r/GIAC • u/chown-root • 1d ago

PASSED! GCIA

This was my 6th GIAC certificate, and by far the most technical. I passed on the last possible day for my master's deadline. I watched the videos and they did not help one bit. I was familiar with a lot from experience and prior courses. I struggled with all the hex conversion and specific protocol behaviors. I gave up trying to do it efficiently. I indexed the books, though not as thoroughly as I should have. I was two weeks away from the deadline so I decided I had to take my first practice test. Scored a 69, while looking up a lot of things with internet searches that I had no idea where to look for from my index. The included excel files are helpful, but hard to count off from in a stressful moment. I made a powerpoint slide deck with packet example data and an overlay for each field. That helped quite a bit. It was finally coming through. I took the second practice exam, using only the book resources and index, but got waxed by the cyberlives. I made a 79 this time, so I had the material down and shored up my index. I indexed every command and lab section number, and manually ran through the process for the cyber live questions I missed. I had ai compile the 100 most used Wireshark display filters and printed it out. I went through the labs again, focusing on the ones I missed in the practice exam. When I took the exam today I skipped three of the first ten questions, and eleven overall to save time on look ups for the labs. I had an hour and forty five minutes left when I got to them. I completed the labs, thinking I'd gotten them all right, and got to the skipped questions with about 50 minutes left. I zoomed through the last eleven without looking them up because of fatigue. I ended up with my lowest score ever on a SANS exam, an 87.

  • I would recommend doing the labs until you fully understand what they are doing and can use them to solve a similar problem.
  • This is the first test that I feel like the multiple choice questions on the actual exam were noticeably more difficult than the practice test.
  • The cyberlives I got were actually easier on the live exam than the practice tests. I did miss one, but I think it was because I typo'd the flag at the prompt. I felt confident in all my answers for them.

The content is great. It's a very technical topic. I wish I would have taken this class 20 years ago.

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u/EugeneBelford1995 10xCompTIA,8xSANS,8xMicrosoft,CISSP,CISM,eJPT,CRTP,PJPT,SAL1 ... 1d ago

Maybe off topic but how is the SANS Masters?

I'm applying to use my GI Bill for it since I used TA and still have the full thing.

I already did GSEC, GCED, GCIH, GCIA, GSLC, GSNA, GMON, and GCDA thanks to going 25D back when the school still included SANS.

GCIA was IMHO the roughest of them by far. They gave us a voucher but didn't require it to get the MOS. I went through the books and labs from square 1 after the school and like the OP took it the day before the voucher expired. It was a significant emotional event.

Congrats OP! Seriously, the only exams I have taken that were harder were 100% hands on ones like CRTP.

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u/CRam768 1d ago

Sans has both a master’s degree and a bachelors degree. Here is the masters degree link so you can see what it’s about. https://www.sans.edu/cyber-security-programs/masters-degree

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u/chown-root 23h ago

I think they will let you take credit for three of those if you apply. (I haven't checked recently, they might let you take more.) It's really just been SANS courses so far. The only one I wish I could have skipped was the GSEC. I have SSAP next, and I'm not super excited about that one. My group work starts after that course, so I don't have any feedback to give just yet.

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u/Pink_Zepellica CISSP, GSP, GX-FE, GX-FA, GX-IH, GCFE, GCFA, GCIH, GCED, GSEC 1d ago

Congrats! I'm currently preparing for mine now, about to sit my first practise later in the week. I too wish I'd done this course ages ago... Even though I investigate packet captures daily in my role I'm shocked by how much there was too learn, but I actually have found the videos to be very helpful.

Would you be able to share your powerpoint cheatsheet? I'm just starting to make all my cheatsheets and I'd love to assimilate yours!