ASA Specialist Certification

Cisco Career Certifications are IT Professional certifications for Cisco Systems products. The tests are administered by Pearson VUE. There are five levels of certification: Entry, Associate, Professional, Expert, and Architect, as well as seven different paths, Routing & Switching, Design, Network Security, Service Provider, Storage Networking, Voice, and Wireless.

Firewalls, as a technology, have been around for over 10 years. Also due to extensive use of internet by large number of people, the use of firewalls has become commonplace in corporate and small offices, and even in home environments. Cisco’s been in the firewall business for over a decade. Originally it provided PIX solution from Network Translations and later evolved into the Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA). Cisco also supports firewall technology in their router line, starting with Reflexive ACLs, moving to Context-Based Access Control (CBAC), and most recently introducing Zone-Based Firewalls (ZBF).

The Cisco ASA Specialist certification recognizes security professionals who have attained specialized in-depth expertise and proven knowledge of the recommended best practices in designing, implementing, maintaining, and troubleshooting network security solutions, using the Cisco ASA adaptive security appliance. The Cisco ASA adaptive security appliance is widely deployed and in use at leading enterprises and service providers worldwide. The Cisco ASA Specialist is recognized as the benchmark security product certification for engineers, consultants, and architects who configure advanced Cisco security appliances and VPN solutions, including advanced protocol handling, remote access VPNs, Secure Sockets Layer VPNs, site-to-site VPNs, high-availability VPNs, and failover.

CCNA Security

642-617 Firewall v1.0

Deploying Cisco ASA Firewall Solutions

• Choose ASA Perimeter Security technologies/features to implement HLD based on given security requirements
• Choose the correct ASA model to implement HLD based on given performance requirements
• Create and test initial ASA appliance configurations using CLI
• Determine which ASA licenses will be required based on given requirements
• Optimize ASA Perimeter Security features performance, functions, and configurations
• Create complex ASA security perimeter policies such as ACLs, NAT/PAT, L3/L4/L7 stateful inspections, QoS policies, cut-thru proxy, threat detection, botnet detection/filter using CLI and/or ASDM
• Perform initial setup on the AIP-SSM and CSC-SSM using CLI and/or ASDM
• Configure, verify and troubleshoot High Availability ASAs (A/S and A/A FO) operations using CLI and/or ASDM
• Configure, verify and troubleshoot static routing and dynamic routing protocols on the ASA using CLI and/or ASDM
• Configure, verify and troubleshoot ASA transparent firewall operations using CLI
• Configure, verify and troubleshoot management access/protocols on the ASA using CLI and/or ASDM
• Advanced ASA security perimeter configuration/software/hardware troubleshooting using CLI and/or ASD fault finding and repairing.

642-647 VPN v1.0

Deploying Cisco ASA VPN Solutions

• Choose ASA VPN technologies to implement HLD based on given requirements
• Choose the correct ASA model and license to implement HLD based on given performance requirements
• Choose the correct ASA VPN features to implement HLD based on given corporate security policy and network requirements
• Integrate ASA VPN solutions with other security technology domains (CSD, ACS, Device managers, Cert servers, etc.)
• Optimize ASA VPN performance, functions, and configurations
• Configure and verify complex ASA VPN networks using features such as DAP, CSD, Smart tunnels, Anyconnect SSLVPN, Clientless SSLVPN, Site-to-Site VPN, RA VPN, certificates, QOS, etc. to meet security policy requirements.
• Create complex ASA network security rules using such features as ACLs, DAP, VPN profiles, certificates, MPF, etc, to meet the corporate security policy
• Perform advanced ASA VPN configuration and troubleshooting