Checkpoint CCSA Self Study Course Review

There has been a few people talking about self study for Checkpoint lately and being lucky enough to have my job pay for the training materials I thought I'd do a quick review for everyone else considering this path. First I want to start off saying that Checkpoint's website for ordering is horrible! I tried ordering the latest version of this product in three different browsers and their site doesn't recognize their product as an item (not cool).  So, instead of buying the R71 version I got the R70 version for $600 (they are similar enough). Also as a warning I paid for express 2 day shipping, yet the order took 10 business days to process...so that was pointless. Anyway on to content...

The self study training course includes:

• 1 Courseware book
• 1 Lab book
• 2 CDs that contain all the Checkpoint blade modules
• 1 Checkpoint backpack
• 1 Checkpoint mousepad (does anyone use these anymore?)

The course book is broken down into 12 chapters covering the following topics:

• Checkpoint software blades
• How to install/upgrade/manage an R70 security gateway
• How to setup and manage a security management server
• Licensing and centralized license management
• User authentication (including external authentication against LDAP)
• IPS
• VPN concepts plus encryption

I read through the course book in 2 days (It's just shy of 500 pages cover to cover). The editing as far as image placement/quality and grammar checking could have been better. I found a handful of things completely mis-spelled and there are a few images that are just completely impossible to make out. The book is written by about 10 different engineers that contributed to different sections, so the book reads more like a compilation of study notes then an actual book. There are numerous references to R65 products and usage (which you can see in the screen shots as well), which isn't on this exam.  You can also see that come of the screen shots have entries from 2006 while others from 2008...leads me to wonder how much of this book was really updated for R70 content to begin with.

I'd say if you know nothing about Checkpoint or their products this book might help you clear things up. That being said the book was written for those with 6 - 12 months of experience to take their exam...at which point you'd know how to do most of the tasks in the book. For someone that is seasoned or even some what experienced with Checkpoint products, I'd say forget this book as it is not worth $600, poorly written, and you can find most of the documentation for the products more useful than the content laid out in the book.

The lab book is decent for those that wish to practice or have no real world exposure to Checkpoint products. Although the lab book is about 300+ pages and includes 12 labs...much of the content is one liner directions or white space for page filling.

In closing I wouldn't recommend the self study course to anyone...it's not worth the $600, you can do better through research or having someone teach you (a friend or co-worker maybe), and the mistakes/outdated references just add negative feelings toward this course as a whole. There are also no sample test questions to help you actually prepare for the exam either. I'm still on the fence about buying the CCSE course given the quality of this one, however I might just to review it.  Maybe someone will step up and write a book for this exam although that hasn't been done since the R65 version came out in 2006.