The GSEC Prep Guide: Mastering SANS GIAC Security Essentials

Having read through this book and fully utilizing the practice test I have to say that this book has about 10% to 25% relevance to the material you will actually be tested on. I am so glad that I have years of practical experience, attended the SANS classes and have the original SANS Material.The tests were not easy and do require you to have intimate knowledge of the material you are being tested on.This book and the CD of practice questions were a complete waste of time and effort.

The Wiley book is well laid out and the writing is crisp and clear. Mike has a gift to explain a topic well in the minimum number of words and I hope he continues to write on information technology topics and I look forward to his future books.I had to give the book a low score, two stars, because it fails to meet its purpose. It purports to be a preparation guide for the GIAC GSEC exam series. I wanted to evaluate the book to be sure the content can prepare students for the exam and in my opinion, it is not adequate for that task.Since the book is useful at an outline level for reviewing the material, I will focus this review on the areas where I believe it falls drastically short in preparing you for the exams. MS Windows Security accounts for 1/7 of the GSEC exam. Sadly, the coverage in the book is apparently based on a very old version of the course. The best advice I can give you is read the course description for day 5 on the web and buy a good, up to date Windows 2000/XP book or two.There is no coverage in the Prep Guide of the cookbook (hands on) material which is testable as of July 2003 students and beyond. There are hands on questions for every tool that is covered by the cookbook in the exam bank.The wireless section, appendix B, is testable. I did not see coverage of wireless in the book.The author speaks authoritatively from time to time about the nature or content of the exam. It is may be dangerous to do this. The exam is dynamically generated. Questions are pulled from subject buckets from an enormous bank of questions. No two exams are ever alike.Finally, it is important to remember that the GSEC day books are over 2,000 pages and the Hands On cookbook is several hundred pages as well. It is impossible to fully cover that much material in 480 pages, even with a gifted author.Stephen Northcutt - Director GIAC

Book is outdated as it was printed 12 years ago. My fault for not checking before i purchased it.