[Noisebridge-discuss] Fwd: Complimentary GIAC Forensics Certification w/ SANS @Home beginning July 14

[Rodney Thayer]

Christie Dudley wrote:
> You know I've seen these things before, but I always wondered if these guys
> were reputable and not just a diploma mill sort of place.  It seems that
> this might be the right kind of crowd to ask if these guys are worth the
> time.  I mean... seriously, they offer a *class* on "ethical hacking"?
> 
> (Which brings me to my next question... why don't we? ;-) )
> 

(disclaimer: from time to time I make money doing training.  They're not 
my competition, they're Black Hat's competition.)

SANS is one of these training shops that declared itself an institute 
long ago.  Some incredibly good people have given and have received 
training at SANS.  And they've got some lame bland generic crap given by 
noname instructors too.  They've got that whole "buy our certification" 
cult thing going so they want to sell you credits.  They charmed someone 
into declaring them a source of so-called certified training, which 
makes it so they sound legitimate to silly employers who check the 
acronyms on your resume instead of seeing if you have a clue.  As a 
general matter their courses apparently can be quite good (I've not 
attended, but I've gotten feedback from multiple students and fellow 
teachers.)  At one point (possibly not true now) they refused to claim 
you were competent to train for them unless you had taken a certain 
number of courses from them. Sort of an Amway training model.  And they 
use 'trainers' - someone possibly quite competent but using the same 
canned slides all 12000 other trainers use. It's not like Black Hat 
where you're taking a class from someone who's a subject matter expert 
and oh by the way does training.

Regarding NB training.  That's possible.  It'd end up being like 
Toorcon/Shmoocon/Defcon training - a wide range from ok-for-being-cheap 
on up to incredibly good.  It's a good idea.  But don't call it "like 
SANS training". NB training would definitely be worth doing for the 
LEARNING not the "I'm cool because I was at SANS last week" benefit.