The PhoneBoy Blog

Go Get Your CCSA and CCSE at CPUG University

15 Feb 2009

If you’re looking to get your Check Point CCSA and CCSE certifications, I can’t think of a better way to do it than going and taking your training from CPUG University. This 6-day boot camp, class taught by Barry Stiefel, is focused on teaching the key concepts necessary to pass both certifications. The $3995 USD for this bootcamp includes lunch and dinner as well as exam vouchers for both tests.

Aside from the focused courseware, the lab setup is nothing short of fantastic. You spend less time troubleshooting basic network functionality–something I’ve done in my own classes I taught more than a decade ago–and more time actually learning Check Point.

That isn’t to say that things go flawlessly in these labs. In many of the labs, the monitoring software made it very easy to isolate configuration issues. In one case, it took us a couple of hours to get to the bottom of a nasty misconfiguration. I eventually was able to isolate it by using fw monitor–something I haven’t used in ages! However, in that trouble, we learned a lot. Isn’t that the point of going to class?

The class is not for inexperienced networking people. Check Point experience will be a huge plus and will ensure you get the most out of it. All of us in the class had quite a bit of experience, which made the class a lot of fun.

For me? The biggest shock was how little I had missed. The last version I seriously played with was NG AI (R54). R60 wasn’t that different, and quite frankly, neither was R65 the couple of times I’ve seen it. The concepts are the same. The UI has been refined a bit. Troubleshooting works more or less the same.

The other thing that makes this class effective is the fact that the exams are given right in the classroom–while the content is still fresh in your mind! No wonder he has such a high pass rate, which our class added to those percentages!

If you can get yourself to San Francisco, I can’t think of a more cost or time efficient way to get your CCSA and CCSE!