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Do you think you have what it takes to be in the red-hot cybersecurity industry? Our 16 NPower students have been enrolled in the Symantec Cyber Career Connection (SC3) program since September and come from all over New York City. They are now going through final preparations for the last stage of our program where they embark on hands-on internships at leading corporations like Bank of America, CBS, Citi, KPMG, Marathon Consulting, Morgan Stanley, and TD Ameritrade. That also means prepping for some additional certifications and exams like the CompTIA Security+ 401.
Here are some photos of the giant whiteboards at the NPower Brooklyn classroom, revealing the students' handwritten notes for their recent exam. The students also hosted a study group for 3 weeks where they basically locked themselves in a room and did some intense studying. As you can see, they jotted down all the information they could on cybersecurity. However, it was not only the content for the exam that needed to be learned, but sheer test taking skills. All told, they spent over 360 hours preparing for this particular exam.
“Preparation for this exam was very tedious due to the way they ask the questions on the exam. It’s 50% knowledge and 50% test taking skill,” said Ashley Williamson, SC3 Brooklyn student.
So far, 12 out of the 16 students have taken this exam and have passed it. Next on list is sitting for the CompTIA Linux+ certification. Rockstar student, Patrick Roserie (you may remember him as our 1st student to pass the Network+ test on Day 8) and two other students have already passed parts of the Linux+ certification exam setting the precedent for the rest of the class.
"It's about raising the bar and doing more than what is required. You can't be complacent in this industry. You need to evolve with technology, otherwise YOU will be the thing that is outdated," exclaimed Patrick Roserie, SC3 Brooklyn student.
Four new sections were recently added to the Security+ 401 exam to cover cloud computing, incident response, mobile devices and network-enabled devices that could accidentally become part of your network. Two more new sections increase coverage of physical security and application of the “CIA triad” (confidentiality, integrity and availability). In addition to these six new sections, dozens of other changes were made to existing sections to cover evolving malware, business continuity, big data, secure file transfer and other issues.
Attention: hiring managers at recently hacked corporations and organizations in the NYC area, our students will graduate on March 25, 2015 so reach out TODAY to Mohanchand.Raghbeer@npower.org to arrange interviews with our students.