“The Journey of a thousand miles begins with one step” -Lao Tzu

I came to Metadata Forensics from a local Police department in Georgia, and while I thoroughly enjoyed the “figure it out” education I accrued there. I was excited to start adding the letters to the end of my signature block that proves I know what I know.  So, my first step of this thousand-mile journey would be Cellebrite’s Self-Paced Certified Operator “CCO” course.

As the title implies this is the Self-Paced version of Cellebrite’s two day in person course. It’s designed for would be examiners like me, who need to work at this when they have time or maybe just because I learn better remotely. Cellebrite states the CCO is an Intermediate course in the description, but personally I feel it starts students at step one, then ends with the ability to successfully operate one of the industry’s most valuable forensic tools.

The layout of the virtual classroom is easy to navigate, and each block of instruction is broken down into modules with gray progress bars that satisfyingly fill in green as you progress through the steps. Within the modules are knowledge checks, videos, and interactive lessons which I feel help with the hands-on aspect many people “ahem” ME, really need to learn optimally.  While we’re on the subject of learning needs, the course will read to you while you follow along, and the videos have subtitles.

I will say that I was frustrated a few times as I felt the knowledge checks were checking knowledge we had not yet covered, and then vindicated when in the very next module, we covered said material. Not to worry though, the checks are part of the training, you can do them again, and again, and they are not part of the required 80% or higher you must have to pass!

 All in all, this course was very well put together, I won’t say that my journey was without issue, possibly because of my compulsive need to fill the green task bar before moving on to the next task… but I admit to nothing.