Sans Coures

I am thinking of going to the SANS Network Security Conference in Las Vegas (http://www.sans.org/ns2004) to take one of their security auditing tracks (Track 7 (http://www.sans.org/ns2004/description.php?tid=71) or Track 10 (http://www.sans.org/ns2004/description.php?tid=58) ). These are a little pricey and I don't think I can get my employer to pay so I wanted to hear what people thought of these SANS courses (or any SANS courses for that matter).

Also, at what level are they taught? Track 10, at least, looks pretty basic from the outline but perhaps the course is more intense?

Thanks for any feedback

d

I took track 3 (Intrusion Detection) last year and thought it was really good. Being very new to this arena it was pretty overwhelming but I learned a great deal. If you go, be sure to take in some of the evening sessions and BOF sessions. And check out the IPNet. There's a lot of cool stuff going on there.

In general the SANS courses are very good: well taught by both knowledgeable and good instructors, and are pretty deep content wise - think of "drinking from a firehose" statement...lots of material in short period of time. Many of the tracks are geared toward people who already have some experience in security but some are beginner level.

I took the Audit track, #7, and learned alot about what and how to audit sytems. It gave a good depth for many different areas to audit and helped me craft my auditing strategy. I had some great instructors that I recommend such as Stephen Northcutt, John Green, and Randy Marcheny.

I also took the CISSP 10 domains prep class taught by Eric Cole. It was another very good class and Eric is a fine instructor. It is geared toward teaching you the 10 domains of CISSP for certification.

A fellow network/security friend of mine, with many years of experience managing firewalls, took the firewalls track and thought it was very good as well.

Again, the SANS courses, while are pretty pricey, are high quality material and value IMO and worth it.

Hope this helps.

I've done:
Security Essentials
Unix Security Admin
Incident Handling
part of the Intrusion detection
and their course on business law and computer security.

I think they've all been good courses so far. The conferences are great.

Been to Tracks I and IV, both were excellent.

FYI, when I attended Track IV in Wash DC. There were a couple of guys in the track with us who were working for the conference. They had signed on to be gophers for the instructors, and help monitor badges. For that they got to sit in the entire track free of charge. SANS taught 8 of their tracks in DC, and had 2-3 of these type of folks in each classroom.

They should be accepting volunteers on their web site. Just a thought if funding is an issue!

Also, I plan on going back for Tracks III, VII, and VIII. As time and $ permit.

Thanks for the replies.

I think I will be making plans for Vegas.

d