Killed the Security+ exam!

To prepare, I took a 40 hour CompTIA course at a computer school, and since then I've been studying on and off for about 6 months, I used mostly the ITIL Security+ book, it covered everything that I saw on the exam. I also used Professor messer's training videos (saw each of them at least 3 times!), I browsed Darryl's book for a different viewpoint on different concepts, I took a few practice tests from transcenders.com (not the best resource), and I watched the CBT nuggets on the SY0-401 exam (Keith Barker).

I was considering taking the SY0-401, but thanks to members of this forum, I realized that it would only really be for bragging rights because like your score, it doesn't show up anywhere which version of the test you took. I already had the materials and put in the time to study the SY0-301, so I ended up taking that and swallowing my pride.

I'm not the best test taker, so I flipped through the entire ITIL book cover to cover the night before and took notes so I ended up getting 5 hours of sleep. (I've got kids so that's about average anyways lol). After all this, I was still nervous walking into the testing center, I even used the restroom twice!

Come to the end of it and got an 869/900!

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dave1227

Congrats!! Got 852 today myself!! I was pretty nervous too at the start and even halfway through I wasn't sure how I was doing. Had about 20 minutes or so to go back through everything and at that point I was sure I was going to pass. I was hoping for 800 so I was thrilled at my score. The class I took was for the 301 test so that's the one I went with too.

Morv

Yeah, I know I had to stare some questions down pretty hard lol. I changed my answers a couple times. One of my issues is thinking about real-world implementations, where more than one of the answers could honestly be completely true given the right situation... but with CompTIA you gotta remember that if they don't specifically mention a variable in the problem then you cannot assume it in your reasoning.

Taking Net+ before this test was a big help, a lot of it is having networking down pretty well (I think 21% of the exam i think is network security)

dave1227

That's funny because I was thinking driving home from the exam center that I didn't really have too many networking related questions and I was expecting more. I have not taken the Net+ test and I knew that CompTia kind of recommended that. I'm taking the CCNA 1 class in the fall and although I've done some networking in a couple other classes I would say I just have a good basic working knowledge of networking at this point. The book I used to study for this exam suggested you should know how to do some basic subnetting and I was prepared for that but I didn't have to. A couple of the performance related questions were a little tricky but a couple were not.

I'm just really happy to have done so well on this one,I'm sure you are too! 869 is an awesome score. Now onto the next one! Been studying for the Microsoft Configuring Windows 8.1 exam too so that's up next and that's gonna be tough.

Dakinggamer87

Congrats on pass!!

Doyen

Awesome job! Congratulations

cmitchell_00

Congrats on the pass! What is your next exam?

nisti2

Awsome job, I cannot wait to sit in front of the test!

Morv

I've heard a lot of viewpoints on the CEH exam from this forum. There is a great post by Sexion8 that hits every point

I'm going to take the CEH because I believe that it would blend very well with the security+ exam. This comes from my thinking where the security is on the defensive side, and CEH is on the offensive side. I would like to get my career track set on security, so knowing both sides of the story, so to speak, seems beneficial.