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Hello everyone, I got my CCNP last year and while I enjoy my job, the more I read about security the more interested I become.
Now, I've been exposed to enough geek culture over the years to know that you can't just go out and get a couple certs and pretend to competent. I've been reading all the resources I can find on cryptography and software exploits, as I figure it would be best to approach the subject from all angles.
Unfortunately my reading has been disorganized and regimentation, and completely without hands-on practice. As I have no intention to crack into other people's systems, I thought I'd be better off building a sort of lab, kinda like I was looking to when looking at the CCNP. I have a fairly decent computer, and have some of the parts from my last (q6600) build to use for dynamips/gns3 and VMs. I'm hoping someone here can give me advice of a setup that I can build/buy that would allow me to explore vectors of attack and how to mitigate them.
I was also hoping for a recommendation of a way to organize my study into something with more structure. For R&S I had the ccnp to shoot for, but from what I understand the ccna/ccnp security certs are not very useful or respected. Any tips would be appreciated.
Now, I've been exposed to enough geek culture over the years to know that you can't just go out and get a couple certs and pretend to competent. I've been reading all the resources I can find on cryptography and software exploits, as I figure it would be best to approach the subject from all angles.
Unfortunately my reading has been disorganized and regimentation, and completely without hands-on practice. As I have no intention to crack into other people's systems, I thought I'd be better off building a sort of lab, kinda like I was looking to when looking at the CCNP. I have a fairly decent computer, and have some of the parts from my last (q6600) build to use for dynamips/gns3 and VMs. I'm hoping someone here can give me advice of a setup that I can build/buy that would allow me to explore vectors of attack and how to mitigate them.
I was also hoping for a recommendation of a way to organize my study into something with more structure. For R&S I had the ccnp to shoot for, but from what I understand the ccna/ccnp security certs are not very useful or respected. Any tips would be appreciated.