Security for a day

My first GIAC gold paper was finally published in the SANS Reading Room. It was a labour of love, frustration, discovery and determination.

For those of you unaware of the process to get a SANS “gold” certification, this is the process. You pass a one of the SANS’ “silver” qualifications, then choose to push yourself further by writing a paper related to the qualification. Applying in the SANS portal to “go gold”, a brief summary of what the paper is based on and what its goals are is required. This summary is read by the gold paper advisors, a group made up of SANS alumina students, and hopefully one of them agrees to take on the role to spend the next six months advising on the paper. Once an advisor takes on the role, a fee is paid to SANS. This covers administration and a fee to the advisor for their time.

From then onwards, drafts are sent to the advisor for feedback, guidance and sanity checks. When the advisor feels the paper is ready, it is submitted to a review board. Should it pass that, the paper is published in the SANS Reading Room. At that point and only that point, Gold certificate is yours.

Why do it in the first place?

A four hour exam is one way of displaying your ability, spending six months to possibly have it published to the entire world to review is another.

Exams test people in certain defined ways, but spending personal time to understand, develop and put down on paper a project is a much, much more extensive test of knowledge and understanding.

For me, this is was a real change and challenge as I don’t write papers. There is no personal or professional requirement to do so. Life has to be about challenges and pushing forward. So I gave it a go.

So what went wrong during the first six months

• My time management sucked.
• The outline of the paper was too vague and not defined enough
• I tried to review and edit the paper by myself
• I failed to understand what the advisor was telling me to bring the paper back on topic and track

The two cardinal mistakes were I mis-judge how long writing/re-writing took and thought I could edit my own work. Oops.

My original paper wandered all over the place and my advisor, Don, should have hit me with the large ‘Pay Attention’ stick; He tried to re-focus where I was off track. Email is not the best medium to convey certain emphases. If there was not a 14+ hour time difference, then we may have been able to talk directly. The re-writes missed the mark and time got away from me. I got to five months stage and with the Christmas break looming, supported by Don, I applied for an extension. He felt that I was trying hard – School report flash-back: C minus, Chris can do so much more it he applied himself and pays attention – and was getting on the right track.

So with a New Year behind me and the three month extension approved, I found three people willing to review my work. I listen to Don’s advice and made some sweeping edits. Each changes and re-write got smaller and more focused on particular points. Finally Don was happy and submitted it for review by the review board.

Simple rules for the next one

• Make time to write the paper. It was amazing how many different distractions could and would appear.
• Have a pre-planned outline of the paper and what it should intend to deliver to the reader content-wise.
• Pre-build or have full access to any test environments needed for the paper’s subject matter.
• Build a time line and stick to it. A wise friend told me two months to prove all the concepts in the paper, two months to write them up and two months to edit the paper.
• Line up two or more people to read the paper and provide honest feedback.
• Do not expect an instant respond back from the advisor. They have lives give them a couple of days. Plan this into the time line.
• If you do not hear back from the advisor after two weeks then email SANS. Stuff happens in other people’s lives

To make the next paper better than the last

• Read other people’s papers
• Read, or re-read, The Elements of Style by William Strunk
• Ask friends, peers or SANS instructors what their favourite technical papers, books or writers are. Then read them.
• Ask someone what you could have do better in the first paper

To make the next paper better than the last

Well the paper is up in the SANS Reading Room here