EC-CDE Initial Review

The CDE is the Certified DevSecOps Engineer by EC-Council. At this point I'm only through 1 module and I just had to get my thoughts out in long form.

Why this cert?

I've seen this come up a few times. After doing my own research I believe that this cert could help me solidify that I'm a devops professional (I don't feel like people give me the proper credit), and that it would look real nice when I decide to start another business.

EC-Council also has a good reputation for certs. For you hackers, you know them for CEH. Getting info on the CDE was a little weird though. I had to put in my email and then someone called me to talk about the offer of the class, labs, and test voucher...I guess this is where we can get into the good stuff.

High level thoughts

So as I mentioned above I have only gotten through the first module. That took forever (1.5 work days). It shouldn't have taken that long at all. The video is 2hrs long. That's right folks, 2hrs of just straight talking and slides overflowing with words.

After suffering through the video I checked the courseware and it's just the verbal version of the video (exact same pictures for the slide). Then I also looked into the  lab. I immediately got turned off from the lab when I realized I had to make accounts of these different platforms (bitbucket, I assume cloud, ect). They say your responsible for the cost which I get but if that's the case just help me setup a homelab and have walk-thru videos.

As of now this course is not worth the cost. I probably could have made a better course and labs based on the curriculum I saw but live and you learn. I can only hope this gets better.

More thoughts...

Video:

• Break things up into chunks. A video per learning objective would make things easier to digest.
• Add closed captioning. I have iffy speakers but also I can read faster than they were talking.
• Mention that if you don't want to listen to the videos you have a book version (the e-courseware)
• Make things more exciting. There was one point where they were going through a cloud example and it wasn't even a "code-along"/done on the fly. It was just slides with snapshots.

labs:

• Have a platform where demo accounts are already made for users to use.
• I don't want to create accounts (I have a few of them already) and put my personal info into your VM
• I get being responsible for charges for things, but again I say...look at the cost you charge and tell me why you can't give a better platform that doesn't require more money out of my pocket.
• The flag system was just...honestly just send us to hack the box or something.

Overall

• Everything feels very old
• I think they could do with learning how to structure the course better
• A project based course and labs would be better
• Price and value aren't matching so far...like...I would have just preferred the "book" and a voucher at this point
• Not feeling too confident in this course helping me improve anything skill wise based on the labs
• They need to have different levels of offering based on where you think you are (brand new, experience, advanced)