Earning My First IT Certification!

During my internship in a security operations center, I realized quickly that I would need to upskill. I had already been studying casually for the Security+ certification from CompTIA but, after being challenged to complete it before the end of my internship, I decided I wanted to sit for the exam as soon as possible. Thanks to Professor Messer on YouTube, I was able to get through the key domains relatively quickly by listening to YouTube videos during my bike rides. He went through the exam topics in short bite sized videos, making it easy to digest and even easier to rewatch specific topics. The objectives include concepts like security controls, cryptographic solutions, threats, vulnerabilities, mitigation techniques, architecture models, disaster recovery considerations, incident response, enterprise security, governance, risk management, and more.

Right before the exam, I purchased Professor Messer's practice exams and started cross referencing other sources online to ensure I was not leaving any gaps. I came across a YouTube channel called Cyberkraft that was extremely helpful, because it provided a handful of videos with performance based questions that are hands on rather than just lecture material. He also provided a PDF with common ports and protocols that not only listed the ports but also explained their use case. The Security+ was once infamously known to be a port number memory test but it has shifted over the years and requires you to understand the protocol more in depth.

Once I completed every performance based question I could find and memorized the ports, I felt comfortable sitting for the exam. Since I had years of experience in IT by this point, many of the terms I already felt comfortable with so I just needed to frame my thinking in a way that would help me pass the exam. I took the exam, and passed with a 790 out of 900! The key takeaway that I would give to anyone who is preparing for this, is to be ready for vagueness. Many people who have experience with CompTIA will say the same thing, and that is that sometimes you just have to pick the best answer. There may be multiple correct answers due to the way they phrase the questions, so it's important to be able to think critically.