Review and Testimonial: Filip Omazic

Filip has been working in the cybersecurity industry as an incident handler for over a year. With a masters degree in IT, cybersecurity was his hobby. He has obtained numerous micro certificates as well as a few more popular certificates like BTLv1, eJPT, TRANSITS1, … Filip has been learning malware analysis since he has started working and he immediately fell in love with it.

More than any form of confirmation for his knowledge, Filip likes to tinker with things on his own – expanding his knowledge above the certificates he gained in almost every cybersecurity area. Filip has signed up for MRE in order to become an excellent reverse engineer and has decided not to settle with the first level of certification, but try to reach the highest one.

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?

Ever since I got my job I was faced with malware, I was shown basics of malware analysis and was encouraged to explore more. I quickly fell in love with disassembly, decompilation and debugging. For a while I was looking for a certificate that will be very technical and teach me things most others won’t. When I’ve found MRE it was an instant decision considering the content and the way of educating.

Did you enrol in any of the MCSI Certifications?

MRE Certified Reverse Engineer – only that one so far. After I’m done I will seriously consider signing up for another one.

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

I’m not sure yet. I cannot decide if I would like to learn more about vulnerability research, OSINT, or something else. I do already have my own CVE number, a developed 0day and I’ve done some vulnerability research – so maybe that’s my way to go.

What was your first impression about the platform?

I’m not going to lie at first I was unsure about a lot of things, the industry mostly talks about large corporations’ certificates – but I was never one to care about a brand, instead I cared about the content itself. Quality over branding. It was a bit unusual to have to record videos and write reports, but to be honest I’ve quickly adapted.

Were you able to navigate through the platform with ease?

Yes.

How would you describe your learning experience so far?

An interesting journey. A journey that will give me the knowledge I wished for. I’m excited to see what else is waiting for me on MCSI.

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

Not really. The only things I needed were VMs, Office (or OpenSource alternatives), a search engine, video recording software and video editing software. None of this cost me anything.

Also I think it’s important to note that if you do editing you don’t have to do anything advanced – just trimming down the video’s time is enough. That being said, there are few exercises that required editing, all other ones that just required recording were under 3 minutes. Also I consider this important to note: not all exercises require both the video and the report, some don’t require neither (the beginner ones). If I knew that I think I would have been less worried/scared to join.

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

I have always been a more technical person so MCSI’s way of teaching fit me really well – so not really. The problems I’ve faced were more like: report writing and styling, documentation and similar.

I have handled this with a few tries of uploading the same task, with Benjamin Mossé personally helping me shape the report into a decent one – one that can be used in the industry. I’ve appreciated his effort for this.

How was your experience submitting the solutions for every exercise?

It was easy. Once you get used to the platform the workflow gets way faster. At first I needed an hour to do a 1 point task, now it takes me 15-30 minutes depending on the task.

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

Yes and no. I wouldn’t call trimming the video down or speeding it up as video editing skills, since it is really basic and people do it on their smartphones with dragging their finger to shorten the video. This level of video editing is very beginner-oriented but can still be very useful not only for the industry, but also for your personal life. Content creation in today’s age is becoming way more important.

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

Yes. The process is fast and everything is checked by a person, not a computer. I really like that approach since I really have a feeling that I have a teacher helping me with progressing, instead of a feeling of doing an online quiz.

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

I aim to be an excellent malware analyst so that I can handle incidents with malware better, share my knowledge with coworkers and learn general reversing. I want to get to a point where anyone can rely on me for malware analysis and reversing.

Plus it’s cool.

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

From beginners to people with few years of experience – if it’s your first certificate. If you are looking to switch your cybersecurity branch then it can be for anyone. I would like to point out, however, that the platform doesn’t keep you at the level you came from. A lot of platforms I’ve been on really limit you with content – MCSI doesn’t. Take MRE, for example. It will take me from a beginner level reverser to a senior/expert level reverser if I solve all the tasks. Now of course, some people would say that work experience still is required to prove that you can be a senior – but MCSI offers so much practical tasks that you won’t have the contrast you would usually have from other popular certificates. I am biased however, since I really love technical approaches to learning :)

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

It’s an underdog platform. I keep telling more and more people about it and I hope it grows and expands It’s (already wide) knowledge tree with contents, certificates and more. I think that there is a lot of people who respect technical knowledge without all the heavy branding and empty promises. This is why most cybersecurity people love conferences like BSIDES – It’s purely technical. MCSI is like that, a place that earned my respect.

I’m looking forward to find out what else it has for me.