PassMark Certifications

[Microdyne]

I find it interesting how when trying out the PassMark's OS Forensics Triage exam it seems impossible to pass. I have made several attempts at it and consistently get the same two scores. I had someone far more experienced in digital forensics and certified (not with this particular software) and although the software itself is very easy to navigate, time saving and appears to have several advantages over other software, the exam doesn't seem to accurately reflect the software. Additionally a couple oddities one being where the importance or more accurately what is not important with a flash drive. Space, Quality/durability, read write speeds... clearly you need reliability. Some manufacturers make very low quality, painfully slow flash drives and in a time sensitive environment this would be very important. So we have a choice between read write speeds, quality and manufacturer. Are they not all important. Do you take your files and then as some very cheap flash modules do, corrupt your data or even loose it. Manufacturer specific also determines, in most cases (unless they sell higher end drives) determine the other qualities mentioned on the list of choices. Some of the questions for areas of data acquisition (according to the latest version of OSF) seem to be inaccurate or a proper choice not there. This is just a basic exam it would be interesting to see how the other one(s) are. PassMark software is great and of good quality. The exams from my limited understanding and from another well experienced, all we can do is look at it and shake our heads... whats with these tests. At least the Triage one that we played with.

[David (PassMark)]

It is a multiple choice exam with 30 questions that you can sit an unlimited number of times and only need 75% to pass. Some of the questions are only True and False answers. It should be difficult to fail if you are taking it seriously and have the OSF tool & User's Guide in front of you as a reference. Answering purely randomly should get you ~35%

I looked up your results, you got 53%, 56%, 60%, 63% & 66%. With only 30 questions and you getting only half to 2/3rds of the questions right, it is no surprise you get similar percentage results on each attempt.

For face to face course we get people to sit the exam at the end of the course. Typical scores are 90%.

[Microdyne]

Thank you for such a quick response. So if I had the user manual it would explain which options with the flash drives? I guess I'm not suggesting Micron modules are a must LOL,but really do not all those qualities come in to play? Why is that question set up that way? You are correct I don't have the software or user manual in front of me, just watched youtube videos to get an overview of how the software works and where many of the main tools within were. I thought with a basic understanding and so few questions it wouldn't be what I found so tricky. Naturally I tried differen't answers to where I thought I was getting it wrong. I thought I was choosing answers that a typical forensic audit with most of the mainstream software on the market would reveal. Confused. I'll download the software, have my friend go through it with me and revisit it. He did find for such a basic exam the way some of the questions appeared seemed odd too.