AWS Certified Security - Specialty - Passed

jayc71

This was a pretty good exam, covered a lot of material.  Definitely know IAM, KMS and S3 well.  There were lots of questions around when/how to use Guardduty and Inspector but nothing too in depth about them.  Understand how CloudTrail and CloudWatch work together, how to alert on logs and what types of things are actually logged.  Secrets Manager was covered briefly, as well as routing, SGs and NACLs (and their differences).

I went through a lot of CloudAcademy lessons, read the documentation on most of the services I thought would be covered and took the AWS practice exam (which was kinda pointless since it doesn't give you any immediate feedback).  


EDIT:  I did get feedback on the AWS practice exam but not until just after I finished the actual exam, but I took it about 24hrs before so I guess that's on me!

chrisone

Wow what an awesome achievement! I am looking to get that cert next year
 Thanks for sharing your experience and your methods of what it took to get a pass! 

jayc71

Thanks!

UnixGuy

Congrats on the pass! Excellent cert to have

jayc71

Thanks!

cyberguypr

Congrats! Working on this one right now. 

LonerVamp

Congrats! I took that one a few months ago myself. I found it pretty difficult, plus the added stress of taking it at home.

newjack

I am thinking about taking this cert. Any reccomendations on how to study for it or practice?

jayc71

newjack said:

I am thinking about taking this cert. Any reccomendations on how to study for it or practice?

I'd suggest the SAA and Sysops exams prior to this one unless you are very familiar with AWS already.  The services mentioned in the first post are the ones you should probably read the documentation for, basically log into the console and make sure you understand each tool under the "Security, Identity and Compliance" heading as well as the basics of KMS, S3, Cloudwatch, EC2, etc.  I used CloudAcademy's video courses and their practice exam.

LonerVamp

newjack said:

I am thinking about taking this cert. Any reccomendations on how to study for it or practice?

I'd start by looking up other people's posts and reviews on the AWS Sec cert. I don't think many really veer off the path of doing AWS Solutions Architect - Associate first, optionally doing Developer or Sys Ops, and then doing Security. For studying all of the previous, ACloudGuru is a great first stop, then Linux Academy for the real substance and even some labs. And then Jon Bonso's practice exams collections on Udemy to practice up. Reading AWS whitepapers, FAQs, and documentation is excellent.

For Security particularly, I would suggest reading AWS Security blog posts from the last 3 years. They go through examples and scenarios that sometimes directly show up on the exam.

For me, since I was really painfully new to AWS last year when I started my journey, I opted to start with AWS Cloud Practitioner, and I was glad I did. It was super easy, but the learning I did for that helped me succeed with Solutions Architect which helped me succeed with the Security part.

If you already are comfortable with AWS and security within it, it's OK to try jumping straight up to Security.