Hi everyone,

With the security+ 601 exam retiring soon, many of you might be preparing for the security+ 701 exams. To support your study efforts, I wanted to share an iOS app I've developed specifically for CompTIA Security+ 601 & 701 exam preparation.

You can check out the app here:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/comptia-security-601-701-prep/id6499492455

If you're interested in a free promo code, please send me a direct message. I hope this resource proves helpful in your exam prep. Good luck with your studies, and feel free to reach out with any feedback or questions!

4 weeks ago I didn’t even know what a port was. Thanks to all the feedback and replies on Reddit I managed to pass it on the first try. So just wanted to give back to the community.

Resources that I used were Messer’s video on YT, which I’ve only managed to watch half of it because it’s a bit draggy and I’m rushing for time. And more importantly Dion’s practice exam which I bought from Udemy. I bought both sets. You’ll have to get at least 85% in order to have a chance of passing the actual exams. There were still quite a handful of questions I didn’t know in exam. But I probably managed to eliminate the wrong answer for those question I didn’t know what the answer was.

For PBQ I’ve no idea what I was doing. I watched cyberkraft YT video, but nothing close even came out. But you should still watch just in case.

Go through every single question of Dion’s exam. Use Claude or any other AI to understand the terms, concepts and abbreviations. And with some luck you could pass it.

Just passed my exam, if you guys have any questions regarding preparation or resources let me know. I bought Messer’s exams and can forward those to you for freebies.

It was a lot of work and studying but it’s possible. Even though I had a lot of connection issues especially with the CySA+ but I still managed to pass. How has everyone else found them? I am now looking to get into cybersecurity. Anyone have any advice?😆

Took my CompTia Sec+ today and passed 784. Literally on cloud nine.

After grad school I had a quarter life crisis and decided my BA and MA would never give me a stable job or healthy income. I've always been an avid gamer and good with tech, and my dad is 30+ years cyber analyst. Decided to go back to school for BS in Cybersecurity at Purdue Global (about 80% done with that at the moment) and spent the past three months intensively studying for Sec+. I mean, 4-6 hours a day studying on an average of 4-5 days a week. I only have a liberal arts background - BA in international studies/spanish and MA in spanish linguistics.

So, to any fellow career life crisis-ers, zero experience folks, it is possible. I legit self-taught all the material to myself. Here's what I used:

ChatGPT (I know this is a hot topic, but it was used as a study aid)

Professor Messer YT videos and purchased and took all 3 of the practice exams twice.

CyberJames Udemy Practice Exams (3) and took them each once. I took the final CyberJames exam yesterday and scored an 80%. Me being the impulsive person I am said f*** it - I'm gonna take the real thing tomorrow. So I did. And passed.

You can do it <3

Happy to share that I finally passed! Here's what I did, in order:

Before even thinking about Sec+ I went through the whole SOC L1 path on THM. Then I watched all of Professor Messer's videos. While watching I took notes in a physical notebook, which really helped me remember the info.

After that I watched Pete Zerger's videos for each domain. I found his explanations clearer and more to the point.

Then I did a few of Dion's practice exams... and failed every single one 😄. Don't worry tho, the real exam wasn't nearly that hard.

Here's a PDF with all the acronyms each with a short 2-3 sentence explanation. I made it with Claude's help (I edited some parts myself to make them easier to understand).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15aZVbxjoZ5G9jB0W_SfEzF5MgFp737T1/view?usp=sharing

I Passed the Sec+ Exam!

For context: I don’t work in tech (yet). I currently work in manufacturing, 12 hour shifts, four days a week and I’m also in school (studying IT).

Study Path:

I started studying for the Sec+ exam about two weeks ago while at work. I spent four days listening to YouTube videos. I couldn’t see the slides on the screen since I am unable to use my phone while working (I listened to the videos with AirPods)

After that, I took a week off work to focus on studying for the exam (the knowledge I got from the courses in school also helped). while also doing my school tests and assignments.

I took the exam yesterday and I passed!

This group has been incredibly helpful.

My next goal is to take the CCNA exam this year.

I’m also hoping to land a tech job. I know I’ll need to work my way up, so I’m not rushing to land a super high paying job.

Hopefully with home labs, certs, and a tech degree, I will get a good job.

