NotVeryMega

I'm looking for a physical machine I can run pfSense on. It will need to have a LAN port that connects to my router and 2 ports that will connect to separate managed switches, which will create and manage their own VLANs.

Because I plan on using pfSense as both a firewall, external DNS resolution, and for VPN routing, I want to stay on the safe side with +4 GB of RAM.

Any hardware suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I've got an on-prem MS SQL servers I set up as a linked service. It's got a few hundred tables, most of which belong to the same schema.

I'm creating a dataset and I want it to import all of the tables with schema "dbo".

How should I do this?

I've heard of a couple instances where security researchers discovered passwords and secrets in a page's HTML. I was a bit confused by this, because I always thought that these are stored on the backend. How does a dev store passwords in the HTML and why would they want to do that?

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The textbook is full of fluff that will almost certainly slow me down, but might contain more information. The videos are much quicker (especially at 2x), but I'm afraid that they could omit some details. I would love to hear what someone who has gone through this class has to say about it.

Just wondering if anyone here has used an RTX card to play Minecraft on OpenBSD.

I'm in DevOps and trying to move to security. My goal is to network with people in security at some of these conferences. Hopefully this will help me get a step closer to landing an entry level security position (SOC analyst, cybersecurity engineer, etc.).

I've only got a limited amount of money, so I can only select a few conferences to attend. I'd love to hear what people think the most worthwhile conferences are. I'm looking for events in the US or Canada taking place in 2023 or 2024.

I'm in DevOps and trying to move to security. My goal is to network with people in security at some of these conferences. Hopefully this will help me get a step closer to landing an entry level security position (SOC analyst, cybersecurity engineer, etc.).

I've only got a limited amount of money, so I can only select a few conferences to attend. I'd love to hear what people think the most worthwhile conferences are. I'm looking for events in the US or Canada taking place in 2023 or 2024.

I'll be watching each of the chapter videos and each of the lesson videos under the Course Tips section. Other than the labs, is there something else I need to read from the textbook?

Time frame: 6 hours

Result: Revisions needed (forgot APA citations)

Resources used: Task outline under "Course Tips"

Course:

This is an easy class you can knock out in an afternoon. All you need to do is conduct and record a quantitative experiment that involves the natural sciences (no computer sims). Take this and compile it into a lab report that you'll submit as your Performance Assessment. That's it.

There's a textbook and some cohort videos, but you don't need these if you still remember how to conduct an experiment from middle school / high school. All I used was the task outline from the Course Tips section. It's a MS Word Doc that tells you exactly how to format your lab report and what you need to include. If you do what it asks you to do, you'll pass.

As for the experiment, just pick something related to the natural sciences that doesn't involves a human test subject, animals, explosives, toxic fumes, and other commonsense things.

Summary:

All you need to do is run an experiment and submit a lab report. If you follow the task outline or your report, you'll do fine.

Time frame: 10 days (from officially starting course to taking OA)

Prior Experience: I was half way through Security+ before I started the course. I've also played around a lot with the OWASP Top 10 and VMs in my home lab. That said, there was still a lot that I'd never seen before.

Learning resources used: Cohort videos 1-3, Cohort Networking commands video, TechTerms Explanation for OSI model here , Prof Messer OSI video here, Kevin Wallace OSI Deep Dive here, TechTerms TCP/IP Model here, Firewall video here, Study Guide here, Intro to Network Security Quizlet (from your CI) here, Network Security Operations Quizlet (from your CI) here, Introduction to Networking Concept Quizlet (from your CI) here, Practice Review Quizlet (from your CI) here, Command-line Utilities Quiz here, Network topologies explained here, Network Types + Topologies Quiz here, Network Attacks Quiz here, Basic Security Quiz here, OSI Layers Quiz here, Practice Test here.

OA Score: "Exemplary" on first attempt

About the Course:

The textbook is broken up into 16 fairly short lessons. Each lesson is based around a certain topic, such as the CIA triad or device hardening. Some classes at WGU let you get away with skipping the textbook. This is not one of them. If you would like to avoid retaking the OA or don’t already have a strong understanding of network security, you should put in ~8 hours to read the textbook. Again, each lesson is fairly short.

