CompTIA Security+ Get Certified Get Ahead: SY0-501 Study Guide

The Security+ certification was one that I needed to get for career development, and I was underwhelmed by the online training courses offered to prepare for it. This book, however, gave me all of the information I needed to solidly pass the exam! The initial assessment questions were useful to identify areas of particular weakness, and I used the results to focus my studying. The practice questions both in the book and in the supplemental materials provided online were essential, ESPECIALLY the ones that demonstrated how the "exercise" category of questions would work. Taking the time to complete every offered question after reading the chapters was a great way to drive home the lessons. I appreciated the summarizations at the end of each chapter, which focused on especially important bits of information to know before taking the exam. I also appreciated the extensive list of acronyms at the end of the book. As is often the case, knowing the meaning of the acronyms allowed for eliminating one or two candidate answers on more than a few of the exam questions. The 10% discount voucher provided with the book makes purchasing the book a cost saver in addition to an excellent study guide. Buying both the book and the exam cost less than buying the exam alone would have cost, which I appreciated. Thank you for providing a well-written, focused study guide. I was happy to pass the exam the first time I sat it, and that success was largely due to the information I gleaned from reading through this book!

I bought Daril Gibson's book kindle edition which was the best thing I did - it's easily searchable on PC and on my Kindle. Here's how my preparation went and I hope this helps some of you who're looking to take their exam soon. BTW, I passed my exam this week , although not with flying colors, but I PASSED! 1. about 40 days of studying - on average 2-3 hours daily, but about 5-6 hours during last week before test. 2. Used professor messer videos to understand the concepts plus occasionally other few videos on youtube. For example Kerberos, TACACS, 802.1x etc. topics 3. Practice tests from Daril's book are somewhat easy in my opinion - the actual test questions are a lot harder. 4. Also used Mike Chapple's practice test questions , those I found some what harder than Daril's book 5. Jason Dion's short videos on concepts were also helpful. 6. Took my own notes and used them in the last 48 hours heavily. Now about the actual exam: 1. Got 5 performance based question , those were super hard so I skipped them after wasting about 10 mins of my time, completed only 1-2 in the beginning. Use the strategies given by Daril on his blog site. 2. Some multiple choice questions are too lengthy in my opinion and you need time to read and comprehend and then pick the best answer. They are not straightforward , some of them were super tricky , you have to think hard so 1 min for a question sometimes is not good enough. 3. I wish i had little extra time may be another 5 mins so I could complete and review all questions (remember the PBQs will consume your time, I wish I had skipped them entirely in the beginning to save time ) 4. Had to weed out a lot of unrelated choices given in the answers - your fast reading and comprehension skills will come handy here. All in all, this book is a great foundation for your study experience but you must use other resources to take and pass this exam. It's not an easy one! good luck!

I used this book as my only resource to study for the 501 Sec+ exam. I previously used the 401 edition as my only resource to pass the exam 3 years ago. [I do have experience + previous training, so YMMV]. I took it for granted at the time, but (having used a few other cert guides since then) I wanted to say that I really appreciate how this book: -Is well written. Concepts are explained clearly, and the chapters are formatted in such a way that they are easy to read and easy to skim/review. -Covers the all the official objectives, and even reference specifically which objectives are covered in which chapter. -Includes two practice tests, as well as 15-question quizzes at the end of every chapter. -Is a great value, at only ten bucks for the Kindle edition! In short, everything a cert guide should be.

I purchased this book a couple months ago, and used it as my primary study guide for the Security+ SY0-501 exam. I recently took the exam and passed it, here's a few notes on how this book helped me. Pros: - This book reads much more like a reference as opposed to a book teaching you a single topic (which it isn't because the exam covers a wide variety). At first that threw me off, but I really ended up enjoying it. - It has a pre-book assessment as well as a post assessment, which were really good to gauge how much I'd learned/what still needed help before taking my exam. - Each chapter has a 15 question "chapter assessment" definitely do these. - Topics are covered in a good amount of depth, and clearly; I didn't find myself struggling to understand topics after he explained them - The author offers a code to get a 10% discount on the cost of exam, definitely take advantage of it. - Companion site offers labs (mostly simple, but I would say sufficient) for most chapters Cons: - It reads like a reference book, which is great to look back on, but for folks who may be like me it can feel odd. - Not a knock on the author at all, but as others mentioned his questions are very well written and the correct answer can usually be found with decent understanding and a little context. The actual exam however had many very vague questions I was like, "huh?" Again not a knock on him, but definitely incorporate more practice questions to help prepare you. - Additional study materials/flash cards/etc... available but for an additional purchase from the authors companion site. That being said I can personally say that if I was completely new to InfoSec, or IT in general, I would not have passed this exam. These certifications aren't cheap and I honestly think the CompTIA recommended path of A+ -> Network+ -> Security+ is a great fit, unless you have the IT knowledge already.