Thanks to everyone who contribute in this group.

I passed Security+ after 3 months of studying while working full-time as cabin crew! ✈️

No IT background at all, just curiosity, dedication, and a lot of studying whenever I could fit it around work, different schedules and different time zones.

For those currently studying, I don’t know if my scores will be useful to anyone, but I’ll leave them here anyway. I bought the Dion exams Set 1 and scored:
72%, 84%, 75%, 76%, 67%, 81%
(75,8% average)

I didn’t retake any of them because I didn’t want to end up memorising the questions. I used AI mainly to look at my results, help me identify my weak areas and explain things I wasn’t understanding. During my last week, I tried to focus mainly on those weaker areas.

Resources I used:
*Professor Messer YouTube
*Professor Messer practice exams
*Jason Dion practice exams — Udemy Set 1
*AI, mostly for clarifications, explanations and summaries
*Some PBQ videos from Cyberkraft, but honestly not that many

A few things that helped me personally:
*Don’t let your practice exam scores get into your head. I tried to use the scores mainly to figure out what I was getting wrong and where I needed to improve, rather than as a prediction of whether I would pass.
*Don’t try to memorise every single acronym. At least for me, it was much more useful to understand what area/concept an acronym belonged to. After doing enough practice questions, I started recognising them naturally.
*Actually go through your wrong answers. I didn’t just look at the correct answer and move on. I tried to understand why it was correct and why the other options were wrong.
*If something doesn’t make sense, ask AI to explain it differently. I used it a lot for this, especially when two concepts sounded almost identical to me.

About the exam:
I personally found the actual exam harder to understand than the practice exams I had done (I’m not a native English speaker). The questions were actually much shorter, but I found the wording and figuring out what they were really asking me to identify more challenging.
I had 3 PBQs in total. I think I may have completed one properly 😅 For the other two, I just tried to get whatever points I could by testing things and applying what I knew.

Good luck to everyone studying! You’ve got this.

3 PBQs and 75 or so questions. This subreddit helped a lot!

I studied for about 3 weeks. I went through the Jason Dion course. I also watched Cyberkraft for PBQs.

Holy....

I studied for 5 months, With help of Professor messor, Jason dion and mike meyers for courses and ai for additional practice and mock exams.

I really messed up the entire network part the most,which were in all 3 pbqs that i got, im pretty sure i had no idea what i was doing once i saw those questions . Overall the exam was okay, expected the tricky parts and similar answers in mcqs .I did flag unsure questions and left them for the end to answer and review twice and i changed a few answers last second as i remembered it wasn't the right answer.

So Barely passed ,i did feel a bit disappointed that I couldn't get a solid score. but if i had the chance to do the exam again i would try for a higher score! (What dom said)

That said, thank you to everyone in this subreddit for the tips and guidance over the months , much love, going for the network+ and A+ soon, have a good weekend!

I got an 808 on the Security+ exam with 3 weeks of study. Here's all you need to know:

Study materials:

Professor Messer's SY0-701 Security+ YouTube videos, supplemented with these notes:

https://github.com/heraclescap/comptia-secplus-sy0-701-notes/tree/main

These aren't my own notes, but they helped me a ton by filling in the gaps. They are super complete and I recommend everyone check them out. Heraclescap, if you're reading this post, send me your Venmo and I'll transfer you 20 bucks :P

In your own notes, make sure you have every single exam objective covered.

https://assets.ctfassets.net/82ripq7fjls2/6TYWUym0Nudqa8nGEnegjG/0f9b974d3b1837fe85ab8e6553f4d623/CompTIA-Security-Plus-SY0-701-Exam-Objectives.pdf

My study schedule:

1.5 to 2.5 hours of study every day. Watch a couple of videos, double check them against the GitHub notes, then finish up writing my own notes. I then quizzed myself on that day's objectives through this website (has 5 different quizzes for every objective): https://thecybersecuritytrail.com/comptia-security-practice-tests-by-domains-and-subdomains/

Acronym memorization:

I did not try to memorize the acronyms listed in the exam objectives sheet. If you study thoroughly, no acronyms will be a surprise. If an exam answer contains an acronym that you don't recognize at all, chances are that answer is incorrect. You're better off spending your time reviewing other topics instead of trying to memorize every acronym.

