Security+ Practice Tests: Prepare for the SY0-501 Exam with CertMike

Being honest, this book was essential for me passing the security+ (my first try) but it was definitely too difficult at times and it also contradicts other sources out there.A-) My background:I have been working on personal programming projects since 2010 pretty much on/off. I have developed a strong knowledge of cryptography since most of those projects dealt with OpenSSL. I have also set up personal firewalls and redundant servers for these same projects. However as far IT specific experience I have almost none. I have never setup a VPN environment, a DNS server, an email server, a private CA, and definitely never configured switches or any other Cisco related technology. Too bad encryption is only 10% of the exam. I should mention though that English is my second language + I am a known bad test taker. So, I'm easily confused with these types of tests.B-) How it helped me pass:After I finished Darril Gibson's book to include his additional online content and scoring 90% or more in all of the tests like he recommends, I felt pretty confident about taking the test. However a couple of days before taking the exam I had to re-schedule because of this book. I took the first and second tests and scored less than 80% on both. That DESTROYED my confidence. However it did help tremendously with the actual exam.Most of the questions in this book are MORE difficult than the actual test, but I'm not sure if this is necessarily a bad thing. In this area I think Darril's questions are much closer to the actual exam. The only bad thing with Darril's questions is that there are not that many questions compared to the 700+ questions in this book (and his explanations are a little better).C-) Difficult of the questions:Once you get this book try your best not to get frustrated because let me tell you........YOU WILL!! Some questions are just unnecessarily combobulate. For example, a three sentence question. Just brutal!Just deal with it!D-) My biggest gripes:1- Many questions about things that Security+ doesn't test you on (I know because it is not on the objectives). For example, there were many questions about cipher algorithms that Comptia doesn't require you to know, i.e. CFB and OFB. He also talks about technologies different Cloud platforms by name and not function and expects you to know the type of cloud service (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), like Amazon Lambda and MANY others. This was frustrating because I never heard of those before and they are not require to know about according to Comptia. There are other things too but I forget.My recommendation is to get to know them and just move on. This was particularly frustrating.2- Some of the answers I simply disagreed with. There was a question about the usage of dogs that was really on the gray line and not clear on how the dogs were not a preventing control but instead they were a detective control.He talks about service accounts and says that they should be prioritize when logging because they are privilege accounts. However, Darril says that they are simply user accounts. Which quite honestly I agree. How can a service account be privileged if it is only used for one thing. Most of these accounts are created so they can run a service (like mysql, php, nginx, etc). The funny thing is they both recommend each other's book so they should also check each other's work to iron out those disagreements. Hint!3- No labs for performance based questions. As difficult as I can picture Mike's performance questions he should definitely try to get something like that together.E-) Other resources I usedBLUF, I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. BUY THIS BOOK!I used some of professor messer's videos (not that many honestly) but also used other videos on youtube specifically the ones about Kerberos. I bought courses on udemy but never used them either. There is a guy with a cowboy hat that I can't remember his name right now, he seemed funny in a good way but I just didn't use it. Wasted $20 bucks.Darril Gibson's book is this book's other half. They just need to be sold as a set.READ Gibson's book first plus his online content, and pass all the tests with 90% or better AND then tackle this book.Read the objectives and push yourself to know each individual sub category like the back of your hand.Don't forget to make index cards.F-) I passed the test 787/750 on Oct-24-2019! Good luck to you. I leave you with some pics of my main study material.

A bit of preface. I work currently as a level 2 help desk tech for an enterprise wide company. They offer free certs if requested. I've recently been wanting to move up in my career and managed to get an interview setup for an InfoSec position. They requested Sec+ within 12 months of employment. This interview was in 2 weeks (still haven't done it yet). I set myself up to take the SY0-501 exam with only 1 week of preparation, so I could potentially have it ready for the interview.Fast forward, I passed it at the time of this review. 771/900. I only used 3 resources for studying:1.) Professer messers course notes2.) Google to verify objectives on the exam and gain more insight on particular topics3.) This bookThis book is separated into chapters that correlate to the exams objectives and their sections. I read professer messers notes first, researched info I needed clarification on, and did all questions in the appropriate chapters from this book. I kept track of ones I did wrong and did them again until I got it right and knew why it was the right one.This book comes with two practice exams. I did one the night before and the second one on the morning. This book, while very time consuming, is *incredibly* similar to what you'll see on the exam. It's detailed on why questions are right, and has redundancy of concepts to solidify your understanding.This book should not be used alone of course. I do not recommend brain dumping off it. Study the objectives first, test yourself with this book, review what you did wrong, understand why the right answers are right.For my one week cram session, this book was the difference between passing and failing and I consider it the best practice booklet for SY0-501 period. Recommended over others.

Highly recommended. I did the tests 3 times and passed the Security + Certifications. Many questions are very similar to what you will get on the exam. Doesn't have practical questions, but you can find those online.

The questions have numbers in front of them. The choices are also numbered instead of lettered. The answers, however, have letters. What kind of proofreading is this? I need this book to help me pass the exam, but I'm not impressed so far. Going back and forth between question and answer is also pretty slow and I lose my place.Update: this issue only occurs on the web based Kindle Cloud Reader. My phone based Kindle is fine. I bumped it from 2 stars to 4.Update 6/2/19: I'm almost half way through the book. Assuming the questions are accurate, I'm very pleased with the book thus far. I'm bumping it up to 5 stars. The Kindle version in the Kindle Reader has an issue showing numbers instead of letters in the questions. This is only in a desktop web browser, that I've noticed. It was also very slow navigating from questions to answers. However, I managed to open two copies in 2 web browsers. This works pretty well. It's a lot faster to deal with this way.

I passed the exam first time yesterday. My background is in networking, routing and switching. I used this book to practice for the exam. I like the wordings and the difficulty of the questions which makes you well prepared for the real exam. It has good explanations as well.In addition to this book I used Darril Gibson book as well. In Gibson’s book, each chapter follows compTia exam objectives accordingly.It’s not an easy exam, you need to understand the concepts and practice as many questions as you can. Good luck

Great examples for exam prep

Really poor print quality.Awful job by Amazon.

I bought this book more than a month before. today only started the exam, that too with chapter 6. the 9th question is about blowfish and the answer is about RC4 !!! how can I trust this book then. I will fail for sure if I read it. cannot return too since the return date is already over. feeling so angry

I purchased this book to test my knowledge after taking Mike Chapple's course on LinkedIn Learning. The questions covered all of the material in the course and then some, and helped me identify the gaps in my knowledge.Between the course and this book, I learned enough to pass the certification exam on my first try.

It's good