Cisco Certified Network Associate Security or CCNA Security would be validating associate level skills and knowledge required if you want to secure Cisco networks. If you gain the CCNA Security certification, a network professional would be demonstrating the skills that would be required to develop a security infrastructure, mitigate security threats, and recognize threats and vulnerabilities to networks. The curriculum of CCNA Security is going to emphasize on the core security technologies, the installation, monitoring and troubleshooting of network devices to maintain confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and devices, and competency in the technologies that are utilized by the Cisco in its security structure.

Prerequisites:
You are going to require gaining the valid Cisco CCENT, CCNA Routing, and Switching, or any other CCIE certification which could work as a prerequisite.

Course Content:
IINS or the Implementing Cisco Network Security v3.0 is considered as a 5-day instructor-led course which would be presented by Cisco Learning Partners to end the users and channel partner customers. The course would be focusing on security principles and technologies, which could be used in Cisco security products to provide hands-on examples. Utilizing instructor-led discussions, supplemental materials, and extensive hands-on lab exercises, this course allows learners to gain the understanding of common security concepts, and deploying basic security techniques by utilizing a mixture of popular security appliances within an infrastructure real-life network.

After seeing the course content, you might feel that it wouldn’t be an easy task to achieve this certification. To ease up your learning part, you could join SPOTO, one of the best training providers of all the Cisco Related Certification.

After you have completed this course, students will acquire the knowledge and skills regarding:
• Describing common network security concepts
• Securing routing and switching infrastructure
• Deploying basic authentication, authorization and accounting services
• Deploying basic firewalling services
• Deploying basic site-to-site and remote access VPN services
• Describing the use of more advanced security services such as intrusion protection, content security, and identity management

Can you do CCNA Security Directly?
Shortly speaking I would say that the answer to this question would be no. You would require either CCNET or CCNA Routing and Switching or any CCIE Certification, which could work as a prerequisite in gaining CCNA Security. Thus, you need the CCENT Certification, which you could achieve at the same price as CCNA. Hence I would advise you to gain two CCNA Level Certifications, as it would be of the same cost as gaining the CCENT/CCNA-S

You would also need to re-certify this certification at the same time re-certifying us also going to renew both the CCNA’s. You are needed to appear for the CCNA Routing & Switching exam before you could appear for the CCNA Security. Once you have cleared it, you can attempt for the exam. It would be costing around $250. After clearing the CCNA Security you could go for CCNP security which again would be costing $150.

It is totally up to you which way you are willing to go. You could spend about $250 for CCNA Routing & Switching, then $250 for CCNA Security and later on $150 for CCNP Security. Or you could spend $2000, the written exam would cost about $400 and Lab $1600 and directly you could opt for the CCIE Security. You can save about $650. It might take you about 6 months of preparation to clear both the written and lab examination.

Whichever route you select, to gain any of the Cisco Certification, you need to have a good training institute. I would recommend you to join SPOTO, if you want to achieve any of this certification, without any difficulty. SPOTO even provides you with passing guarantee, which would again give you surety and boost up your confidence level to achieve this certification.