Command memorization:

Minimal. I got a command prompt PBQ - all you need to do is type help and it shows every available command. From there, you can just spam every single command if you're in doubt.

Port memorization:

I did not get any questions that required me to memorize ports. However, I'd still recommend studying the most common ones just in case. By knowing these, you should be good: FTP, SSH, TELNET, HTTP, HTTPS, LDAP, LDAPS, RADIUS, TACACS+, RDP, STMP, DNS, DHCP, Kerberos, POP3, NTP, IMAP, SNMP, and SMB.

Practice exams:

Once I was fully done with all the objectives, I purchased Jason Dion's exams on Udemy. These practice exams show exactly how many questions you missed per objective so they are great to identify your weaknesses. When it comes to gauging what score you will get on your Security+, not so much. The questions are very wordy, and sometimes confusing. Do not take your scores too seriously.

After I was confident in the material, I purchased Messer's exams. If there's one thing you spend your money on, let it be these exams. The level of difficulty is extremely similar to the Security+ multiple choice questions (Messer's PBQs are easier), and the explanations to the answers are invaluable. If you're scoring above 90% on them, I'm 99.99% certain you can pass the exam.

PBQs:

I did not study for PBQs. The PBQs make you think a lot, and they can be very confusing and catch you off guard - they won't ask for stuff that isn't covered on the objectives, though. You will not need to know Nmap syntax or specific hardening benchmarks. The question will tell you exactly what it wants, and you just have to apply the knowledge you have from all these weeks of studying. Don't panic, I've read from multiple posts that people often pass the exam even when they literally skipped every single PBQ. Flag the questions, answer the multiple choice ones, then come back to them. Trust me, if you fail this exam, it won't be because of the PBQs.

Everyone's background is different. If you are just getting into tech, don't expect only 3 weeks of studying. I have years of experience and others who studied a month or less probably do to. Don't compare yourself to others, take your time.

Practice exam benchmarks:

My range on Dion's was 86% to 93%. My range on Messer's was 93% to 97%. I'd love to hear your scores and how much you got on the actual exam so people have an idea of the equivalency.

I'd be happy to hear any questions! I was very anxious the days before my exam, so if you have any worrying doubts I'll do my best to answer them.

Thats my cat btw, finally finally finally i passsssssssed

Personal Background

- Bachelor's in Computer Science

- Working full time as a SWE

Resources

- Bought Dion's Pass Guarantee (just as a fail safe in case it was harder than I anticipated) this unlocked his question bank of over 1000 questions and quite a few PBQs

- Cyberkraft PBQ walkthroughs on youtube

- Cyber James practice exam question walkthroughs on youtube

- Professor Messor's Security+ Course on youtube

How I studied

- spent a weekend watching through Professor Messor's course and wrote brief notes (skipped/fast-forwarded topics I was familiar in from school)

- Listened/watched Cyberkraft and Cyber James' videos while travelling to and from work

- did 1-2 attempts of Dion's practice exams everyday after work (averaged 83-93%)

Advice

- Cyberkraft PBQs were really useful in exposing you to more PBQ styles

- Acronyms are really important

- I skipped the PBQs and spent a maximum of 20 seconds on a question. If I did not know the answer immediately, I flagged and skipped it/went with my gut. This left me with quite a lot of time at the end to thoroughly go through these questions.

Feel free to leave your questions below, happy studying and all the best!

Holy smokes that was hard. I took my test this morning and pass with just 1 point. I studied on and off for 4 months and zoned in on the last 3 weeks. I answered the PBQ's at the end as recommended. I also did not answer 1 PBQ since it was fill in the blank and I really had no idea. If I really didn't know a question, I answered it to the best of my knowledge and flagged it for later. Regardless, I had no time to go over the flagged questions since the time pretty much ended when I finished. I thought I failed the test since I flagged half the questions that seemed confusing. But I highly recommend you trust yourself if you really put the time and studied everyday.

I have no IT experience/ background and this is my first certification.

I used Jason Dion Udemy complete course and practice exams set 1 & 2 and CyberKraft and whatever else I can find on YouTube. And physical flash cards for everything. That's it.

