A Place to Hang Your Hat at Black Hat 2017
Come on in to our living room! That’s right, this year our Black Hat booth wasn’t just a booth. It was a house. We welcomed attendees into our living room to showcase exactly how you can train for your certifications right from the comfort of your home. So take a seat on our couch and read on about our experience at Black Hat 2017.
What a difference a year makes! This year was our second appearance at Black Hat USA. Yes, we were excited to get back to connecting with attendees about our (ISC)² Approved Live Online CISSP certification training program, but we were even more excited to debut our new Live Online training course for the Security+ certification from CompTIA. Not only are we extending the flexibility and convenience of our live online course structure to this in-demand cert, we’re also ahead of the game by modeling the course off of CompTIA’s new SY0-501 exam update that will premiere in October.
BUSTING THE MYTHS
Black Hat, “the world’s leading information security event,” was teeming with cybersecurity’s most elite subject matter experts, executives, and practitioners — how could we not get excited? Across the two-day trade show, we interacted with thousands of folks and this curious bunch had questions and comments for the N2K team. Here are some of the frequently asked questions that we were able to field from attendees.
What kind of software do you sell?
We don’t. Of the hundreds of vendors exhibiting at Black Hat, the vast majority of booths were focused on pitching attendees on SaaS products or consulting services. N2K was among the small number of organizations not selling endpoint protection! While all of the businesses certainly bring value in working towards the overarching goal of making organizations safer and more secure, we take the approach that organizations should be investing in current and prospective employees to solve the “people” problem. And how to solve that problem? Training. We offer certification training and executive training.
How are your training programs different from a boot camp?
Boot camps have a one-size-fits-all approach to education – sit in a room for 5 days and cram in as much knowledge as you can. We don’t believe in boot camps. We know that every student learns differently – everyone has different learning styles and speeds, areas of strength and weakness, and personal life demands. N2K’s certification training programs are designed for you to learn the material at a digestible pace, so you can retain the knowledge for the long term – not just cram for a test. Ultimately, that is going to make a difference as you work to advance your career. Plus, we benefit from 75+ years of learning science at our sister company, Kaplan.
Are the videos on-demand or pre-recorded, similar to an online library?
Yes and no. We refer to our courses as “live online” because the program is structured around weekly classes taking place in an interactive online environment with a certified instructor. The weekly sessions are not pre-recorded, though they are recorded for review or access at a later time and date. Miss a class? No problem! You can watch the recording. We also support many of our programs with on-demand videos in our learning management system (LMS) to serve as additional resources for our students who need to be able to dive deeper and learn more on a given topic.
Does everyone on your team know how to write backwards?
Unfortunately not – at least not well. Our innovative light board technology allows us to break away from drab and monotonous PowerPoint displays so we can talk directly to you! The light board itself is a glass pane bordered by LED lights. We write on the light board with neon dry erase markers to increase the visibility of the text. In the live sessions and on-demand video content, our certified instructors write normally (left to right) while facing a camera. Then, in real-time, we use software to reverse the image feed to the classroom so that students can see the writing properly from home.
NEXT STEPS
A lot of you were curious about the range of certification training programs we offer. At Black Hat, we showcased our Security +, CISSP, and CISSP Refresher training programs. However, we are just getting warmed up. One of the greatest advantages of attending the conference was learning what certifications interest cybersecurity professionals the most. Even though CISSP and Security+ are two of the most requested and required certifications, we know that you would like us to expand our high-quality training to other certifications. We hear you! Soon, we will broaden the spectrum of live online training by deploying more certification training programs – we’re tracking what you want, so please visit each of the certification pages below and request to be notified of updates about:
Black Hat celebrated its 20th birthday this year and we were thrilled to be part of it. After 20 years, it’s still the premiere place for information security professionals to gather. We like to think we’re the premiere place for certification training. Are you ready to get started? To learn more please visit us here.