If you haven’t heard of Community SANS courses before, I encourage you to have a look at this new format (new outside the US, where it’s been running for years). This is a great way of bringing the popular SANS courses to your local security community at a reasonable cost, especially for those that can’t attend the major events.  It’s worth mentioning that unlike the SANS Mentor  sessions, these are delivered over a six-day period, just like it is at a larger SANS event, including the full set of books and access to audio files. They are just delivered in your own community, in a small classroom setting and at a discounted cost for tuition and travel expenses.

I’ve already described my experience with SANS, both as student and facilitator, so I won’t go over that again. Also, you can find a further detailed description of the Security 503 track on SANS website, an outstanding course that I’ve already described as the “most valuable course I’ve ever taken”. However, I want you to listen to Mike Poor, instructor at the SANS Institute and co-author of this course (along with Judy Novak and Guy Bruneau), describing it on YouTube. Mike Poor is both an amazing professional and a great guy that I had the opportunity to meet at SANS Sydney in 2008, when I took his Penetration Testing class. As Mike would say, this IDS course is simply “awesome”!