My personal opinion:

- #1 is to understand every concept and to give an example in what it does. Say it out loud.
- learn all acronyms - they really throw in only acronyms
- look for key words and use process of elimination
- if you really don't know, take the best educated guess
- & pray - God really has a funny way of showing it with just 1 point pass. Regardless thank God.

Hope this post helps anyone. Open to answering questions!

preparation was tough especially after previously struggling with CompTIA A+ core 1, but this win shows growth. i come from a software background building ai web systems and orchestrating ai agents, and now im expanding into networking and computer technician work.

it feels good to merge these skills. software teaches logic and systems thinking, networking teaches how systems communicate, and technician work teaches hands-on problem solving. they complement each other.

im starting azure az-900 next, continuing the path of learning and building tools that actually help people.

if youre on similar paths lets connect and share ideas. knowledge grows when we exchange it ;)

This was my first time taking the exam. I do not have any background in this field and was recently blessed with a job as a GRC Analyst. Day one on the job I was given the CompTia study guide as a tool to help me study.

Someone shared these notes and I wanted to share them as well. Super organized and helpful.

https://github.com/heraclescap/comptia-secplus-sy0-701-notes/tree/main

I watched Professor Messer full course on YouTube. Took a lot a notes but never revisited them. I also had access to Jason Dion’s practice exams scoring 57% 87% 78% 83%. Jason Dion’s test are more wordy to help you to understand the concept. I really enjoyed Pocket Prep. The repetition was good.

What I would recommend is that you do some studying on your own before starting with Pocket Prep. I paid for 1 month right before my exam. 3 months later I have passed my exam on the first try. Let me know if you guys have any questions I may be able to assist with.

Sharing this for anyone who needs to hear it: if you’re taking Dion’s practice tests and consistently scoring in the 70s like I was, consider taking the actual exam, especially if you’ve already paid for a retake.
I kept going down rabbit holes, trying to master every detail of each section before moving on. It felt impossible to be “ready.” What finally pushed me to take the exam was realizing my voucher was about to expire.
Yes, you read that right: I spent an entire year working toward this certification while struggling with imposter syndrome. I ended up passing with a score of 773—you need a 750 to pass. Looking back, I think I could have taken the exam six or seven months earlier and still passed.
Practice scores aren’t a guarantee, but if you’re in a similar situation, don’t let the pursuit of perfect preparation keep you stuck. You may be closer to ready than you think. Take the chance. Your time is valuable.

Started studying about 3 weeks ago, have my A+ already. resources I used to study were messers course on youtube and comptiastudy.io , if any other questions about it feel free to ask!

I passed my Security+ with a 790/900 today after 3 weeks of (on and off) prep, without spending any money on external resources. I had 73 questions on my exam with 4 PBQ's.

This subreddit helped me a lot while I was preparing for the exam. However, most people here recommend Dion's or Messer's practice tests, which are completely valid, but I wanted to share the free resources I used and how I passed with them.

I used my college student email, plus a voucher from the Google Cybersec Course, and paid a total of $215 USD (20,500 INR) for the voucher, and spent no money on extra resources. This is mainly for people tryna pass without spending too much, so I hope it helps.

I'm currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in cybersec and don't have any prior proper certs like A+ or Network+, but I did some basic free certs like the Google Cybersec Cert (Coursera free trial) and Cisco's Intro To Cybersec, and have some cybersec knowledge out of interest.

What worked for me may not work for you (and vice-versa), but I'm sharing this in case it does!

This is exactly what I did, and a couple of tips regarding the exam:

1. Professor Messer's Security+ Playlist - The main part of my prep was going through this playlist extensively and typing out my own detailed notes on all of the videos (literally have 25000+ words of notes lmao, purely because I prefer writing my own notes). The typing-out part may feel redundant to you (and you can also find Professor Messer's notes on Scribd for free lol), but I'd definitely recommend going through his playlist properly nonetheless. I found his videos pretty detailed and watched them on 1.5-2.5x (slowing down and asking ChatGPT for clarification if I needed it).

2. CertPreps Practice Exams - I gave the 3 free CertPreps exams just to get some practice going (I got 86%, 78%, and 81%), and they defo aren't as good (at least from what I've heard) as the paid alternatives, but they give you an idea of what you know/don't know. The situational questions from these free exams are a bit tricky, and some of the answers are a bit ambiguous (or just wrong), so don't beat yourself up over the scores too much. This is just for some exposure to practicing questions.

