By SYO-201 is coming to town. And with it comes a few surprises. Mostly I think for me (Tcat Houser), and less for Certkingdom.com. The big surprise for me is I am going to work with my co-author from the highest rated training manual for SYO-101 (Helen O’Boyle) along with a third person, I have never worked with before, Dawn-Marie. She is a buddy of Helen’s. Originally I had no interest in the new Security+ exam, mostly because while the work Helen and I did was considered the “Gold Standard” for taking on SY0-201, it never got any marketing effort. For the effort we put in, we would’ve been better off picking up aluminum cans from the side of the road for recycle.
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There is also the other smaller matter that my efforts on the topic of computer security are not really in alignment with what CompTIA’s testing for on SYO-201.
So why the change?
It comes down to a number of smaller factors. Helen had some time availability, she wasn’t predicting. Dawn-Marie comes in with not only excellent acumen in the field of computer security. She also brings (at the risk of slightly revealing her age), more than a couple years of experience in documentation layout.
And surprise, surprise. The largest factor that motivated us to update our Herculean effort comes down to the fact that SY0-201 is not that much different from SYO-101. At first, one would think after seven years, how can there be not that many changes in computer security? Upon further study, the answer becomes self-evident. We’re still dealing with a world where TCP/IP is still version 4, and not very much version 6 (IPNG). And for a moment, let’s pretend we do live in a world where IPNG is a regular feature of our daily lives. Our original work, pretty clearly lays out the differences between IP V4 and IP V6.
CompTIA’s offering a “bridge exam” for people like Helen and I were already blessed with SYO-101. My understanding is it’s 40 questions, versus 100. Personally, I’m going to pass on the bridge exam. Unless my buddies at Certkingdom.com can pull a rabbit out of a hat, a discount voucher from them, will put the full exam in the same price range as the bridge exam.
Opps. I just realized I didn’t explain the bridge exam. CompTIA Security+ Exam is testing only the differences between SY0-101 and SY0-201. Again, at first blush , one would think a lot of changes have happened in seven years. The answer is both yes and no. A man in the middle attack is still a MITM. Social engineering may have seen an increase in sophistication with spearfishing. And it still social engineering. Oh yeah. Certain aspects of PKI have been updated. That just means we have to go to that section, highlight and hit delete on the parts that haven’t quite caught up (since they did in seven years).
With our change in publisher, Dawn-Marie is giving the book a whole new look and feel. Helen and I are ‘hell-bent’ on bringing the refreshed work at a dramatically lower price point. Gosh, I don’t want to sound like a sales pitch for the new book. And to prove that point, I want to make it clear.
Well, its still out there. I downloaded and did the MD5 sum check on the (English) version. Still the same baby. Not hard to find. Now please don’t bust my chops that MD5 sums is now considered obsolete. We that that work 7 years ago, when it wasn’t. And we still talked about SHA-1 as the replacement. Maybe you want to look and see what SHA-2 has to offer.
As for the comment that are 200 page free PDF is almost the same as the InsideScoop version, I must disagree. Besides, 500 pages, there was a lot of graphics work and a lot of test questions , developed from our shot in the dark. We are committed to exceeding the previous standards at a much lower price point. We’re doing this because we care. Not because we’re trying to make a buck. SY0-201 Exam has already proven that futility.
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