Week 10: Lessons learned

Current Trends in Cybersecurity, Week 10,  lessons learned.

Looking back, this class seemed to fly by, yet was one of the most taxing classes I've taken so far.  When the class first started and we were given the option to go at it without a textbook, I thought: "Well, this should be a pretty easy class if a book isn't even required," nothing could have been further from the truth.  So, right off the bat if I had to revise my approach, I would have definitely ate the cost and purchased the book sooner than I had.

The biggest issue I had with this class was trying to narrow the scope of my work; I found myself jumping between NIST guidance, referencing CISSP material, and following guidance in my penetration test material, and basically found myself fighting self-inflicted scope creep and found myself spending way too many nights up at 3am just short of banging my head on my keyboard in frustration.     

To do over again, I'm sure I could deliver a better final product, but to be quite honest, I'm not sure that I would do it any differently -- I am sure the amount of reading and research I've done over the last 10 weeks will pay off in spades in the long run.   

Lesson learned, there may be a dozen ways to skin a cat, but in a project like this, pick ONE model and go with it; don't mix it up or it becomes hard to handle as the project grows.  At work we follow NIST guidance exclusively, so it's easy to follow a blueprint and get from A-to-Z.  I could have gone that route and saved myself a lot of headaches, but in the end, I think I've learned more by stepping out of my comfort zone and trying to recreate the wheel.

Week 9

Having wrapped up week 9 of Current Trends in Cybersecurity, it's hard to believe we're only a week away from being done with this term!  It's been quite a challenge packing 12 weeks of study into 10, especially these last couple of weeks.  I've been revisiting a lot of my CISSP material for this course, as there's a lot of overlap. 

My home testbed is all but covered in cobwebs, as I haven't had the time to play with all the reading I've been doing these last couple of weeks. 

It's a real challenge to keep the size of these documents down to a manageable size for the class, I'm finding myself picking and choosing what to add and what to dismiss because otherwise the final product would be massive; unfortunately I feel that my deliverable products seem a bit lackluster because of that fact, but I'm sure my peers are not interested in reviewing a gargantuan document.

We're in the final stretch, I'm looking forward to hearing what my peers have to say about my final project, and eager to make corrections, tidy it up and be on my way to the next hurdle; only 4 classes to go until this degree is in the books.