CCSA/CCSE certification study material at CP community

[ED]

First I would like to say that this community is the place to go if you need help and also a place where everyone share their knowledge and tries to help each other. Also being so close to the experts at Check Point is great and makes this community unique and great but it's also a great way for Check Point to get feedback from customers to improve their products even more and see what people struggle about. That said, I suggest to make this community even better and to raise up the level/knowledge even more for those that work with Check Point products every day. 

Attending a CCSA course forexample takes 3 days and costs around 3000 USD. Let's be honest, not everyone can afford that or get that covered or have ability to take 3 days off work. My idea is to have all the study material/labs for self study available here at this community for both CCSA and CCSE exam. Attending a live course will always have advantage over self studying and you don't need to setup your own virtual environment. If Check Point would allow us to have a dedicated place under this community where users can contribute with the materal for CCSA and CCSE exam and sort of have an approved mark from someone at Check Point for the contributed materials so that the information is correct and validated. The material would have to be divided into two parts, a part covering all the topics and then the related lab excercises. It could be divided according to the data sheet from Check Point like this for CCSA:

COURSE TOPICS

• Introduction to Check Point Technology

• Security Policy Management

• Policy Layers

• Check Point Security Solutions and Licensing

• Traffic Visibility

• Basic Concepts of VPN

• Managing User Access

• Working with ClusterXL

• Administrator Task Implementation

LAB EXERCISES

• Working with Gaia Portal

• Modifying an Existing Security Policy

• Configuring Hide and Static NAT

• Managing Administrator Access

• Installing and Managing a Remote Security Gateway

• Managing Backups

• Defining Access Control Policy Layers

• Defining and Sharing Security Policy Layers

• Working with Licenses and Contracts

• Working with Check Point Logs

• Maintaining Check Point Logs

• Configuring a Site-to-Site VPN

• Providing User Access

• Working with Cluster XL

• Verifying Network Compliance

• Working with CP View

I hope i managed to explain my idea correctly. What do you guys think? 

Why am I not allowed to publish this voting on other places than Developers (code hub)? 

Yeah it would be interesting for me and I would benefit from it.	142
Not interesting for me.	1

[_Val_]

Hi Enis Dunic‌, I have moved your poll to "Training and Certification" place where it belongs. BWY, you should be able to post it any public space, but navigation might be tricky some times. 

I have also asked our colleagues from Educational Service to comment, as there might be some issues with your initiative. 

Just a couple of notes about official Check Point training system though.

Check Point delivers official educational services through a systems of ATCs (Authorized Training Centers) as well as through  tools. With the system of ATCs we ensure the best quality learning experience for our customers.

We also have a system of CLC - Check Point learning credits, to help the customers in planning and receiving training for the new products. See more details here.

Taking a course, with ATC or a virtual one, is not mandatory, but improves your chances if success. Self study materials are also available for you and listed on the training pages: Self Study Resources | Check Point Software 

[Gomboragchaa]

Hi Enis Dunic‌ 

That is true. For example, In my country hasn't any ATC. If I want to study CCSA and CCSE, I have to go another country. I must to pay flight ticket, hotel and any other related cost. Training cost is expensive and virtual class is same price. It is not fair. I think Virtual class must be more cheaper than classroom training.

Training is very important for engineers. 

[ED]

Taking course through ATCs and using CLC system is great but this is sort of an alternative to that because of the mentioned reasons above. The information about all the topics are already floating around in this community so it would be nice to have it organized and centralized in one place. 

[_Val_]

>> Training cost is expensive and virtual class is same price. It is not fair. I think Virtual class must be more cheaper than classroom training.

Why, could you please elaborate?

Virtual training in question is not a recorded unguided course.

On the opposite,

You get the same courseware, you spend the same time in the "virtual" class with a real instructor on the other end, you do the same labs in the same environment. You do not have to travel and have your own coffee mug next to you. Why should it be cheaper?

[Gomboragchaa]

My apologize. I was think the virtual classroom might be some recorded session. I've never been virtual classroom.

I mean if virtual class room more cheaper, everyone can study the course...

[_Val_]

It is already centralized under the second link I have provided you.