I believe this book is a great tool to prepare Comptia Security+ 501. I spent two months studying and passed it for the first time. It was my first Comptia exam ever. I also used CertMike Security+ practice exam book but that book material deviates from the exam scope kinda a lot. This book is very well-organized and has great explanation. This book does not have any simulation-styled problems but I got most of multi-choice questions correct so I passed it with the score 796 of 900. The pass score is 750 as you know. It is up to you but I think one does not necessarily need to prepare simulation problems to pass it since the number of simulation questions were at most about five. Assuming that the score calculation is based on a simple arithmetic, 900 points is made of 79 questions. I got 796 so roughly 69 questions correct. One question is about 11.4 points. If you lose about 14 questions, then you cannot pass it. Again, it was assumed that the calculation was a simple arithmetic. Good luck. The journey was not easy for me but it was really worth studying it.

This book was more than enough to pass SY0-501 on the first attempt. I have no A+, no Network+ and I have an IT job, but it's mostly desktop support with a little bit of infosec. I read the book cover to cover and completed the pre-assessment at the beginning (scored horribly the first time, like 60%) and did all the chapter quizzes and then when I came out the other end of the book I received a 92% on the post-assessment because Darril does such an amazing job organizing information and defining concepts. I did the pre-assessment, chapter quizzes and post-assessment over again until I was receiving >90% on all of them and I definitively understood why all right answers were right and all wrong answers were wrong. I also took all the exam questions on examcompass.com and that was a great resource for solidifying information. It's important to note that you won't see questions like the ones in the book on the exam (they'll word questions differently and try to throw you off there's also performance-based questions), so it's very important that you not simply complete the chapter quizzes, but rather read the entire book by highlighting or taking notes or both and become familiar with these concepts.

I have an application development background … not a network engineering/admin background. I read the book twice. On the 2nd pass I took the end of chapter quizzes. I also bought the end of chapter reviews/”remember this” audios. On the weekend before the exam I reviewed my highlights and notes for each chapter while I listened to the audios. This really helped cement things and get me ramped up for the brain dump of the test. I had particular trouble piecing together chapter 3 networking concepts. That chapter kind of just cruises through that topic and you have to read it slowly and thoroughly along with chapter 4 on securing the network if you don’t have a networking background. About the book: The book is good. Sometimes I had to mentally edit and summarize the author’s explanations for myself. He tends to launch into examples and there is sometimes a lot of wordiness and you get lost as to the tie in to the subject at hand … in my opinion. But, all good content if you read it like a novel the first time you go through it and just highlight the first time. The second time you should verify that your highlights make a summarized story for you to just read during your final (third) jam session. I just took the test a couple of days ago and passed on the first try! GOD deserves all the credit and all the glory. This test is hard now. There is no way to skim through the material and pass it. There is way too much content for you to remember. You have to just drill on it until it becomes somewhat natural information to you. About the test: 1. There are performance based questions now. I had about 4-5 of those as the first questions on the exam. One showed you an office layout and had you drag/drop physical access controls to each laptop server in the different rooms (like cable locks, CCTV, biometric scanners, cipher locks, etc.). Another performance question showed you a log and asked you to identify the entry where the attack started. I didn’t even know what the log was but it looked like a log of hashes and so I identified where the hashes duplicated (some kind of replay/spoof attack) and got it correct. Find a different book for performance based questions. This one lacks the ferocity needed to answer those heavily weighted questions. 2. I had no questions on ports such that they asked me which service or protocol was running on which port. I came in prepared to answer just the most popular ports such as 20, 21,22,23,25, 88, 983, 443, 80. However, there were only 2 questions that included ports, services, protocols in the answers and you had to choose the correct bundle. I had heard they are moving away from port questions on the exam. 3. Other areas: VLANS, containerization, SCADA, attack types, wireless APs, mobile devices, vulnerability scanning, frameworks, etc. There were a lot of “Given the following scenario, which …”. Good Luck!

For those with little to no experience. Recommended for the beginner. The book is well written and the topics well covered from a high to medium level. Is best used in conjunction with the referenced material within along with the online labs. The text provides much insight and great analogies for the beginner. Those with experience may find much of the text covers too much of what you already know. That said, it's helpful regardless as long as you skim the text for discovery of topics that you are weak on -but you just as well could skip this book, follow the provided outline for the course and research topics on your own. Still, this book is moderately useful even for serious experts. Just don't expect a technical reference. For reference, I had 15 years of experience prior to taking my exam, only skimmed this book for topics I was weak on, studied for one week, and then passed on my first try. I do credit the book with helping me pass.