Introduction

I needed to renew my other CompTIA certification and decided to take the CompTIA CySA+ exam and certification to expand my knowledge in other cybersecurity areas. I’m going to talk about my experience with the exam without spoiling anything and also what steps I took to prepare myself and pass the first time.

Preparation

I was initially planning to do the CompTIA SecurityX exam first and I had already bought the books for it, bought a Udemy course and I realized I needed more knowledge on the “blue team” side of things. I decided that I was gonna do the CySA+ exam to prep for those areas in the SecurityX exam. And this would also help me satisfy some continuing education requirements and help me renew my other certs.

The materials in the SecurityX helped, but I wanted to force feed myself with all the concepts of the CySA+ exam and I found this CySA+ prep playlist from Certify Breakfast:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMYSjEaGLw_vGxGsAIUgmkbEm52QR02tx

I’ve also had several years of experience working on various projects related to vulnerability management, GRC and secure architecture assessments so that helped out for the most part.

The thing that helped me the most was the fact that I’d already simulated the “attacker role” on pentesting and red teaming engagements. There were a lot of concepts on the exam that required you to be in the attacker’s role in order to analyze security incidents.

Exam Experience

I made sure I got at least 8 hours of sleep the night before, and got a big breakfast before starting the exam. I made sure to put myself into a relaxed state, so I could remember as much of the study material as possible without having to stress out during the exam.

I took the exam via their remote proctoring, you have the option of doing this in person at an approved facility as well. I honestly struggled on a few questions and most of the scenario ones. I had to either follow what was “textbook” or had to follow my personal experience. I leaned towards my personal experience at work, and at the end of the exam I got the message that I passed. 

A couple of days later, I checked my CompTIA account and noticed my other cert got automatically renewed for a few more years which was a plus!

Conclusion

The certification definitely opened up more paths for me in terms of job/project roles and also validated the knowledge and experience I’ve already accrued the last few years as a cybersecurity professional. If you want a certification that is vendor neutral to validate your defensive security skills and knowledge, I highly recommend getting this cert. If you also have other CompTIA certs but haven’t gotten this, and are thinking of renewing your other certs, I’d recommend getting this exam for that reason as well.

– Z333RO