Hello everyone!
Little bit late but I wanted to go through taking the GCIH exam and my experience.
I was definitely intimidated when I signed up for the course. My partner had taken the course before I did and raved about how much he learned but he did have to push his exam because of how difficult the practice exams were for him. So I knew going into it that this would not be an easy exam for me.
I took the GCIH On Demand because of the long hours and having two kids it would have been impossible for me to pay attention the entire time with no interruptions.
When I received my books, the first thing I did was read through all of them and index according to Lesley Carhart’s method. You can find that here. Instead of stopping at each lab, I would read the entire book first, then go back and do all of the labs from that book. I found this helped me stay focused. I have ADHD so stopping after every section, getting out my computer and completing the labs would have been very distracting to move from activity to activity with minimal downtime. When I got fatigued from the reading, I would listen to Josh Wright in the OnDemand course. He explained things very well, broke down topics, gave examples. I don’t usually like listening to the lectures but I listened to almost all of his OnDemand recordings multiple times especially in subjects I was weak in.
The labs I did using my 34” monitor. I’m sure it’s doable on your laptop screen but having to switch from the linux VM to the windows VM and back to the instructions was honestly a headache and being able to spread out the windows on a large monitor helped me learn better.
A lot of the course worked in “Red Team” “Blue Team” like “here is an attack” “here is to defend yourself from that attack”.
I took my first practice test about a week and a half before I was to take the exam. Honestly this was piss poor planning on my part. I should have finished the books and labs much sooner so to spread out the practice tests. I ended up never going back and taking my second practice test.
The material was dense and I did have to reread pages and sections a couple times in order to ingest the information. I did not have a lot of prior experience with Windows Command Prompt or Linux command line before this so a lot of this was completely new information for me.
As you can see here, I failed most of the CyberLive exam questions my first practice test. So this is where I started when it came to rereview before my exam. I took all of the labs again and the ones I failed, I did twice. Subjects/sections that I received less than 4 stars in I reread the sections over again. I did this every night after my children went to bed for at least 3 hours up until the exam.
Before going into the exam:
- I had reviewed other people’s experience with the exam on Reddit.
- I had printed out SANS personal cheat sheets. You can find those here.
- I had printed out my index and put them into sheet protectors with binder rings.
- I did not study the night before in order to relax and unwind before the big day.
Throughout the test, I skipped questions I wasn’t 100% familiar with but I tried to keep a decent pace because I knew lab questions were last and take the longest. I don’t normally take my breaks because I don’t like to distract myself or get out of the “zone” so I tend to go the 5 or 6 hours straight.
And I ended up passing!
I learned a lot throughout this course and have already used some of the skills I acquired in my day to day. This was the second certification/class requirement for my Master’s Degree at SANS and so far loving what I’m learning!