Review and Testimonial: Scott Fenn

Scott Fenn, CISSP has been working in various fields within technology for approximately 15 years. He currently runs his own company providing IT consultancy and security services, as well as working for organizations such as the Synack Red Team. He has specialist experience and interest in the Education, Aviation and Healthcare sectors. A constant learner, he holds over 60 certifications from vendors including ISC2, Cisco, Juniper, CompTIA, LPI, Oracle, AWS, eLearnSecurity and EC-Council. Scott frequently serves as a subject matter expert for both course and exam development.

Outside of work, Scott is a big fan of the Adelaide Crows and holds Pilot’s licences in the UK and Australia. He loves flying to remote and challenging airstrips with outstanding wildlife, such as Kangaroo Island.

Hi Scott! You have been a student on the MCSI Online Learning Platform for a while now. Can you please tell us about how you embarked on your learning journey?

I got into technology in my teens, and since then have amassed about 15 years of experience across a wide range of fields including Tier 1 and 2 support, Networking, Security and Application Development. I currently run my own IT Consulting and services company which now focuses primarily on security. I have a background in education and am constantly looking for new and innovative ways to learn new skills and re-enforce old ones – I discovered the Mosse Institute one day whilst looking for my next course of study.

Right away, I was impressed with the variety of courses on offer as well as the practical focus of the certifications. Price is not my primary factor in choosing certifications, however, MCSI’s fees did strike me as very fair - especially considering the access to the course is perpetual. This was already a huge improvement over some providers!

Signing up with MCSI was also a way to help me move forward with some of my personal goals - during the pandemic, I decided that I’d like to make some changes in my life – specifically, I want to spend more time traveling and working internationally (and having some fun), especially in Australia and the US. As a new and innovative provider of Cybersecurity training (and better yet, one whose curriculum is aligned with the ASD skills framework and NIST framework) the Mosse Cyber Security Institute looked well worth a try.

Did you enrol in any of the MCSI Certifications?

I did, so far I’ve signed up for the MPT, MOIS and MRT courses.

That’s great to know! Did another MCSI Certification interest you?

Yes, in the second half of this year, I’m focusing the majority of my professional development on cloud security and I’ll probably sign up for the MCPT course as part of this. I’m also interested in the MGRC course in the near future.

What was your first impression about the platform?

The platform is easy to use and even better there’s a dark mode! (You’d be surprised how many platforms still don’t have a usable dark mode!). There’s also a simplified user interface available for those who are new to the industry which is a great idea. The platform also receives regular updates - I’ve been using it for about 9 months now and there’s been several new features and improvements just in that time.

Were you able to navigate through the platform with ease?

Yes, the platform is easy to navigate – I wouldn’t say you need any special skills to dive in and give it a go.

How would you describe your learning experience so far?

I really enjoy the learning experience at MCSI. Over the years I’ve obtained a large number of certifications, some wholly practical and some entirely theoretical. While MCSI is very much focused on developing practical skills there is also a theoretical element – more often than not you’ll need to go and do some research before you can start on actually producing a solution, which gives you a nice mix of both approaches.

I also like the fact that each certification course contains a variety of exercises requiring more or less time to finish. I often complete a shorter task at the end of the day or during a break in my work which is an excellent way to make use of my spare time. On the other hand, some of the longer more complex tasks can take days or even weeks to complete and are a great way to give yourself a “miniproject” to work on. Since access to the course is a one-off fee, there’s no stress around having to finish by a certain date which makes the whole experience even more flexible.

You’re also free to complete the course in any order that you like – although in some places it’s worth following the recommended structure since you’ll practice a skill in one exercise which will directly contribute to the next, this, in particular, is a very satisfying way to learn!

Did you require any special equipment to work on the exercises?

Not so far, for the courses I’ve taken being able to run a VM or two is all that’s required.

If you look at the course details page for the course you’re interested in you can check for any specific requirements. While the base requirements are enough to complete the course, you’ll probably want a bit more capability if possible. Most exercises do only require you to run one VM, although a handful require 2. If you want to run an additional VM to use as your workstation for the course (for example, Parrot OS or Kali running on top of Windows) you’ll need to factor in that additional overhead. If you want to run multiple Windows boxes, you’ll need more resources than if you were running Linux machines.

