GIAC and GSE Certification

This is an interesting little trinket and find in terms of evolution and current status of the computing industry security certification pathway: the GSE(GIAC Security Expert), the highest certification for the GIAC (Global Information Assurance Certification).

 

Should I get GSE GIAC certified? to what end? the terms, tools, news, policy, trends and politics is vast and to take all the certifications just to get to the GSE would be, expensive, and time consuming. Alas, some will and some must take this path. For me, the formal education and hi-tech corporate leadership route is best and has been accomplished.

 

In leadership and management, one just knows we need on the team and staff or at some level of management one of those security type folks with all the credentials. Either FTE, Part Time or Subcontractor, a GIAC GSE would be vital to some major corporations, providing the price and timing is right.

 

For me, its knowing and allocating resources to achieve that end and making sure hire to performance is top notch and meets all the business goals and KPIs and more...

  

GSE GIAC for me, not really necessary at this time - as a master expert computer systems engineer and technologist leader with an masters in business and technology management and bachelors degree in computer systems engineering, with PhD studies in organizational management and leadership, with 25+ years of corporate experience in hi-tech, the certification path is not daunting yet definitely amusing in terms of policy making and certifications.

  

It's like going through West Point and becoming an General (Brigadier or higher) versus going through NCO schools to become a Command Sergeant Major. Different paths, same end result, yet one has stripes and chevrons and the other has brass, silver and gold on their collar and under their belt.

 

more to come...

 

Reference:

https://www.giac.org/certification/security-expert-gse

 

GSE Certification Objectives

The skills required to successfully earn the GSE certification can be broken up into three major groups:

1. General security skills
2. Incident handling skills
3. Intrusion detection and analysis skills During the GSE lab, GIAC will provide you a laptop with the following tools installed:
• Windows 7 Professional
• LibreOffice
• VMWare Player
• Wireshark
• GPG4Win
• The Putty SSH suite and WinSCP
• Burp Suite
• Notepad++
• A virtual machine with a customized configuration of Kali Linux 2018.1, with included security tools.
• We have also installed Snort, SiLK and Bro IDS.
• You can find a list of standard tools included with Kali Linux here
• Virtual machines with Ubuntu Linux Server

To ensure a level playing field for all candidates, you will not be permitted to load data, software, or electronic references onto the computer for the exam. We will provide external mice, but you will not be permitted to attach additional peripherals (monitors, keyboards) to the candidate laptops. To complete the exercises, you must exclusively use the tools and virtual machines provided by GIAC. Failure to comply will result in dismissal from the examination.

The following is a partial list of some tools and techniques you can expect to encounter during GSE exercises.

• sniffers/IDS - wireshark, snort
• Scanners - nmap, Nessus vulnerability scanning results
• utilities - netcat, ssh, gpg, iptables
• miscellaneous - metasploit, command line tools, and common attack techniques

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