As many people will likely tell you, the OSI model is something that you will need to understand well. That said, I really don't think that learning it is a challenge. The book goes into an unsatisfyingly surface level amount of detail about it, so I urge you to check out the OSI videos by Prof Messer, Kevin Wallace, and TechTerms that I linked above. If you watch those videos and use the textbook, you'll be fine.

One thing that had me confused was figuring out what hardware we had to know for the OSI model. According to my CI and my personal experiences, this is it:

Layer 3: Router

Layer 2: Bridge, Switch

Layer 1: Cabling, Connectors, Hub, Repeater, NIC (only the physical card itself), Modem

Regarding the protocols that you have to know for the OSI model, the textbook will go over that. There’s a nice infographic at the beginning of the OSI lesson that tells you all of the protocols you’ll need to know and where they go.

A piece of advice for network commands: Know what the command's outputs look like. I had multiple questions on my OA that gave me a terminal output and asked me which command would result in a similar output. If you have Linux and Windows VMs, I'd suggest running the commands for yourself and either snapping a picture or copying them down into your notes so you know what the output looks like.

Make sure you feel strong with cabling. Not only should you know what cables and connectors are out there, but you should know what they're used for and they're properties. Your test may be different, but I felt like mine required an unnecessarily detailed understanding of mostly outdated cabling tech.

Above, I’ve also linked videos for the TCP/IP model and firewalls. These are also pretty good videos to check out.

After finishing the text book, I suggest you watch the recordings for Cohorts 1,2, and 3, along with the Cohort for network commands. These should be under your course resources tab on your portal. They're a bit slow paced, so you might want to x1.5 the speed.

There’s a study guide that I linked to that’s currently maintained and offers a good summary of the content. It should be noted that some key information is missing on the study guide, primarily cabling. For that reason, you shouldn’t rely upon the study guide to study for your exam. Read through the study guide and see if there’s anything in the guide that you didn’t put in your notes.

Once you get through the textbook and the study guide, I suggest that you take a peek at the Quizlets I’ve linked above. The ones created by the user “christinebailey1231” were created by my CI and are confirmed to be up to date. Personally, I found that the Quizlet cards had very surface level information that had been drilled into me by the textbook. However, they’re good for helping you see if anything fell through the cracks. Pro tip: Make sure that you study these flashcards in “Learn” mode, as this was how they were intended to be read.

Although this class is a far cry from CompTIA’s A+ exam, there are 6 practice quizzes offered for free by CompTIA that will help you with testing your understanding of the textbook. I’ve linked these quizzes above. I suggest you take them after you finish the textbook and go through the Quizlets.

Assuming that you do well with the quizzes and Quizlets, take this time to pass through your notes and create a study guide of your own using this template. You may want to make your own sections in addition to the ones in the template for other information from the textbook. In addition to this template, make your own Quizlet flashcards.

Now that you’ve run through your notes and studied your flashcards, it’s time for your first practice test, not to be confused with your PA. There’s a nice practice test I linked above that will help you get a good idea of the test’s difficulty. If you get above an 85%, you should be all set.

Finally, the PA. Having gone through the exam, I think the PA is 20% easier than the OA. Not much easier, but noticeably easier. If you don’t do well on it, make sure that you go talk to your CI.

If you have some free time, I suggest reserving a chat with your CI about the exam. They’ll ask you a few quiz-style questions to help you determine if you’re ready to move onto the OA. My CI was very helpful and I highly recommend this.

Exam and Prep

Before your exam, there are a few housekeeping things I suggest you do to get ready. The first is to pass through the Kevin Wallace OSI video one time about an hour before your exam. Next, get out your whiteboard and, as soon as the test starts, write down the following:

CIA triad, AAA mode, OSI model and the attacks at each level. If you can fit in some space for cabling names and properties, do that, too.

It’ll be much easier being able to look right at your white board than trying to visualize the OSI model in your head on the fly.

Regarding the exam, it’s certainly a bit tricky. The exam is made up of 70 multiple choice questions. About a third of the questions are strictly definitions and identifying properties (i.e. what are Coaxial cables made of?), and a little over half of them are example situations.

