JNCIS - Epic Win (Again)

I spent the last of my Juniper exam vouchers on the JNCIS-SEC exam and passed by the skin of my teeth today.  Since I took a new job last month that’s 100% Cisco, this is the last Juniper exam I’ll take for the foreseeable future.  Too bad, too.  I really like the Juniper exams.

At my previous job, we were 90% Juniper with a whole mess of SRX firewalls around the world.  Since this exam is really about that platform, it was pretty logical that I should do alright on it.  Of course, a large part of the blueprint was on IDS and UTM, and I have no experience there.  For my entire career, those type of devices have been handled by other groups, so I had some studying to do.  That’s where I ran into problems.  I have absolutely no interest in IDS.  I have no interest in UTM.  There’s nothing about content scanning and analysis that interests me at all.  I promise you all that I tried my best to read up on these topics, but I was asleep after 10 words every time I tried.  After rescheduling the exam twice to try and study a bit more, I finally decided it wasn’t worth the trouble and just took the exam…and passed.

The exam was typical Juniper with clearly-worded questions and perfectly-clear exhibits all around.  A near-perfect exam yet again from Juniper.  I was disappointed by three questions, though.   The problem wasn’t with the technical details; they were just worded terribly.  I’m definitely not shy about commenting on questions during the exam, so hopefully the exam team can use my comments to improve those bad apples.  I’ll miss these exams; Cisco surely doesn’t produce any exam of this quality.

Send any Final Four tickets questions my way.