UNDER CONSTRUCTION
The Next Hurdle: CWSP
The next hurdle after the CWAP is the CWSP. As I mentioned in my previous post, the CWSP is a deep dive into the security side of Wi-Fi. I know security is absolutely necessary — it’s a fact of life in any network — but personally, it’s the chapter that speaks to me the least. Hence the word “hurdle”. 😄
For this training, just like the CWAP, I could once again call on Hans van Ballaer (CWNE #340), and just like the CWAP training, it was hosted by 802.be.
Unlike the CWAP though, this one was fully remote. My diet would like to thank whoever made that call — because those sandwiches at 802 were absolutely legendary, and being in the same room as them every day would have required both a CWSP certification and an entirely new wardrobe.
So… CWSP. Normally a three-day training, but our group was chosen as an experiment to see whether it could be done across two slightly longer days instead. The pace is higher and your brain takes more of a beating — but from a company perspective, missing you for two days instead of three is a lot easier to swallow. So there’s a trade-off: your neurons suffer a little more, but your manager suffers a little less.
Coffee at 7:45, ready to go at 8:00 — for ten hours of security content. Per day.
Hans is not only a great guy in everyday life, but as an instructor he comes highly recommended. At one point he somehow managed to make topics like Key Hierarchy, Stream and Block Ciphers, and Fast Transition Key Hierarchy genuinely interesting — and that’s no small feat.
To be completely honest, I was glad the training was in my native language, because by the end of day one the candle was well and truly burnt out.
Day two kicked off with a recap of the last chapter from day one — and speaking purely for myself, that was very much needed. Encryption, VPN, Secure Roaming, WLAN Monitoring, WPA3, Captive Portals… it all came through. Though nowhere in the material was there a proper explanation for getting Captive Portals to work reliably across every possible platform. 😄
Towards the end of day two we touched on Pentesting and Pentesting tools — but I’ll be honest, not a lot of that stuck with me.
Two days and twenty hours of training later, it was time to dive deep into the CWSP Study Guide.
And that’s exactly what the next post is about — how I prepare for the CWSP exam.