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I am studying for my Security+ Certification (I plan on taking it within a month), but I’m a bit nervous as i have never taken an exam like this before, at least not outside of college. I’ve been studying the CompTia books, but I’m just not sure if its truly enough. Got any advice for me? I’d appreciate anything at this point!

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I find that after studying the material, practice tests help. I personally like to use Transcender’s practice tests.

Also…when taking the exam, use all the time they give you. Once you go through the exam, review the questions you were shaky on. Then review all the questions if you have time. Using all the time has made the difference between pass and fail for me more than once.

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Read the answers before you read the question. Sounds backwards, but you will be surprised how many you will know the correct answer to before you even read the question. It is a good way to separate the BS from the good answers.

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get the visual cert exam suite.

then go here http://www.examcollection.com/

and also get books and have the knowledge in addition to the test prep noted above.

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If you would like some free training videos, I have found Professor Messer to be pretty easy to follow and understand:

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Take every practice test you can find!! That’s what I did before taking the Network+ as well as Windows7 70-680 and not only passed them both, but also saw several questions that were nearly identical to the practice test questions I found. There are also “Brain Dump” sites out there as well but whether you use them or not is up to your standard of ethics.

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Thanks everyone for the quick responses! I am definitely going to check out some of the other sites and free tests and other practice tests as well once i finish the book i am currently studying. I was just wondering how accurate the practice tests truly were and if they were worth looking into.

@SupersupIT- I’m not necessarily against the brain dumps, but at the same time i don’t want that to be the basis of my success either. I want all the hard work and reading and studying to be the reason for passing the exam (as well as have all the necessary knowledge from it), instead of just memorizing test questions overall. Does that make sense?

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Matt,

I agree that you should not have “paper certs”. With that being said and the complexity of today’s certs I highly doubt there is a single person on this planet who can gone to a cert test without at least giving the dumps an over view.

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The “brain dump” stuff is actually against the agreement you enter when you load up the test to take it at the testing center. You are agreeing that you had to prior knowledge (except what you gained on your own from previous attempts) of the actual questions that are on the test.

I am working on my Security+ right now as well and my school has provided testout.com and uCertify and the study materials. I am working on the testout stuff right now and it is just a lot of videos. Haven’t looked at uCertify but it is highly rated for actual learning and not just cramming to pass the cert.

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Big thing, go with the first answer you think of, you’re usually right, but what I’ve found to make the difference is to take what you’ve learned and try to apply it, if not for real then at least think how you could use it or how it applies to something you’re working with.

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I really like practice exams. I always find that the books don’t adequately prepare you for the test in most cases. A lot of the books glaze over topics that really need to be explored more in depth. Practice exams really help in identifying your weak spots and the format of the tests.

It seems sometimes that test sometimes default to specific wording rather than know what has to be done. You can know exactly how to do something, but if your don’t know the wording exactly you can be left with a 50/50 shot at getting the right answer. practice exams help in pointing this out so you get familiar with the exact terminology. for example, i work with switches and firewalls daily, but still sometimes will mix up the correct command since they are so similar in the wording, but just a different order in how the command is used (show ip interface brief vs show interface ip brief). when you are living and breathing practice exams for one certification, you become really familiar with the wording.

Of course you need to be using all of this information in a lab or live (if you are brave) setting to really become proficient in it. It doesn’t count worth squat if you have a cert, and cant fix a problem when the shit hits the fan.

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I used the ExamCram book and took a few practice tests then almost aced it. Like others have said: Take all the time they give you, read the questions and answers thoroughly, and mark the questions you aren’t sure about. Often they will be answered later or you might see something that jogs the old noggin.

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SupersupIT wrote:

There are also “Brain Dump” sites out there as well but whether you use them or not is up to your standard of ethics.

Only if you consider breaking the law to be a purely ethical concern. In most countries, the EULA for the exams is a legal contract you enter into. Violating that contract is illegal - in some places even a criminal offence.

Brain dumps devalue certifications & make IT as a profession look bad. Any institute that cottons on to you using brain dumps will yank your certs & blacklist you. Try explaining to your boss why it got pulled without losing your job…

Back on track, practice. If you can do the work & know the theory, you should be fine. If you only have theory or practical knowledge, not both, you’re likely in trouble. All the best!

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@Reap3r

Thats what i’m worried about. I wasn’t sure if there are free practice tests out there where i can practice at all LEGALLY without brain dumps, and also, i’m still a student. I do have a few years of IT experience, but not mainly in security (at least not hands on). Most of it is in theory, not hands on, and i’ve never gotten the opportunity to test out what i really know as well.

That problem i have where most of the information i know about IT is all in theory, i don’t normally get the opportunity to practice anything that i read either from the community, or just books or websites as well. That’s partially why i want to get these certifications, to show that A) i am very serious about my career and B) That i know (at least in theory) what i’m talking about, and that i’m trying to find the experience as well. Does any of this make sense to anyone else, or am i just rambling? haha

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@Matt2438 - I understand exactly what you’re saying. I studied MCITP without much experience. :slight_smile: The only thing that saved me was a lot of faith & tons of practicals. I couldn’t afford a physical lab so I got VirtualBox & virtualized everything I could. At one point I had around 4 servers & two clients on 1 host, running everything for Active Directory, to DNS to Exchange. I spent around 6 weeks a shot studying the theory, doing the questions, completeing every practical & running as many scenarios as I could. I joined domes, routed mail, set up sub-domains, un-joined, added roles, removed roles, tried configs, broke it on a regular basis & carried on.

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Unfortunately, i don’t have the capacity on my actual home computer to run multiple virtual machines. I do have one virtual machine running, and i have set up servers on virtual machines for work, but thats about the most experience i’ve had with it. Fortunately, i am still quite young, but unfortunately i’m getting a bit impatient and i want to truly see what IT security is all about, and start to get GOOD experience on what i need to know, and what i can do to learn it.

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The security + exam was easy. Don’t worry yourself too much over it. For studying Comptia Certs I always recommend using two books, Sybex being one of them and Exam Cram for the other. Read these and you will be fine. Event better if you can go in on the price with a buddy.

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^ CE is right on, I read the Sybex Sec+ book several times before I took my test. I feel it covered everything I needed to know. I know it was helpful on the SY0-201 I don’t know how much has changed on 301. I’m not going to say it was super hard, but I will say the CompTIA price will have you nervous. Just study up and accept that the worse case scenario is you have to shell out another $264.

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Matt2438 wrote:

Unfortunately, i don’t have the capacity on my actual home computer to run multiple virtual machines. I do have one virtual machine running, and i have set up servers on virtual machines for work, but thats about the most experience i’ve had with it. Fortunately, i am still quite young, but unfortunately i’m getting a bit impatient and i want to truly see what IT security is all about, and start to get GOOD experience on what i need to know, and what i can do to learn it.

Learn to use Linux. If you truly want to head into info sec, you need to be able to use & work with *nix. I’m currently in the process myself.

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Well everyone, i really appreciate the advise. I just really need to buckle down and continue to read/re-read any books i can get my hands on.

@leepeyton, i looked up the Sybex Sy0-301 book and it got awful reviews. Do you (or anyone else) know about this? Or if its still worth reading? The reviews have stated that it has a lot of useless information towards the exams, and then doesn’t go into much detail on the important parts of the exam as well. Any advice/suggestions?

@Reap3r, i have a little bit of hands-on experience with Linux, and i did have a basic Linux class (which was awful…didn’t learn much at all from the teacher, did more on my own). I just gotta get my hands on an image so i can create a virtual machine and learn more myself.