My point is, the official Education Services's goal is not only to get you certified. Most importantly, we want you to understand and master Check Point products. If you have enough experience with them, and if you continuously working through Check Point documentation, you may try to pass an exam without even taking the course.

However, if you are only starting with Check Point or you want to develop your expertise to the next level, I would sincerely recommend talking the course you need before taking chances with the exam.

[Timothy_Hall]

Right, I've had students attend Check Point classes I've hosted both classroom-led and virtual tell me the only real difference between the two was not being able to chat in-person with the other students when attending .  The lecture/lab/lecture/lab format and the content is identical in both versions.

The only other difference was obviously not being able to enjoy the free coffee/soda/bagels in the virtual version of a class.  I offered to show virtual students a picture of a delicious bagel on the shared display, but that would just make them hungry.  🙂

--
Second Edition of my "Max Power" Firewall Book
Now Available at http://www.maxpowerfirewalls.com

[johnkhoo]

Hi Timothy, I am planning to study CCSA. Can I check with you if any of your courses on the below website can help me to prepare for my CCSA exam? 

Second Edition of my "Max Power" Firewall Book
Now Available at http://www.maxpowerfirewalls.com

[Timothy_Hall]

You can see the list of courses along with dates that I teach at www.shadowpeak.com.

[johnkhoo]

Thanks Timothy.

[Nathan_Gautrey]

Must admit I don't know many people that have taken the virtual courses.  Given the choice between Onsite, Virtual and not taking the course almost everyone I know will do Onsite or skip due to cost.

On the subject of training material does anyone know how to get the material without the capsule docs viewer?  Palo Alto, Cisco and every other course I've been on has given us PDF's or html pages, we don't have access to windows devices we can randomly install software on for the course and frankly I can see any benefit to the student.

[_Val_]

Thank you for your feedback Nathan Gautrey‌. I am pretty sure there will be someone from Educational Service on this thread to comment.

[PhoneBoy]

Our tagline here at CheckMates is: Learn, Share, Inspire.

Which certainly suggests that you should be able to find educational material here.

That said, most of the discussions and materials are not currently geared towards getting people Check Point certified.

The formal CCSA/CCSE training (virtual or in-person) is a paid offering either directly from Check Point or an ATC.

The idea of community-built training materials is certainly worth exploring. 

In the way of general guidance on this topic, I'll offer the following:

• Discussions about specific questions on the certification tests are out of bounds.

• Discussions around the specific topic areas covered on the tests (e.g. the list above) are certainly fair game.

[Yuri_Slobodyany]

I actually had the idea (and still have) of recording Video course covering all the topics on CCSA R77.30/R80 exam and uploading somewhere like Youtube, but what stops me from actually doing it is uncertainty about the demand for such a course. To cover all the exam topics for say CCSA would take some 18-20 hours of video play time, and unlike "let's fire up Checkpoint and watch me do things" style, the exam demands both theory and practice. Theory of the related technologies because exam has always had questions about security technologies not specific to the Checkpoint products, so you have to cover VPN/Hash algos/Encryption algos/Sateful vs packet filtering/etc a lot of stuff. And then you have to do the practice of configuring the firewall, which is actually the easy part for me. 

My rough estimate, all in all, a video course covering CCSA may take from 150 to 200 hours of clock time to produce at professional level . And if after all this work just 20 people are going to watch it ... kinda sucks.  Look at the Check Point Support Channel - YouTube  - starting 2010,  lots of videos, promotion on the main CP venues, some are professionally very good and mere (by today's standards)  330,468 views , not sure ...

Printed/written materials have even worse chances - as Dameon Welch Abernathy  somewhere on this forum discussed, back then when firewall was much smaller, it took him 2 years! to write a book about the Checkpoint firewall.

So prospects of this ever happening are dim.

Unless someone has other ideas on it and can substantiate them.

[Xavier_Koenig]

Absolutely interested. Actual study guides for the CCSA/CCSE R80 are not really out there since it's so new, and for the CCSM it seems to be almost non-existent. I understand that the administrator guides for each exam tell you what subjects are covered, but having an in-depth guide to explain each section would be killer. Great idea Enis Dunic‌!

