network security.
Overall this book is an excellent addition to the resources required to successfully take and pass the SECUR exam. It gives a good guide of the test objectives and gives the reader the direction that needs to be taken when preparing for the test. Each chapters has excellent examples and illustrations for the reader to see implemented exactly was they have just read. I would rate this book a 5 out of 5 and would highly recommend it to anyone who is preparing for this exam. I have read many Certification Exam guides and the common theme that most readers tend to forget is that it is a "guide". It is not the "answer guide". It is not going to give you the answers to the questions on the exam. It does provide the outline of what needs to be studied and gives the basics that you need to know, but you will need to study more than just this guide. I don't think Cisco has ever labeled these as an "all you ever need to know for the test" book. I have taken the SECUR exam and I can tell you that this guide is an excellent addition to your test preparation materials by providing you with a good guide for the exam.

CCSP SECUR Exam Certification is a member of the CCSP Self-Study series from Cisco Press. In the past I have read several of Cisco Press's self-study series books to prepare for the CCNA and CCNP certifications and found them to be very helpful. This book is geared towards those interested in preparing for the Cisco Certified Security Professional (CCSP) certification and the SECUR exam in particular. This book pleasantly surprised me with its straightforward layout which makes the material easy to manage and digest. The chapters are distilled down to the core of the material you need to know for the SECUR exam. The included CD-ROM contains a PDF version of the manual which is very useful for performing free-text searches of the material. An electronic test engine is also included. However, the test module can only be installed once so be sure to consider this when selecting the system to install it on.

Each chapter begins with a "Do I Know This Already?" quiz. A few of these quizzes have typos or formatting errors but this is a minor issue and does not prevent you from using these sections to gauge your knowledge prior to reading the chapters.

The first three chapters of the book contain a review of network security essentials. While not directly tested on the SECUR exam, this material is essential knowledge for any network security professional. Even seasoned network professionals are wise to review this material occasionally to ensure it remains fresh in their minds. The book continues to build on this knowledge in later chapters.

Chapters 4 and 5 cover management of Cisco routers. Basic yet important material is covered in these chapters. Those with CCNA/CCNP certifications or equivalent knowledge will largely find these two chapters to be a review of material they have previously mastered. However, there are tips and tricks included that I have not encountered previously.

Chapters 6 through 10 cover Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA). A nice walk through of the components and configuration of Cisco Secure ACS is included for those who may not have access to it otherwise.

Chapters 11 through 16 cover the Cisco IOS Firewall Feature Set. This includes securing the Cisco router, access lists, the IOS Firewall, Context-Based Access Control (CBAC), authentication proxy, and Intrusion Detection features. Benefiting from its recent publication date, this book includes coverage of some of the newer IOS features such as time-based ACL's.

Chapters 17 through 20 cover Virtual Private Networks, including IPSec VPN's, Certificate authorities, Easy VPN, Cisco Works, and Router MC. VPN configuration can be complex and confusing but the authors outline step-by-step how to properly configure and troubleshoot VPN configurations on Cisco devices. The final chapter is titled Final Scenarios and ties all the material together with step by step explanations of how to configure Cisco equipment for each scenario.

Overall, I found this book to be useful in my preparations for the SECUR exam. It is tightly focused on the concepts and commands needed to successfully pass the exam and I would recommend it to others.

I know the exam series is not as in-depth as the regular type Cisco Press book; however this book is lacking the meat. It is a 528 page book of which only 225 pages directly try to teach you. Eleven percent of the book (52 pages)is nothing but blank pages or title pages with no value. There are 20 chapters averaging only 11 pages each of the topic. They waste 36 pages rehashing the chapter you just read. I could understand putting a summary in for long chapters; however this book has none. This is how the book breaks down in pages, 14 rear index, 8 glossary, 52 blank/title, 8 ads, 34 content index/forward 34 answers to chapter questions, 20 question, 36 foundation summary, 73 Did I know this already, 23 scenario, and only 225 foundation pages of meat. I am not going to get into the quality of the meat. Need to reformat book, get rid of fluff and add meat.

This book covers preparation for taking the Cisco SNRS examination number 642-502. The SNRS exam is the replacement for the older SECUR exam that had the number 642-501. As such this book is kind of a second edition of a book for a test that changed its name.

This book, as its name implies is an exam guide. It is not intended to be an all encompassing study of security principles and practices. It instead concentrates on those items that are covered in the exam. It will help you pass the test, to actively work in network security you will need to know more.

