CEH training in San Francisco?

February 9, 2007 2:07 PM

CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) training in San Francisco?

I chose to use my training/travel budget this year to go for my CEH, and had my heart set on going to a boot camp in San Francisco, staying in a suite at Hotel des Arts, et cetera. I invited a good friend and her 20-month-old son to come along, and we immediately got fifteen kinds of excited about how wonderful it was going to be (she's never flown or really traveled anywhere more than a few hundred miles away). Unfortunately, the class I'd planned to attend was canceled due to low enrollment and it doesn't look like the vendor is going to reschedule it.

I've found a few options from other training vendors, but none that are in San Francisco proper. It's too late for me to get the budget re-approved for a different certification, and I've tried all the usual suspects--Boson, Mile2, Global Knowledge, Unitek, Learning Tree, and Vigilar IntenseSchool.

So I have several questions. Is there a major training vendor I'm forgetting about, or maybe a newer one that isn't Googleable yet? Are there any San Francisco-based businesses that offer CEH training? I'd be in class or studying all day, but my friend would explore San Francisco's parks and museums with the baby. Would staying in Redwood City, where Vigilar offers a CEH course, mean she'd have to spend hours each day on MUNI or BART? As a last resort, is there another city in which a mother and child on a budget could have fun and absorb some great culture while I get my learning on?

Please help us get a child out of the Bible Belt for a week! :)

posted by littlegreenlights to travel & transportation (8 comments total)

Would staying in Redwood City, where Vigilar offers a CEH course, mean she'd have to spend hours each day on MUNI or BART?

Yes. That'd be Caltrain though. As you can see from this online schedule its an hour each way.

Sorry, can't help on the rest of the question.
posted by vacapinta at 2:21 PM on February 9, 2007

Have you considered Seattle? big geek city, lots of programmers, lots of culture. I don't know how the public transportation system is, but I assume it's pretty green = buses and stuff.
posted by muddgirl at 2:30 PM on February 9, 2007

Ahh, thanks, vacapinta. And muddgirl, Seattle is a really good idea, but I can't seem to find any CEH courses there, either. I'll keep looking; thanks for the help so far.
posted by littlegreenlights at 2:54 PM on February 9, 2007

Redwood city isn't that far from SF. And also note on that schedule that there are some express trains that will get you from Redwood City to SF in around 35 minutes.

Might be easier for you to commute then her?
posted by bitdamaged at 3:14 PM on February 9, 2007

oops yeah. I glanced too briefly at the schedule. bitdamaged is right. The commute is only 1/2 hour if you take a bullet train.

And, yes, you could do the commute to class yourself. In fact, you'll be doing the same commute that all the Yahoo and Apple and other Silicon Valley employees take that live in San Francisco.
posted by vacapinta at 3:20 PM on February 9, 2007

CEH doesnt look that hard to get.. you could take the test like 50 times for the cost of a course.. your bound to pass it at least 10 with a little study.

CISSP is far more sort after qualfication.. however its far harder to get also.
posted by complience at 3:24 PM on February 9, 2007

CEH doesnt look that hard to get.. you could take the test like 50 times for the cost of a course.. your bound to pass it at least 10 with a little study.

CISSP is far more sort after qualfication.. however its far harder to get also.

I teach the CEH course, and the exam isn't a particularly easy one. This isn't an A+ course or anything. CISSP is a much more thorough cert, of course, but CISSP and CEH don't really have anything in common at all.

CISSP is designed to be a lot of great platform-independent theory, and CEH is exactly the opposite -- hands on learning with the same tools the people breaking into your network are using.

My only real complaint with the course is that there's a lot of material to cover. The new version of the course that just launched (5.0) has an extra few hundred pages over the last version, too. I'm teaching the new one for the first time next week so I don't have too much to say about it, but make sure that you're getting the 5.0 course, wherever it is you go.
posted by Jairus at 12:16 AM on February 10, 2007

Thanks, everyone. bitdamaged's schedule clarification makes it look as though staying in SF with me commuting may the best option, but I am a little worried about public transportation, based partly on previous experience and mostly on the voice my own inner yokel. I might as well admit that I still can't figure out that bullet train schedule. :)

As for the whole CEH/CISSP thing, well, we had to schedule our training early in the year for budgetary reasons, and I knew I couldn't devote the study time pre-boot camp to make passing the CISSP exam even a remote possibility. By the time next year's budget rolls around I'm sure I'll be better prepared for the breadth and stress of the CISSP, if I'm still moving in that direction. It's true that with my training budget I could take the CEH exam a few hundred times, but for right now a CEH is fine, annual travel and training are mandatory, failing a certification exam is beyond impolitic, and it's all on the company, so . . . CEH works for everyone involved.

Jairus, thanks for the information. So far everything I've looked at claims to be 5.0.
posted by littlegreenlights at 12:06 PM on February 12, 2007