The GIAC GSE god cert kicks butt, but its expensive..as you said, you need to get at least 5 other cert's first. Kinda like going after a CCIE. But personally, I think the gsec certs are much better then the CISSP. What people don't seem to understand (especially human resources people, but they don't understand much) is that CISSP is more based on theory, while the GSEC certs are very specialized. If someone has a GCIH, you know that they have training and experience in Incident Responce. It doesn't mean you hire them to set up a firewall. If someone has a CISSP, then you know that they have trainging in the theorys of security, but have no idea what they can actually do.