But having said that, the first chapters of the book give a pretty good introduction to basic security fundamentals. I particularly like the comment that the words 'network security' may be a contradiction in terms. But we all deal with networks, and security has certainly become a problem as the bad guys out there seem to be constantly trying to break in.

As with other Cicso books, each chapter of this one starts with a short quiz to allow you do decide if you need to spend time with this chapter. This can be a real time saver by allowing you to concentrate where you need to.

I recently read the book titled "CCSP SRNS Exam Certification Guide (CCSP Self-Study)" by Greg Bastien and Christian Abera Degu. ISBN: 1-58720-153-4

This book is exclusively meant for CCSP candidates preparing for SNRS exam which is the latest version of old SECUR exam. The book indeed covers all exam objectives in sufficient detail and provides Foundation Summary and End chapter Q&A. The book is easy to follow and it will certainly help certification candidates to pass their SNRS test with flying colors. The book also includes CDROM that contains entire book in pdf format, over 200 practice questions, boson testing engine and few cool sample chapters from other Cisco press books. I wish I had this kind of resources at my disposal when I passed my MCNS couple of years ago.

My only complain with the book and authors is topics details are adequate to pass the test but not enough to make this title useful for real life security deployments or troubleshooting. They are barely scratching the surface and the reader has to read details else where to properly understand the topic. The book is just enough to pass the cert but it cannot find permanent place on my book shelf like Jeff Doyle, Saadat Malik or Justin Menga certification guides.

I especially enjoyed chapters on Layer 2 Security, Cisco Easy VPN Server and Advanced IPSec (the best chapter in the book) but again the coverage is adequate to cover exam objectives and major details are missing. I didn't see any coverage on DMVPN which I consider to be a very important topic in VPNs and it should be included in the next edition. I also find typos here and there like VTP is acronym for Virtual Terminal Protocol as opposed to VLAN Trunking Protocol.

Overall I think this book delivers what it promises but it certainly needs more meat to be beneficial for mid to senior level security administrators.

The CCSP SNRS Exam Certification Guide is to prepare you for the new Cisco exam 642-502, as shown in the cover illustration. However the Amazon product description on the day I write this and the earlier reviews all refer to another book which prepared an older exam, the 642-501 SECUR. Although there is alot of overlap in content, the exam objectives are not completely the same.

Hopefully the book authors have done a better job updating their material than the people publishing the product descriptions.

I used the older book to prepare the original 642-501 exam and my main complaint was the lack of fully working sample configs. I passed the multiple choice exam but there are still some features I haven't gotten to actually work on live routers.

Many publishers have produced various Cisco certification study guides for the CCNP/DP/SP tracks. So, why not get the exam prep materials straight from the source? With "CCSP Self Study: CCSP SECUR Exam Certification Guide" (ISBN: 1587200929), Cisco Press has successfully done just that.

First and foremost, the book is an exam study guide and not meant to replace the official SECUR course curriculum. If the reader does not have extensive, prior Cisco IOS experience or has not completed the SECUR course, he/she is advised to first review the Cisco Press book, "Securing Cisco IOS Networks (SECUR)" to take the course. However, if the reader already has the requisite experience, this book will provide the reader with enough information to conquer the SECUR exam.

The book layout is concise and straight-forward. Each chapter opens with a "Do I Know This Already" quiz. Each opening chapter quiz provides the reader the opportunity to test his/her existing knowledge to each chapter topic. While the book suggests the reader could skip the chapter materials if reader passes the opening quiz, why would you - you purchased this book for a reason. Each chapter succinctly reviews the exam topic and closes with a chapter Q&A. I also found each chapter's Foundation Summary extremely helpful as a review mechanism the night before the big test.

The book closes with a series of lab scenarios which reinforces not only the exam topics, but challenges the reader on the fundamentals of securing Cisco IOS routers. The reader can easily complete these labs on his/her own test-bed environment with three routers (requires 3DES!). Finally, the book includes a companion CD-ROM that includes a test engine as well the book in PDF format. For the frequent traveling consultant, such as me, the e-book format is an added bonus.

If I had to offer one drawback on the study guide, the book did not adequately cover the Cisco SDM. But, in Cisco Press's defense, the exam topics are always evolving and the reader is advised to always check with the Cisco website for the latest exam topics. I "blew-away" the exam after reading this book, and I highly recommend it to anyone planning to sit for the SECUR exam.