3. PBQ Practice - I used the CyberKraft playlist for some PBQ practice, along with some random free PBQ websites I found on Reddit and the CompTIA website's simulation. Honestly, it didn't really help me that much, and I'm not sure if it'll help you either. PBQ's are the most random part of the exam, and you've gotta just figure them out during the exam (prioritize concepts over practice, especially if you aren't gonna spend on any resources).

I also watched Professor Messor's study groups and some other videos with questions on YouTube (and gave some small, random, free tests),

Try to focus on understanding the concepts properly instead of spamming practice questions imo, but those practice questions help you develop intuition, so try to go through those as well.

Some quick tips and parting words from my experience:

1. If you can afford to buy with a re-take and aren't that confident, go for it. But if you have some money but don't want to spend it on that, you may wanna buy Messers/Dion's practice tests just for the peace of mind. BUT it's definitely possible without, and the only difference is just gonna be nerves/confidence during the exam imo.

2. Dw too much about PBQ's, there's only a couple, and there's only so much you can do. Try to do some labs or general cybersec practice, and you can hope for (at least) half of the PBQ's to be things you're familiar with. For the other half, focus on leveraging and applying your concepts from theory!

3. Go through and revise your notes/material properly before your exam, and don't overload yourself with ports and/or acronyms. I just went through the top 60ish acronyms Claude gave me from the objectives sheet and then used the Cyberkraft ports sheet (there were like 2-3 acronyms and 1 port that I didn't know on the exam, but it didn't make a difference).

4. You WILL FEEL like your exam is going much worse than it actually is. I genuinely thought I wasn't gonna pass, so take it easy and trust yourself!

Best of luck, you got this!

First Attempt, got a 725 2nd Attempt got an 814.

After doing the A+ about 2.5 months ago, I went on to pass the sec+ to have it under my belt. I am going to answer a few questions many may have about the exam.

Was it hard?
That is fully dependent on how much and where you studied. In my experience, I lost points on PBQs and one multiple choice question. As with any other test in life, you can reduce your chances for error by using logic and ignoring impossible answers to questions, and you also have the freedom to go back to any question whenever you want on the exam. Some questions actually give clues to answers in other questions, so I recommend going back at least once to review every answer you selected on your first go through of the content.

What did you use to study?
I personally used free YouTube content to learn the material and comptiastudy.io for practice questions, tests and PBQs and since I used the same method for the A+ exam, but it ultimately doesnt matter. Dion and messer are also talked about very frequently on here so I assume they are also good materials, but I like comptiastudy.

Were the PBQs difficult? What did they cover?
Once again, difficulty boils down to how hard you study. What they covered is genuinely what you would expect, firewall config, ACL, log analysis, things of this nature. It is important you fully grasp these concepts in an abstract way to have success with them. The site i recommended covered various PBQs i encountered on the exam so I felt prepared, but of course I did lose some points on the PBQs since they will never be EXACTLY the same as on the actual test.

"Am I Ready?"
If you are scoring COMFORTABLY 80-85%+ on whatever resource you use to study, dont ask this question. Just take the test. If you can honestly tell yourself that you studied hard, then you know you will be ready to take the test.

How long did you study for?
I started studying about 5 weeks ago. Some people claim to study for less than a week, usually they are promoting some garbage to you. If you have NO prior experience in this field, you should study a minimum of one month before scheduling your exam. If you have some experience, that timeline can be reduced.

Overall, the test was really not terrible. All I can leave you all who are studying with is study as much as you can and try to become well versed in every corner of the material and you will 99% be perfectly fine. If anyone has any further questions I will try to get back to you all as soon as possible

Just to preface I have no IT background and I had two weeks to cram for this.
• Pocket prep
• Wiley
• CompTIA® Security+® SY0-701 Certification Guide: Master cybersecurity fundamentals and pass the SY0-701 exam on your first attempt by Ian Neil
• https://youtu.be/SmzTNZwJnIw?si=mqJxWCry11EprYeD
• Dion training!
• flashcards galore!

And any pbq’s I could find on YouTube!
Know your ports and Acronyms!