[ED]

That said, most of the discussions and materials are not currently geared towards getting people Check Point certified.

How cool would it be to also have that option here on this community which I believe would be appreciated by many users based on the voting. 

An own part here on the menu for CCSA/CCSE training.

Where you have the main page with all the topics for CCSA/CCSE which will be links to documents created by the community. This way it will be focused on just educational material for those that wants to get certified and the material is easy to find and not spread everywhere. I'm sure many users will contribute to this part and have all the topics covered. 

[ED]

Yuri Slobodyanyuk‌ I think that YouTube is the wrong platform for expecting many views on the uploaded videos for Check Point where you easily will get distracted by cat videos and hundred other things. It has been very little information before on YouTube for Check Point related material and still is. On the other hand this is a growing community with almost 5000 users and they are all interested in just one thing, Check Point. I believe that the theory about all the topics for CCSA/CCSE will be covered by users on this community. It sounds that you would be interested in covering the lab excersise part and it would be interesting for this community. Don't know how the option for hosting the videos directly on this community are.

Here is what should be covered both in theory and lab part:CHECK POINT ADMINISTRATOR STUDY GUIDE FOR R80

If things starts to happen some smart minds should think about people that don't have the ability to setup their own lab environment. I mean offer them some sort of  lab for free.  

[_Val_]

There is already Training and Certification space in CheckMates. Your thread is in here -)

[_Val_]

 >> I mean offer them some sort of  lab for free.  

How do you see that? Where those free labs should be hosted? Who should maintain them?

[ED]

I was thinking about  lab and got the inspiration from Emerging Technologies Training and Certification Materials. Don't have answers to those questions. 

[_Val_]

Well, those courses are only free of charge for a limited amount of time and for CheckMates members only. They are not free on the backend though. We are paying for them even if a student does not.

[ED]

I'm aware of that. Not much is free in this world  The part of having access to an  lab is definitely not neccessary and was just a thought. 

[PhoneBoy]

There are some limits in our current platform that, at times, makes it difficult to highlight all the great resources we have on CheckMates.

That said, once the community begins developing materials, we can find ways to collect/highlight them in a central location.

[Garrett_DirSec]

 I literally just took the CCSE R80 update exam four ago.  I could provide some good suggestions for study areas.

-GA

[ED]

I would like to hear that Garrett, as long as we don't cross any lines. 

[Heath_Mote]

We were strictly Cisco ASA firewalls before we made the move to Check Point a few years back. I think the Check Point documentation via the portal is stellar when compared to the Cisco support portal. The one thing that I miss with Check Point is that Cisco actually publishes their certification materials/books (Cisco Press) and I can go buy those all day long on Amazon for study materials. Not so with Check Point and even worse is that third party resources are almost non-existent. There are a few brave souls in our midst who have published books but nothing compared to the resources Cisco has on Amazon.

I didn't come with any solutions but only with observations that were meant to expand on what others have said above. My main point I wanted to make was that there exists a huge gap in publicly available Check Point resources when compared to Cisco. That might be comparing apples to oranges as far as market penetration but Check Point should want to go out of their way to get resources in the hands of anyone who wants to learn.

Again, my opinion...

[_Val_]

Check Point Admin guides are available for all customers with valid products free of charge. I am trying to understand the parts you are missing. Do you also want this documentation to be available for purchase in paper form?

[Oleg_Pekar2]

I'd like to have at least the updated study guide for CCSE R80.10.

The exam is available for like a year, but link at the official site still points to the R77 version, what a shame 😃

Training & Certification | Check Point Software >>> Get Ready >>> Download the study guide

https://www.checkpoint.com/downloads/professional-services/training/EngineeringStudyGuide.pdf 

The same document for CCSA R80.10 was really useful for the exam preparation, it would be nice to have it updated fro CCSE at last.

[GG27]

Hi guys

I aggree with the idea the courses only at ATC is not for anyone. In my case the main problem is the course price and the day off work it requires.

In the past I always bought exam studying material from distributors and always I passed the exam thanks even the experience on the field.

BTW studying myself for the certification it was more helpful than attending in a class.

I'll appreciate if Check Point will bring available the studying material again by distribution or shop on-line.