Security Presentation Assessment

Part of the Cisco Sales Associate Program, an assessment just being launched, security presentation assessment. It's about presenting the solution from some scenario that managers provide us. I choose scenario 3 which is very interesting and kinda have the challenge. Here is the scenario:

Scenario 3) Your customer Mary, the IT Director at UNC, is frustrated. She and her staff are having numerous problems with viruses and worms. The school's security policy requires that all users have a current version of Norton Antivirus, which the university provides to students and faculty at a discounted price. The IT Dept has control over the faculty’s machines and has an automated process to keep their laptops up to date, but (legally) the school cannot control the student’s PCs. As a result, many students get on the network with out of date code and malware. Is there something the university can do to enforce their security policy? Can they keep the students off the network if they are vulnerable to new worms and viruses? Also, can Cisco help UNC protect their critical servers during a worm/virus outbreak?

What solution am i gonna present ? well you just have to wait, i'm still working on it :P

TO BE CONTINUED

500 vs 2960

One of the exam that i have in the Cisco Sales Associate Program is Role Play. What is role play ? it's just like a simulation between you and someone who pretend as the customer. I am a presales engineer. So this is the practise before going to the real world.

So in this role play, i have to explain to my manager (pretending to be the customer) about why the customer should choose ciso 2960 rather than cisco 500 express especially when the customer is considering to implement IPT (IP Telephony).

My recommendation is using the 2960, although the switch doesn't support 24 port PoE (at least for now).Both the switch (500 and 2960) don't have redundant internal ps.That's why you need RPS 2300 (for the 2960) and RPS 675(for the 500).2960 support PVST+ and the 500 only support CST.Using the PVST+, you network only needs 3 secs to converged (no L2 loops) when there was a link going up or down. While the CST will need 30-50 secs. The important think for IPT implementation is you want to reduce the latency as small possible (150 ms).

Another reason is the Cisco 500 express only uses a subset of Cisco IOS.That's why you won't get the full rich of features that the IOS offer.2960 is using the Cisco IOS software.

Important keypoint why you should pick 2960 is that the cisco 500 express doesn't support telnet, CLI and ciscoworks.You can only troubleshoot the network in 500 using GUI that it provide.

Well the reasons above are the main point that i use for my roleplay.I think i did a good job in persuading my customer in selecting the 2960.I haven't got my score yet but i'll tell you if you are interested :P

regards,
Novan Aryandi
Associate System Engineer
Cisco System Indonesia

Taking CCDA

Based on my experience taking the exam, some of the material are not from the newest edition of the book :P such as how to find how many calls can be made on a link using encoding G.711.That's why i failed on taking exam at my first attempt.

CCDA doesn't have any simulation. I thought that was a good, in the case that i don't have to remember the many commands that Cisco have. But this test was (well i think) more difficult than bcmsn and bsci because it gives a lot of "tricky" questions (if you know what i mean :) Since English is not my native language, this give me some difficulties.But maybe that's only my reason for not doing well on my test :p

This test focus on security and voices, about a quarter of the test was about them. Really not many about routing protocols, only simple one.

Well i'm planning to take the test again in a few days. so wish me luck :D

regards,
Novan Aryandi
Associate System Engineer
Cisco System Indonesia