Passed CSA+

johndabomb44

Hey,


I just wanted to thank each and everyone of you posting your results (pass or fail) as it helped me to learn what they REALLY ask for on the test. I passed CSA+ yesterday and I would like to share my experience:


1. You better know nmap like the back of your hand : I'm talking like every kind of flag and output as well.

2. In fact, you should REALLY know the command line tools very well: I would say spend more time focusing on the command line tools and their outputs than the GUI ones.

3. Skip the Lab style questions: Each one took me almost 20-30 minutes to solve (and no they are not easy). They will eat up your time if you don't manage them well and it's generally better to skip and come back once you knock out all the easy multiple choice questions.

4. About 30% of the multiple choice questions were what I would classify as "trick questions": Make sure you read the WHOLE question. If they add something into the question that on first glance doesn't make sense with any of the answers (or even the question), take a step back and try to view it from another angle. Chances are it DOES somehow factor in. You can also flag for review and look at it later.

5. Know what these are (I did not see these in the study book I used so I'm adding them here to help out):

COOP (What the acronym stands for as it relates to cold/warm/hot sites), How to calculate fractions (I know that sounds incredibly basic but I can't tell you why. It's just I haven't done a lot of difficult math in awhile and I wasn't expecting it on this test), Microsoft services like svchost, lsass, etc and know if it's malicious or not by looking at netstat connections.




Study Material I used:


-Sybex CSA+ Exam Guide by Mike Chapelle: Fantastic book, also comes with 400+ practice questions and flash cards.
-CompTIA Certmaster: I bought the deluxe exam edition (voucher, retake, CertMaster) in case I failed this test. Anyways, I personally think CertMaster is borderline garbage. What I do like though is it splits questions up based on exam objectives so you can see which ones you need to read over.



Again, thank all of you.

Khohezion

Thanks for you input for this test... I'm sitting for it in October, i'll take your words to heart in regards to the knowing command line stuff and those terms. This one seems alot more technical than SEC+...