In terms of software, you’ll want an office suite, a decent code editor and something to create diagrams with. There are plenty of paid and free options for all of these.

A handful of the more advanced exercises also require infrastructure to be created in the cloud (or you can choose to use the cloud rather than running VMs locally). Everything I’ve come up against so far could be accomplished within the AWS free tier, so this needn’t cost you anything.

Did you encounter any challenges while working on the exercises? If yes, how did you navigate through them?

Constantly! The exercises are designed to represent real-world scenarios and objectives that you may face, so just like in the real world, you’ll often spend a lot of time troubleshooting and tweaking something to make it work just right.

At MCSI, you’ll usually need to develop or set up any tools and infrastructure you’ll need to complete a solution as a first step. Therefore, whereas in a typical lab environment, you can simply dive right in and (for example) exploit a vulnerable web application, at MCSI you’ll need to install a web server, get that up and running, build an application which is vulnerable and then exploit it. This approach means you’ll gain more experience by far, but does also mean you’ll face more challenges - and yes, spend more time troubleshooting!

How was your experience submitting the solutions for every exercise?

Submitting an exercise is easy. For video submissions, you’ll need to spend a little bit of time getting your workflow organized but it’s very fast once you’ve done it a couple of times.

For exercises that involved a video submission, did you have to learn video editing skills?

One interesting aspect of MCSI’s approach is the overt focus on creating professional-grade work – the objective is always to develop a solution which you could present in a business context. With this in mind, I spent a morning learning how to use OBS studio and Kdenlive (both free) to make a professional-looking recording and do some basic editing where required, and that’s served me well.

Creating videos also helps you to build a cybersecurity portfolio which you could share with a potential employer, so I’d invest the very small amount of time required to learn to do a good job.

Were you comfortable with how the exercises were graded upon submission?

MCSI handles assignments more like a traditional college or university – each and every one you submit is individually viewed and graded. Generally, the process is very fast, however very complex submissions can of course take a bit longer to review (and waiting for them back can be a little stressful!). The advantage of this approach (aside from the individual attention) is the feedback that you receive with your submission – I’ve had some excellent suggestions from the instructors, many of which I’ve incorporated into my real-world workflows.

How do you expect your career to advance with the skills you have gained from the Online Learning Platform?

I see the MCSI platform as being a major component of my continuous professional development, as well as a valuable mechanism to learn entirely new skills for the foreseeable future. There’s no question that using the platform is helping me grow in terms of confidence and ability on an ongoing basis.

Who do you think is the appropriate audience for this platform?

I’d say that there’s something for everyone on the MCSI platform – the introductory courses are an excellent start for a beginner, and the advanced courses will push more advanced professionals to enhance and develop their skills (as well as refresh old ones). That being said – none of the courses at MCSI are easy – cybersecurity isn’t easy, so this shouldn’t be a surprise! In order to get the most out of your experience you will want to choose a course which is at the right level for you.

One of the much less discussed aspects of the MCSI approach is its basis in proven models of learning, particularly Bloom’s Taxonomy. At the same time, progression through the course material and exercises is benchmarked to the ASD Cyber Skills Framework – what this means in practice is that the difficulty levels indicated for certifications and for individual exercises on the platform really do mean something. If you’re just getting into cybersecurity, take a beginner course or get going with the free Introduction to Cybersecurity course.

The way that exercises are designed and mapped to established standards means that whichever level you’re working at you’re going to feel like you’re working for it – but you do want to be fair to yourself and set yourself a task which is achievable!

On an ending note, what would you like to tell our readers about the MCSI Online Learning Platform?

It’s probably worth teasing out a nuance which is quite important here. What MCSI has developed is a learning platform, not a teaching platform. At MCSI, you need to develop your own solutions to real-world tasks which simulate (and are often couched in terms of) common business functions. There isn’t a guide to completing the tasks, nor is there a lesson plan to follow – there’s a library of information to peruse, and there’s help available on the forums - but ultimately, completing any task on the platform requires you to bring your own skill and knowledge, or to be willing to work to learn how to achieve something. As long as you’re comfortable with that method of learning you’ll love the courses.