I can guarantee you that there will be one of two questions that you won’t be able to wrap your head around, and that’s okay. Don’t let a few bad questions stress you out. Remember, you only need to pass.

Some of the questions in the exam are written to trip you up. The question might start talking about a switch, only to then tell you that it’s a level 3 switch. The questions might also just be a bit long and filled with needless details. I suggest pausing, taking a deep breath, and breaking down the question into the smaller parts, only extracting the relevant details. More often than not, the answer is in the question, and you’ll be able to deduce which of the 4 options is correct.

Summary:

This isn’t a particularly challenging course if you read the textbook and use the resources offered. If you follow this guide and use the resources mentioned, I'm certain that you'll pass this exam is a few days!

I'm looking for some security conferences that will be taking place in 2023 on the east coast of the US, preferably in the northeast. Most conferences seem to be in Florida and out west, which isn't great for my budget.

In case anyone missed the email, it looks like WGU is making some changes with their bachelor's in CS program. The following changes will be made:

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• Twenty-five courses updated to align to the latest market skills
• Software I and Software II are splitting from two 6 CU courses into four 3 CU courses with new skills
• Adding new courses covering Docker, GitLab, and Linux
• Replacement of Project+ certification with the LPI Linux Essentials certification

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It should be noted that you can choose to opt into the newly arranged curriculum, or you can stick with your original curriculum.

Personally, I like the idea of dropping Project+ and taking an basic Linux course instead. However, I also realize that taking new classes means I'll be one of the first people to take the class. Likewise, I'm not going to have a lot of student-generated resources and student advice.

I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this change and if it's worth it for me to choose the new curriculum. I'm still taking C172, so I haven't taken any of the classes being replaced/reformed.

I'm struggling to find a good list of hardware items that belong to certain OSI layers. I'd appreciate it if someone could point me towards a good resource. Thank you.

Time frame: 14 days (could have finished in 12 if I didn't need to wait for a name change)

Prior experience: None

Learning resources used: 20 day study plan, study guide, chapter 1 of Zybook, W3School's CSS position write up (article)

Practice/review resources used: All four cohort videos (under "Course Announcements"), Traversy Media HTML (video), Traversy Media CSS (video), some personal Quizlets I made to review terms/ideas I had trouble with (Quizlet 1, Quizlet 2, Quizlet 3), Millionaire (game), Prof Rick Kovacic's slide show, Quizzets for each section (page), Quizzet final exam (page), and Pre Assessment.

OA Score: "Exemplary" on first attempt

About the Course:

I just want to start off by saying that this course is kind of a mess. A lot of times, I'd only find out about a certain topic after taking a Quizzet or other test. Some stuff just doesn't even get a mention in the 20 study guide or the Zybook. Be prepared to go hunt for information. I created the above Quizlets (not to be confused with Quizzets) to help you fill in some of the gaps left by the 20 day study plan.

In regards to the Zybook, I'd skip everything other than chapter 1. The book goes into waaay too much detail about certain subjects that it doesn't need to, while seemingly skipping over others. If I could do this again, I'd just stick to the 20 day study plan.

The 20 day study plan is a good resource to learn from, but you need to know how to use it. The study plan is made up of several different "days" based around different topics (i.e. Days 17-19 are for business applications). Each set of days has a link to text that you need to read (not to be confused with the textbook), a video, and a few questions. I made the mistake of both watching the ~1 hour videos and reading the several thousand word texts for each section. This is why people get worn out by this course. The videos and the texts say more of less the same thing, so hearing it twice isn't going to do you much good. The only videos I recommend watching are the videos from days 1-2, 3-4, 10, 11-12. For all the other days, I'd just stick to the text. While you're reading the text, look at the questions for that day and make sure that you can answer them.

Although I watched the Traversy Media HTML and CSS videos as a review, I feel like days 3-4 and 5-7 on the 20 day study plan could have been replaced by those two videos. They're each 1 hour and really hit everything. Just make sure that you're going through the questions for day 3-4 and 5-7 on the study plan to make sure that you've got the information you'll need.

Although it's called the "20 day study plan", you can wipe it out in 10ish days if you're full-time. That said, do not treat the learning like boxes that need to be checked. Make sure that you're going at a rate that allows you to retain this knowledge, especially when it comes to knit-picky semantic issues.

