GSE (GIAC Security Expert)

I haven't posted much recently because the last 6 weeks have been very busy for me.  As I noted earlier, over Labor Day, Sherry & I took a 10 day trip.  Since then, I had a 3-day trip to DC for work, followed by 1 day home and then 10 days in Vegas.  That 10-day trip included 2 days sitting for the GIAC GSE hands-on lab.  The GSE is an interesting certification.  It requires at least 3 other certifications before you are eligible to sit for it.  There is then a 150 question, 3 hour proctored "written" (online multiple choice) exam and if the score on that is high enough you can register for the hands-on lab.  The lab is 2 days of actually demonstrating you can do the things described in the 3 underlying certifications.  I won't go into the exact things covered in the exam, in part because we signed an NDA and ethics pledge before we began the labs, but some of the prep materials describe it in general terms.  Chris Mohan was 1 of the other 8 people who sat with me for the exam.  In his blog, he wrote a nice story about his experience.  I was pretty nervous going in because, with all the travel immediately before, I didn't get to study as much as I would have liked.  The 2 days were long, but at the end of the second day, I was pretty warn out, but my first thought was "I expected it to be worse."  That left me feeling cautiously confident.  One of the hard things was, unlike in previous years (and due to the number of us taking the exam), the results would not be known immediately.  We were told that we would have the results within 30 days.  Fortunately, it didn't take that long.  Last evening, I received the e-mail telling me that I had passed the lab.  The results haven't been posted on the web site yet, but I'm proud to say I am one of at least 24 28 persons who have achieved this elite certification.