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Failed Exam very close....need advice

Goldmember

I failed my first tech exam, I was kind of astonished, but I knew the Sybex book alone wasn't good enough.

My score was 735 and a passing score of 764 was needed.

I came home and reviewed all the questions that I thought were borderline and I realized I got most of them right by guessing.

All of these things were not covered in Sybex to the depth required
Make sure to know WEP and encryption algortihm used...
Make sure to know Kerberos port #(which I knew from this site, but not mentioned in Sybex)
Make sure to know NIPS, as opposed to NIDS and HIDS
Make sure to know which encryption schemes are used for email and their underlying encryption algorightms...example would be S/MIME which uses RSA
Make sure to know different names of packet sniffers and password crackers(not covered in Sybex)...an example would be Nessus is vulnerability testing tool
Incident response procedure was completely different then Sybex interpretation
Make sure to know RBAC/MAC/DAC(which is covered enough in Sybex)

Anyways, the questions were vague. Hardly any port # questions, actually only one.

I must have gotten a difficult test.

I could have sworn one question had 4 correct answers and it told me to pick 3.

Anyways, should I buy another book and wait a few weeks or should I attack the exam again.

I feel if I don't attack the exam again my windows might slip away with other things.
I have never failed an important exam so I don't know what everyone else does.

Thanks for the help

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Comments

gojericho0

Work on the parts you scored the worst on. Review the objectives again and try to elaborate on each one without notes. You were close to passing so I would study for a week or 2 before taking it again. When you feel confident book it

IT Man

I will be going for this exam in the next month. Thanks for the info. Sorry you failed. Good Luck next time!!

Goldmember

Don't use Sybex alone, that is my best advice.

I thought the practice questions were crappy and not anything like real exam.

I will take the exam next week after I study again.

I feel confident I should pass this time.

Thanks

Anward

sorry to ear u have failed. good luck next week.

Megadeth4168

Sorry to hear about your luck on this one. I'm sure you will pass on the next attempt.

For this exam, I don't recommend any one book by itself to pass. You really should use at least 2 books for this one.

snadam

agreed that at least 2 different resources are needed for this exam. Id check out the passport book. It covered some types of encryption that sybex didnt, along with other topics. did the trick for me.

danclarke

Sorry to hear about your experiences. Good luck for the next attempt.

I felt sure that I was going to fail halfway through my Security+ exam. However, when the exam was over I had passed with 820.

I'm sure that exam technique helped me considerably.

During the exam, there were plenty of areas where I started wishing I had revised more. I always keep a tally of how many questions I am confident of getting right - and I wasn't getting enough tally marks. In spite of this, I kept going, kept thinking "give it your best shot" and, when I reached the last question, went back over every question - but particularly the ones I had marked for review. In many cases, the tentative answer I had provided then made more sense.

Another factor is probably the "unmarked" questions which CompTIA include. Don't be put off by the occasional question which seems totally unrelated to what you have studied. Just keep going.

All of which can be summarised as "the bleedin' obvious" in the cold light of day, of course. The secret is to make sure that these steps are followed in the exam.

IA-Daigakusei

Sorry to hear you didn't pass.. I'm using the Comptia Security+ book to study, this website and I picked up a book called Street Smarts Security+.. I downloaded it from a site.. (ebooksboard.net) I think... I have the test coming up next Saturday on the 26th.. I really hope I do well.. This will be my 2nd time taking the exam. The first time, I scored a 643.. but I think that because I only used the Passport book that's what caused me to fail.. This time I feel more prepared.. Good luck next time!

msnelgrove

don't forget wikipedia! great source to get FREE information for exam domains

cashew

Goldmember wrote:

Make sure to know NIPS, as opposed to NIDS and HIDS

Is CompTIA like Microsoft will they will add questions not listed in the requirements, but do not count towards your score? Just to gather peoples info on the topic?

stupidboy

cashew wrote:

Is CompTIA like Microsoft will they will add questions not listed in the requirements, but do not count towards your score? Just to gather peoples info on the topic?

Yes indeed they do, this is pointed before you start along with the NDA.

It seems that most vendors do, MS, CompTIA and Cisco are ones where I have read there will be questions that will not count towards the final score and will be indistinguishable form other questions.

I am off for some Citrix action

later this week so I double check their NDA and terms to see (I did not see anything there back in January)