Observations of Instructor Led Training with Real Hardware

TechNow has heard many students talk about virtualized/remote training that TechNow Does Not Do. While training our most recent offering of PA-215: Palo Alto Networks Firewall Essentials FastTrack a student told his story of how he endend up in our course. His story we have heard for other technologies like Cisco, VMware, BlueCoat and other products.

A large percentage of training is moving to the virtualized/remote lab environments. Students are asked to use some variant of remote access software and remote into the training company's lab environment. Our student in our Palo Alto Networks Firewall course informed us that he went to a very costly offering of that course from the vendor and was not able to perform any labs. There were either network connectivity issues, or issues with the remote access software, or other problems. The whole training experience was very frustrating and not productive.

We keep our labs open to students if they would like after hours, or before hours access. Repeatedly going through a lab engrains that knowledge for later recall. Touching hardware is so critical in understanding the problems that arise when a cable comes loose, or a cable gets plugged in the wrong port. There are other scenarios such as just pulling the power cable, or turning off a power strip, or accidently overwriting a configuration. These disaster scenarious requires hands-on physical access to hardware. Preventing and recovering from disasters is what it's all about, and that requires hands-on, instructor led, real hardware.

TN-5305: Supporting and Troubleshooting Windows 11

Course Overview:

This five-day instructor-led course provides IT professionals with the knowledge and skills required to Support and Troubleshoot Windows 11 PCs and devices in an on-premises Windows Server Active Directory domain environment.

Attendees to TN-5320: Supporting and Troubleshooting Windows 11 will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Dates/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 Days

Course Objectives:

Describe the processes involved in planning and using a troubleshooting methodology for Windows 11
Troubleshoot startup issues and operating system services on a Windows 11 PC
Perform system recovery
Resolve issues related to hardware devices and device drivers
Administer Windows 11 devices
Troubleshoot issues related to network connectivity
Configure Windows 11 devices by using Group Policy
Configure and troubleshoot user settings
Configure and troubleshoot resource access
Implement remote connectivity
Deploy and troubleshoot applications
Maintain Windows 11 devices

Prerequisites:

Networking fundamentals, including Transmission Control Protocol /Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and Domain Name System (DNS).
Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) principles.
Understanding of the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) components.
Windows Server fundamentals.

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TN-825: Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) Seminar

Course Overview:

The Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certification program is developed specifically for experienced information security managers & those who have information security management responsibilities. The CISM certification is for the individual who manages, designs, oversees and/or assesses an enterprise’s information security (IS). The CISM certification promotes international practices & provides executive management with assurance that those earning the designation have the required experience & knowledge to provide effective security management & consulting services. Individuals earning the CISM certification become part of an elite peer network, attaining a one-of-a-kind credential. The CISM job practice also defines a global job description for the information security manager & a method to measure existing staff or compare prospective new hires.

This course is designed to assist in your exam preparation for the CISM exam.

Attendees to TN-825: Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) Seminar will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Dates/Locations:

Date/Time	Event
11/17/2025 - 11/21/2025 08:00 -16:00	TN-825: Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) Seminar TechNow, Inc, San Antonio TX

Duration: 5 Days

Course Objectives:

Information Security Governance (24%)
Establish and/or maintain an information security governance framework and supporting processes to ensure that the information security strategy is aligned with organizational goals and objectives
Information Risk Management (30%)
Manage information risk to an acceptable level based on risk appetite to meet organizational goals and objectives
Information Security Program Development and Management (27%)
Develop and maintain an information security program that identifies, manages and protects the organization’s assets while aligning to information security strategy and business goals, thereby supporting an effective security posture
Information Security Incident Management (19%)
Plan, establish and manage the capability to detect, investigate, respond to and recover from information security incidents to minimize business impact

Prerequisites:

A minimum of five years of information security work experience, with a minimum of three years of information security management work experience in three or more of the job practice analysis areas.

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User: tracycampbell

Instructor comments: Dave had great command of the class and the flow of information. The lessons seem relevant to the exam and the course material should assist greatly with passing. As a bonus, his breakdown of PKI helped with my current job requirements.

Facilities comments: The Home2Suites by Hilton was FANTASTIC!

