Studying for the NSE8

Today I'm going to do a short post and messy post to record / share some of the prep I've been doing for the NSE8. Looking at the NSE8 handbook, the recommended courses from training.fortinet.com for prep study are as follows:

NSE 4
FortiGate Security
FortiGate Infrastructure

NSE 5
FortiAnalyzer
FortiManager
FortiSIEM

NSE 6
FortiWeb
FortiMail
Secure Wireless
FortiADC
FortiSandbox
FortiAuthenticator

NSE 7
Secure Access
Enterprise Firewall
Advanced Threat Protection
Cloud Security

When you break these courses down by lecture time and lab time, you get the following minimum effort estimate for the NSE8


 In addition to the above courses provided by Fortinet, they also recommend the following study materials when studying for the NSE8:

 Recommended Study Materials
This section lists the recommended study materials to help certification candidates prepare for the NSE 8 certification exams.
• Administration guides and handbooks:
    ▪ FortiGate, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer
    ▪ FortiADC, FortiSIEM, FortiDDoS
    ▪ FortiWeb, FortiMail
    ▪ FortiSandbox, FortiAuthenticator, FortiClient
    ▪ FortiSwitch, FortiAP
• CLI references
• Cookbooks
• Fortinet Knowledge Base articles


Going off the above information I am roughly estimating that the minimum amount of time invested to study for the NSE8 is going to be somewhere in the order of 400 hours. No small order, but definitely on the more reasonable side for an expert level certification.

Over the next few posts I am going to outline my initial strategy for studying the NSE8, and will work out a rough timeline to get to sitting the exam. Ill keep a running record of all my study on this site to act as notes for myself to review in prep for the exam but also in the hope that it is useful for anyone else that is intending to study for this cert

If you are studying for the cert, leave a comment below! I'd love to hear from other people on a similar journey.


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