While preparing for the exam one of the things that was particularly challenging was finding relevant information, as usual I take copious notes as part of my study process and for the CSE this was no exception given that I had to take the exam 3 times to finally make the grade, this meant that after each failure I continued to add to the notes through my studies.

The first set of notes I wrote were based off the blueprint:

Section 3 – Build security solution

Section 2 – Design a unified solution that includes multiple security modules

Section 1 – Assess Requirements

For section 4 and 5 from the blueprint there was no simple way to go into those topics without practicing each and every technology in the lab as well as the observations made while using the 401 study guide that got published just before my 2nd exam attempt, so I incorporated some of my notes with the observations of weak areas that I kept having trouble with:

F5 CSE Exam Notes – Silverline

F5 CSE Exam Notes – SWG

F5 CSE Exam Notes – IPI

F5 CSE Exam Notes – BIG-IQ Features

F5 CSE Exam Notes – ASM DoS Protection

F5 CSE Exam Notes – DDoS Attacks

F5 CSE Exam Notes – Security Tools

F5 CSE Exam Notes – ASM Session Tracking

F5 CSE Exam Notes – ASM Data Guard/Sensitive Parameters

F5 CSE Exam Notes – ASM Buffer Overflow/File Uploads/ICAP

F5 CSE Exam Notes – ASM Anomaly Detection Methods

F5 CSE Exam Notes – APM

F5 CSE Exam Notes – AFM

F5 CSE Exam Notes – GTM

F5 CSE Exam Notes – LTM