Completing CCNP Security - Study notes for SISAS (300-208) - Part 1

I was half way towards completing CCNP Security when they announced the retirement of the current exams and I did not have the enough time to complete study for SECURE prior to the last day to test. Given that old exam passes expire after 3 years and my ASA Security specialist certification expires after only 2 years, I have to pass the remaining 2 new exams before Nov 2015 and no later than Jan 2016 to keep a Cisco security certification without having to to sit further 2 exams.

As has often has been the case with Certification changes, the self study texts have not been published and no public information on availability is on the Cisco Press website. In fact the page it’s still referring to the February 2012 refresh and not updated yet. I have been informed that new texts should be out in the sometime in the Fall (aka late Q3 or early Q4?) as they have meet significant delays.

There is of course the official course, but I much prefer the self study route with practice exams. Given that the information is spread around, I’m attempting to pull together some notes and a list of books that I can read to keep study moving forward until official (or other) texts have been released.

The first starting point of course is the Exam Description for SISAS (300-208), so given strong focus on ISE and BYOD I’ve chosen to read Cisco ISE for BYOD and Secure Unified Access: BYOD Network Security with ISE as a starting point and following up with a Lab or evaluation environment for ISE.