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CompTIA Security+ Certification

Table of Contents

Note: This exam has been discontinued and replaced by SY0-701, but the content can still be helpful.

Study materials 📚✏️

To prepare for the CompTIA Security+ certification, I used the following study materials:

Books:

  • CompTIA Security+ SY0-601 Cert Guide” by Omar Santos, Ron Taylor, Joseph Mlodzianowski
  • CompTIA Security+ SYO-601 Exam Cram” by Marty M Weiss

Online Courses:

Websites:

ChatGPT4o (paid) usage for study 🤖

  • Clarification of Concepts: When I came across new concepts, I asked ChatGPT to break them down into simpler bits or give me a full explanation, starting from the basics.

  • Practice Questions: I was able to generate practice questions and scenarios to test my understanding of the exam topics. (You can upload your complete study guide and have ChatGPT ask you questions)

  • Review and Summarization: ChatGPT can also summarize sections of the study materials, making it easier to review key points. (However, it requires some manual intervention to ensure everything is correct, and you have to bear in mind the context window, if you request too much, ChatGPT will stop replying.)

Example prompt:

I'm currently studying for the CompTIA Security+ (SY0-X01) certification and need help understanding some key concepts. 
Could you please provide detailed explanations and real-life examples for the following topic?

Buying the Cert Voucher and study materials 💸

Study materials

  • Humble Bundle: Humble Bundle. Quite often, Humble Bundle offers very interesting cybersecurity bundles that run for about 15 days. The average price is approximately 20 to 30€

    The one I bought for the cert: Humble bundle

Cert voucher

  • Dion Training Website: Dion Training
  • CompTIA Official Website: CompTIA Marketplace, I have seen some users on Reddit reporting that the code ‘GoogleSecurity2024’ grants a 30% discount on the total amount of the certification.

Note: If you choose Dion Training, it will include a study guide for your exam.

My opinion 💭

Taking the certification has been a great experience. I revisited topics I hadn’t looked at in quite some time, and I also got to learn new stuff I never studied before.

The content is quite good, but making the certification cheaper would definitely help more people get certified (it’s a bit pricey compared to MS or AWS certifications).