Working on the CCIE

Plans for the CCIE

I have chosen to study for the CCIE: Enterprise Infrastructure. This is one of my goals on my career path. I will be taking some other certifications in order to get the knowledge necessary to pass this Expert certification from Cisco. Planning on doing it between 3 and 5 years out from October 12th, 2025 as the main mid to long term goal.

There are some certifications that I am wanting to accomplish on the path to this goal. I will need to do some more work with SD-WAN and Multicast technology and will fill in some of that with books. I am planning on getting the CCNP Enterprise, CCNP Service Provider and the DevNet Professional certifications to complete my knowledge about the main CCIE.

For the certifications that I will need, there are 6 Professional Level certifications that I am planning on taking. These are the ENCOR, ENARSI, SPCOR, SPRI, DEVCOR and the ENAUTO exams. These six will be for the CCNP Enterprise, CCNP Service Provider and the DevNet Professional. I am also planning on getting other certifications from Cisco like the Cybersecurity Associate and the CBRCOR exam for the Cybersecurity Professional Core.

Other plans for the CISSP and the CEH

I am also looking into the other two certifications that I am looking at getting. The CISSP and the CEH are two certifications that I want to do for my career path in Network Security. There are two certifications before the CISSP from ISC2 that are the Certified in Cybersecurity and the SSCP. These are needed to get the depth and breadth that the CISSP brings to the table.

The CEH or Certified Ethical Hacker is the third milestone on the path that I am taking for my career. There are four certifications that I will need to accomplish this certification. Two of these certifications are the NDE and the EHE which are Essentials certifications for Network Defense and Ethical Hacking. The other two are the Certified Network Defender and the Certified Ethical Hacker.

Additional Certification Plans

I have been focused on some other certifications that I will pursue later. On the AZ-900 I am getting the training materials finished and will wait to take it until later. I am also holding off on taking the Network+ until I need to recertify for the A+ in September 2026. I plan on taking the Tech+ this year along with the CCST: IT Support. These are not the only two that I plan on taking and will focus mainly on Cisco certifications to work on the Network Administrator role.

Conclusion

Having the right scope on what I am doing has helped me to chart my career going forward. There are some additional skills that I am working on like Wireshark, Programming, and some Soft Skills. For programming, I am working on Ansible, Terraform, Ruby and Python. I haven’t been working on Ansible as much but it will help me get the skills I need to pursue the CCIE: EI certification.