How do you know when your ready for the Security+

I was wondering what others used to gage that they were ready to take the Security Plus Certification Exam. I have been studying since December. Materials i have been using are CompTIA Security+ Study Guide 6th addition, CertMaster, and MeasureUp. Currently I'm scoring in the low to mid 80s on the MeasureUp tests. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!!!!

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OctalDump

Is it the same questions or same knowledge area that you are getting wrong? Sometimes you need to go back to the study materials, read it again, explain it out loud in your own words, until you are confident you understand the material. And keep doing practice questions (it's the best prep for an exam, since you are practising the actual skills you need for the exam). How long is it taking you to answer a full test of ~90 questions? Ideally, you should average under 30s per question.

Normally you want to be above 90, and ideally high 90s to 100% before taking the exam, since then you will be confident about passing.

If you did the exam now, you'd probably pass, but there's a reasonable chance that you'd fail. If you have enough time and money, it might be worth risking a fail to just try the exam.

TechGuru80

How bad would a fail hurt your pockets? If you can fail the exam and not really feel the impact of paying the exam fee again...go for it scoring 80s on practice exams. If a fail would hurt, try to get in the 90s just to make sure.

cdx

Purchase Darril Gibsons practice tests and simulations from his website (or his book that comes with the practice questions) and use those, they are the #1 study material for this test.

To answer your question:
1) Print out the CompTIA Security+ Exam Objectives from their website and look over them, if you recognize each concept at a foundational level, you are ready.
2) Do Gibson's practice tests and simulations, if you score 85% or above multiple times, with knowing WHY you chose the answer and not just memorizing (learn mode is great for this), then you are ready.
3) Cut score on Sec+ test is around 83%, so if you are scoring 85% or above on each practice test, you should be ready.

ultm8mind

^What cdx said will set you up for success. Especially the knowing the why, you have to be ready for the "what if.." questions they're going to throw at you.

joshuamurphy75

If you already went through all the content, I'd recommend to just schedule a date a few weeks from now, and go for it. You can study everything you feel weak on until then. I used to wait a long time before taking tests because I was afraid of failing, and afraid of having to pay again, until I realized that I quit my second job to have time to study, and am loosing money anyways by not taking it. I failed my CCENT the first time, but by the time I took it the second time, everything that gave me trouble the first time felt easy. You will never know everything, but every failure lets you know where you are weak. Just remember that if you pass or fail, to still study the parts that gave you trouble when it's all over.

import36

cdx wrote: »

Purchase Darril Gibsons practice tests and simulations from his website (or his book that comes with the practice questions) and use those, they are the #1 study material for this test.

To answer your question:
1) Print out the CompTIA Security+ Exam Objectives from their website and look over them, if you recognize each concept at a foundational level, you are ready.
2) Do Gibson's practice tests and simulations, if you score 85% or above multiple times, with knowing WHY you chose the answer and not just memorizing (learn mode is great for this), then you are ready.
3) Cut score on Sec+ test is around 83%, so if you are scoring 85% or above on each practice test, you should be ready.

^nailed it.

cbd

The actual exam questions are much more complex than any practice questions I've seen. You really need to fully understand the material.

khaledit2015

cbd be optimistic

hellolin

Yup, the actual exam is very subjective, you really need to know your material and networking skills, it seems that they increased the difficulty quite a bit in the last reversion. I am studying for my CEH now and I found that on the topics of security concept that I already know most of it, it's the tools that I need to get familiar with, Sec+ really get you ready for CISSP I think.