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AZ-204: Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure

Course Overview:

Students will learn how to implement Azure compute solutions, create Azure Functions, implement and manage web apps, develop solutions utilizing Azure storage, implement authentication and authorization, and secure their solutions by using KeyVault and Managed Identities. Students will also learn how to connect to and consume Azure services and third-party services, and include event- and message-based models in their solutions. The course also covers monitoring, troubleshooting, and optimizing Azure solutions.

TechNow has worked worldwide enterprise infrastructures for over 20 years and has developed demos and labs to exemplify the techniques required to demonstrate cloud technologies and to effectively manage security in the cloud environment.

Attendees to AZ-204:Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Date/Locations:

No Events

Course Duration: 5 days

Course Outline:

Creating Azure App Service Web Apps
Implement Azure functions
Develop solutions that use blob storage
Develop solutions that use Cosmos DB storage
Implement laaS solutions
Implement user authentication and authorization
Implement secure cloud solutions
Implement API Management
Develop App Service Logic Apps
Develop event-based solutions
Develop message-based solutions
Monitor and optimize Azure solutions
Integrate caching and content delivery within solutions

Prerequisites :

- - AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
  - Students should have 1-2 years professional development experience and experience with Microsoft Azure.
  - Student must be able to program in an Azure Supported Language.

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L-395: Accelerated Linux Administration and Utilities

Course Overview:

This course is extremely fast paced and for students that have already had UNIX or Linux training, or have not worked with Linux in several months or years. This is NOT a course for students new to Linux and assumes the student requires a refresher before progressing through high end security courses that require dexterity on Linux. RedHat and Ubuntu, VMware Virtual Machines, and BackTrack are used for the instruction of this course. The student will acquire the skills to easily navigate the advanced VMware training environment and will be able to create scripts to manipulate and manage Linux. The ulimate goals of the skills of this course is to provide the student the ability to automate through scripting BackTrack tools for offensive security, forensics, and defense.

Attendees to L-395: Accelerated Linux Administration and Utilities will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Date/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 days

Course Objectives:

Day 1 and 2: Unix Review and Unix Utilities

Linux File System Archictecure and In-Depth discussion of Hard and Soft Links
Linux File, Directory, and Permissions Management
Linux archives using tar and zip
Interacting with BASH
Review of Common Linux commands
Sorting files by line or field
Regular Expressions (meta character) with grep commands to locate specific lines in files
Grep, egrep extended metacharacters, combinations-lab advanced combinations- lab Sed
Basic commands- Lab, Advanced commands- Lab, Advanced scripting -Lab
Miscellaneous commands Tr, sort, cut, past, pr -Lab
Performing non-interactive editing tasks with the sed command
Writing simple sed scripts to perform complex editing tasks
Using awk variables & arrays to sort data
Employing awk programs to manipulate numeric & textual data
Performing formatted printing in awk
Writing simple awk programs to write reports from data files
Using built-in awk functions & defining new functions
Write awk programs that make decisions based on numeric or string comparisons (branches & loops)

Day 3 – Intro to Programming / Shell Scripting

Shell Review
Shell Interpretation of Quotes & Backslash
The Bash Shell
Shell's combined with UNIX utilities
Programming Basics
Data Constructs
Programming Looping
Your Environment
More on Parameters

Day 4 and 5 – Security Fundamentals, Linux Administration

System Configuration / Kernel overview
System Maintenance / Disk and file admin
Using utilities for process control, locating files & automating maintenance tasks
System Startup / Boot Process – LILO & GRUB Configuration
Managing the Linux file system
Customization of setup files
Run Levels
Network Services / Configuration
User Management Monitoring, accessing & restricting root system access
Administration Tools
Process Control
Client side components of NFS, Samba, NTP, NIS
Server side components such as DHCP, Samba, NIS, LDAP, inet, telnet, ftp, DNS, etc.

Prerequisites:

Prior UNIX/Linux experience or training

Comments

Latest comments from students

User: mikenaya

Instructor comments: As usual, Dave was excellent and the content was very relevant to our line of work.

Facilities comments: The hotel facilities met our basic needs but it was awkward having a bathroom so close. I can't wait for the new facility to open.

User: fquinene

Instructor comments: Instructor was super knowledgeable and helped me tie in a lot of information from other OS and processes.

Facilities comments: Facility was fine