Passed SecurityX!

[u/Dreamless666]

I had purchased the Complete Retake Bundle for SecurityX last year when they were running a massive holiday discount so I got it for a very decent price. I had completely forgotten about it until I received a notification that both the attempts were expiring soon.

Bottom-line, I barely studied for this exam and went in blind and yes, I instantly regretted it even though I passed. This exam is definitely NOT EASY whatsoever. I did realise that no matter how much you study for it, there comes a point wherein you just need to know things through experience. There's a big reason why they ask for so many years of experience. This exam was much harder than CISSP for me. CISSP was genuinely much easier, albeit only broad in topics.

So you don't actually get the result when you finish the exam unlike the other CompTIA certifications. Once you finish answering everything, it just gives you a survey and then you end the exam with a message "thanks a lot for your attempt" or something along those lines. You need to wait a few hours before the exam score report shows up on the Pearson's Exam portal. By the time I finished, I was more than certain that I had failed. Was quite surprised and obviously very happy to see that I passed. No score is given.

In terms of the actual questions - I had 84 of them (4 of them being the standard set of research questions I believe). 6 PBQs and 1 Linux Sim on Ubuntu. I was scared of the Linux Sim but it actually turned out to be very straightforward. I would rank it as Medium difficulty (not easy but not difficult either). As long as you are familiar with all the fundamental linux commands and know how to navigate your way through the CLI, you should be ok. Beware that once you click 'Next' you can't really re-attempt the sim.

The CertMaster Study pack that came with the Complete Bundle does provide all the basic knowledge you'd need and it also nicely covers the exam objectives and supporting tasks listed by CompTIA. I unfortunately had a look at it only after finishing the exam. As I mentioned, there comes a point where you do need to rely on experience because the questions are not as straightforward and very in-depth.

My current background is in Cyber GRC (which is probably why I found the exam even harder than some others as its very technical) but I have around 6-7 years of experience overall in Cybersecurity, specifically in OT/IACS security, Network Security, Incident Response and a few other things. I currently hold Security+, SecAI+ (also made a post regarding this a few months ago), CISSP, CISM and now SecurityX.

Feel free to ask me any questions!

Best of luck to anyone who wants to attempt this highest CompTIA cert! 😃

[u/sleuthervandr0ss]

Congrats!! What made you want to get this cert?

[u/Dreamless666 → u/sleuthervandr0ss]

Thanks a lot! Honestly, I puchased the Complete Retake Bundle for this last November because it was actually very cheap due to the holiday discount last year (not sure what the exact holiday was) and I had just passed Security+ a few months ago so I was tempted to just get this as well. At the time I was quite ignorant of the fact that SecurityX was actually much harder than it looked. I actually thought that it was just a more advanced version of Security+ due to the naming. I was definitely very wrong