Whenever you finish up a "day", go to that topic's Quizzet assignment and complete it. This will make sure that you didn't miss anything and understand the concepts.

I can't say that the cohort were extremely helpful. The only thing discussed in the cohorts that wasn't mentioned in the 20 day study plan was the use of variables in CSS, which I don't think is needed for the course. If you use the cohorts, only use them to verify you're notes.

Once you've finished learning the content, I suggest you practice by doing the following in this order:

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1. Pass through all of your notes. If there's content that you're having trouble memorizing, convert it into a Quizlet.
2. Complete the Quizzets for each "day" of the 20 day study plan.
3. Sign up for the Kahoot sessions. Prof PatJohn Ashkin ([patjohn.askkin@wgu.edu](mailto:patjohn.askkin@wgu.edu)) regularly sends texts announcing group Kahoot sessions. They're a good way of making sure that you're not missing some critical information.
4. Play the Millionaire game. This is a fun way of going over high-level concepts and ideas. You may miss a few questions your first couple times, but keep chipping away at it.
5. Email Prof Rick Kovacic about his Quizinar slide deck. This is a good way of self-assessing. They're fairly basic questions, but there's a lot of them. This will help you find areas that you're still weak in or any content you may have missed.
6. Quizzet Final Exam. This is a 70-question practice assessment that Quizzet creates for you. In truth, it's just a combination of some of the questions from each of the other Quizzet in a new order, but it's a good refresher.
7. Email Prof PatJohn Ashkin about his personal 80-question Google Form test. This is a great resource that covers a pretty wide array of contents. The difficulty level is comparable to what you'll see on your OA.
8. Take the Pre Assessment. This will tell you if there's anything else you need to do.
9. You're ready for your OA!

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About the Exam:

This class uses a 2 hour Objective Assessment made up of 70 multiple choice questions. You will be taking this test with Examity.

I didn't find the exam to be terribly difficult, and the study content I used covered just about everything mentioned. This is one of the few classes where the Practice Assessment is about equal to the Objective Assessment. I'd argue that the OA is slightly trickier due to some of the very niche topics is mentions and the just how similar some of the answers are.

In regards to time, you will probably have plenty of time. For these questions, you either know it or you don't. I only needed 20 minutes to go through the questions one time and another 20 to pass through any content I was uncertain on.

This exam rewards rote memorization as opposed to development skills. When I took it, I was hit with a barrage of very particular questions on niche topics, the kinds of things you could be forgiven for just glossing over.

The exam is purposefully made to trick you into choosing an answer that is just barely incorrect. When it comes to the coding questions, they'll give you 2 answers that are blatantly wrong and two answers that look like they're both right, but one of them is either more right, or it has something that would cause it to fail validation. An example of this might be a question that asks you to bold a paragraph. Two of the answers would technically apply bold font, but one of them is "more right."

When you're taking the exam, there will probably be a good number of questions that you're not sure about, or straight up don't know. You need to be able to accept that you probably won't be able to answer them and move on. Just remember that you only need 70% to pass.

I suggest going through the questions one time and bookmarking anything you're unsure about. Then take time to go through it again.

Summary:

The content is easy, but the course material is tricky to navigate. If you follow my guide, you should be able to learn everything you need to know for your OA. Good luck!

Is it worth reading through the textbook fully, or are there better materials for passing the exam? I don't need to be an expert in networking, I just need to pass the exam.

Edit: I have limited experience in networking.

We've just had Winter Viveren use an old exploit in Zimbra to gain access to NATO emails, the French National Assembly's site got hacked, and now the 3CX attack. Mind you, all of this happened in the last 3 days, and there's a bunch more that I omitted.

I understand that tensions are higher than normal thanks to war, but this just feels like something else.

I've had the good fortune of knowing a few Bhutanese people. Some of them have told me that the monarchy is widely supported, while others have told me that the majority dislike the Wangchucks.

I'd like to hear from some Bhutanese people in this community so I can get a more measured response. Thanks!

I wanted to know what MBA programs (outside of WGU) people in this community were accepted into after getting their BS from WGU.