CCNA Security Official Exam Certification Guide (Exam 640-553),   ISBN:9781587202209

Customer Rating: 

I read this book, as well as the Exam Cram book for this exam, and studied a little bit from the other CCNA Security book by Richard Deal. Overall I think the Cisco Press book was the best as far as what it covers and how it words things. The key topics are clearly marked throughout the chapters so you can easily flip through the book and review them, this helps keep from having to highlight and mark things on your own. The many screen shots of SDM where helpful and the configuration examples where easy to understand. So yeah, best single study source.

Some final advice:
I think this book was better than the other two I studied. But I'd suggest studying from at least one other book just to get a different taste of it. You may be able to answer all the questions in this book, but fail miserably at the questions from another book because they're different. This was a tough exam, I was lucky to have SDM and a router at home to practice the stuff on and passed the exam, not a great score, but still. I honestly don't think studying ONLY this book will enable you to pass, I don't think studying any ONE book will enable you to pass, at the least you should have some way to practice everything hands-on, or "simulate" it however you can, because Cisco has questions on the exams that require you to know how to do some of the stuff hands on.

Customer Rating: 

DON'T BUY! ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS FOR THE EXAM. This book should be billed as a primer only. It contains good introductory-level information but was nowhere near the level of depth of information required on the actual exam. The cover says it has "realistic exam questions." Not so. I passed all practice exams with ease, but on the actual exam, the level of granularity on the questions was much more in-depth than anything covered in the book. This book in no way, shape, or form prepares you for the exam. Like I said, good as an intro to the subject but definitely NOT good for exam preparation. Sorry to disappoint, but either they changed the exam to make it harder, or whoever advertised the book over-reached on their claims for how the book would prepare you. In any case, if it ever was good, it is NOT good for this exam any longer. DON'T BUY!

Customer Rating: 

I can't imagine being able to pass this exam without this book. topics are well organized and very well covered. The included CD has the boson test on it, which is integrally tied to the book. If you miss a question on the test their is a link that will take directly to that section of the book that covers that material.

Customer Rating: 

This was a very informative text that provides a nice entry into the security realm after obtaining your CCNA. Whether you plan to take the exam or not, I highly recommend it for the knowledge you can obtain from it.

Customer Rating: 

This is a must need book for any network technician or administrator. Plain and simple, you will get your money's worth out of this book! I recently obtained my CCNA and was looking to add an extra appendage to my credentials, so I chose to read this book. I havent yet attempted to take the certification yet or if I even will, but I will say that I came out knowing a ton more about hardening your Cisco devices than I did with the ccna material. In fact, theres really not that much configuring wise with security in the ccna material. So this book really gives you a "one-up" to those with just ccna credentials.

The first thing that I enjoyed in this book was learning about DHCP snooping, vlan hopping, double tagging, stp attacks, CAM table attacks, etc. This book actually explains and shows you how to prevent these layer 2 attacks.

I also enjoyed the cryptography and encryption material (which I also didn't know much about).

The CCNA security is fairly new to the cisco program (as of april 09) and is definitely emerging big time. I encourage you to get this book and jump on the bandwagon.