Ways to study the Cryptography Domain

jbutler9

Hey folks,

I am looking for a way to assist in studying for the Cryptography domain. It is the only domain that I am doing poorly at. I have multiple Sec+ books and Darril Gibson's book on Kindle for PC.

Though I have dealt with and worked on systems involving PKI, smart cards, VPNs, RAS, it seems to me that the granular stuff is what is getting me.

This domain has a large amount of information, and the more I read the more I get all messed up.

Any ideas, recommendations, or other tips are very much welcome. Every other domain I am getting 90% or above with every test question or test exam I take.

earweed

The biggest thing with cryptography for the Sec+ is knowing which are symmetric/assymetric and how each works. I thought the Sybex Study guide actually did a good job with cryptography.
If that's your only weak domain then your pretty close, if not already, to being ready for the exam.

erpadmin

Totally relatable....that was me too.

What helped me out was that I too deal with PKI. That's asymmetric. That's half the battle right there.

I would flashcard all the asymmetric/symmetric algrorithms and start with that. Everything in Darril's crypto section was supplemented with the Sybex guide. I personally used Transcenders for the cryptography flash card section. Once I conquered that, everything else flowed (even the risk assessment nonsense, but that's real world anyway, so I didn't have a problem with it.). Know hashing and what is does and what it doesn't do too...that's definitely important to know. (NDA prohibits me from telling you why......but it's all in Darril's book. ).

Llane

Keep it basic. You don't need to have an in-depth understanding of every single cryptographic function out there to pass the Security+ . Some of the books seem to be a bit over the top when it comes to the required material.

Print out the exam objectives if you haven't already, the cryptographic algorithms in question are listed right there. Learn which ones a hash, which one is symmetric or asymmetric. Make sure you understand the differences between them and what they're used for.

Finally, have a look at the key sizes, check sums and so forth. In my opinion knowing them off the bat isn't necessary to pass the exam. It's good enough if you can tell that AES is the newer standard and probably won't use a 56-bit key.

Good luck when you take the exam. If you score 90%+ on all those tests you're probably more than ready to tackle it! I only got 78% on the CompTIA practice test and scored over 90% on the real thing.

To victory, my friend!

erpadmin

The main thing I want to stress though, is that you really want to be comfortable taking this exam. If you are not comfortable with what you're seeing in the practice exams, then you are going to worry when you take it for real.

I guess that nugget can be applied to any exam, but for you, in this case, it definitely applies. Once you feel comfortable with crypto, as the last poster said, then go ahead and kill that sucka.