GIAC GPEN - SANS SEC560 Course

Here is my journey towards the GPEN certification – starting with the SANS SEC560 course:

It all started while attending one of the SANS SEC560 class training in Munich. 

The training itself was brilliant, our instructor "Erik Van Buggenhout" was very interesting and we encompassed a broad range of tools used for everyday testing.

It is worth noting here that all SANS instructors are also professional, meaning that they carry pen-test engagements day in day out.

The course is for everyone, meaning that no previous pen-testing experience is required, as the course will start from scratch with the most basics techniques prior to getting any deeper in the exploitation/post exploitation phases.

The key benefit of attending a live class is to meet people. Meet your peers working in the same field, meet your SANS instructor and understand his/her career path, make contacts! Always keeping in mind that your career progress will be due not thanks to your technical skills, but mostly thanks to your sociable skills (who you know!).

The SANS course was running from 9.00AM until 5.30PM, with occasional conferences after hours or social gathering. At the end of the 5 days course, a Capture The Flag event is carried out by team of 3 to 5 peoples. That's where you technical skills (and obviously sociable skills to get into the right team) get to be tested.

The capture the flag event was brilliant, I felt like back in the days, while playing FPS games on the internet. After 4 hours of hard work with trance/drums'n bass music in the background (that's how hacker do it, right?!), my team managed to retrieve all the flags and won the SANS coin. Fantastic!

Would I recommend it? Of course I would. Having just moved into a penetration testing role, I felt this was the perfect course to get going, providing a wide range of methodologies and techniques to be applied into live environment. 

My CTF Team proudly showing the SANS coin:

Stay tuned as I will soon been posting about the GPEN certification attempt!