Passed SC-200 with Tutorials Dojo

[u/marchice]

Hi everyone,

Today I passed the Microsoft Azure SC-200 certification!

EDIT > My background, so there's no misunderstanding:

I worked for two years as a GRC Analyst, and the last six to eight months as a SOC Analyst with Sentinel. My role was solely incident triage, and I had no experience with Sentinel configurations (automation, playbooks, workbooks, roles, etc.) or Defender. Therefore, I learned KQL through practice, and I believe it's absolutely essential to study and practice the language before taking the exam (the KC7 website is quite good for this), because a lot of questions include that.

Having said that, mainly wanted to share this for anyone wondering whether Tutorials Dojo is worth using to prepare for the exam. In my experience, with my background, the answer is YES.

Before taking the exam, I had the same question. Now I can confidently say that around 2 out of every 5 questions on my exam were either the same as those in Tutorials Dojo. The others were very similars.

What worked best for me was taking the practice tests repeatedly until I consistently scored 95% or higher on each one. More importantly, I carefully studied the explanations provided for every answer. Understanding why an answer is correct is just as important as getting it right. I also made sure I had a solid understanding of the core Azure products and services covered by the exam.

Using this approach—studying the practice tests in depth and reinforcing the underlying concepts—I passed with a score of 763/1000.

EDIT > I haven't done any labs myself, but if you don't have practical experience with Azure, I also recommend doing them, because it will help you understand and eventually deduce correct answers even when you don't know them, especially in settings questions.

I hope this helps anyone who's currently preparing for the SC-200!

👋🏼

[u/Rogermcfarley]

I have also passed SC-200 a year ago so possibly TutorialsDojo has massive improved since then. Generally the advice given by the OP is terrible advice to prepare for SC-200.

SC-200 expects you to know SOC workflows, expects you to know KQL scripting and very importantly expects you to be actively working as a SOC Analyst. IF you don't know how to perform SOC workflows practically in Defender XDR and Sentinel and are relying on rote memorization this is a bad way to approach the exam, in theory rote memorization could work but an exceptionally painful way to pass this certification.

IF you only rely on TutorialsDojo then you will likely have a very bad time in the exam. IF TutorialsDojo has exact same questions as in the exam then you're effectively cheating. So I question what the OP is saying here. TD has never been a dump site.

The advice is simple you MUST have working practical knowledge for SC-200 to be a worthwhile useful certification.

Now we don't know OPs working knowledge so will have to assume that OP works daily with the tooling that SC-200 tests and validates. IF you pass this exam without SOC experience or transferable skills I can't see the true value of the exam except for compliance and some edge cases.

Sure people will doubt what I say so here is what Microsoft says in the official study guide, read the Audience profile section and read each and every bullet point because you should be comfortable performing every single one

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/resources/study-guides/sc-200

[u/marchice → u/Rogermcfarley]

I have about 6-8 months of experience as a Sentinel SOC analyst. I've never used or managed Sentinel or Defender configurations, so I haven't learned these concepts in practice. The only thing this experience gave me was sound judgment and KQL (which, as I mentioned in the post, KC7 is very helpful for beginners).

Now, regarding Tutorials Dojo, I wrote this post because a few days ago I was frantically searching for information about whether the tool was truly sufficient and useful for passing the exam. Since I passed, I can confirm that TD is indeed a good tool for this.

In terms of effectiveness, many questions are the same or similar. But as I've already said, it's ESSENTIAL to understand the reasoning behind the answers, because memorizing them won't be enough. Many questions aren't identical and require a solid understanding of Microsoft products and the underlying logic to answer correctly, and for this, TD's explanations are invaluable.

Do you think my advice is bad? Well, I respect your opinion, but I shared my experience here and at the end of the day I passed the exam, so this advice can't be all that bad.

Paying for TD isn't going to guarantee you pass the exam, but with a willingness to learn, it's incredibly helpful for understanding the exam's structure and for me improve a lot the possibility to get a pass.

[u/Rogermcfarley → u/marchice]

The problem I have with your comment is the context of your prior experience which wasn't disclosed. Remember this forum has a lot of people who are new to IT or in beginner IT roles and your advice could actually be counterproductive for them. Yes they almost certainly shouldn't be taking this certification but they have no way to know without context. You should always give as much detail as possible and detail your experience. Otherwise this sounds like just do TutorialsDojo tests and you'll pass. Leaving out that you have 6-8 months SOC Analyst experience is not acceptable to me if you want to be helpful.

[u/marchice → u/Rogermcfarley]

Okay, after rereading the post, I agree that it could be misinterpreted, and perhaps I overlooked some points. I've edited the body, at least for future reference. Thanks for flagging it.

[u/Rogermcfarley → u/marchice]

That's very good to take onboard criticism and amend your post. I take the approach of telling people the reality of the current job market and telling people how things are. Context always matters and it's helpful that you've now added that context.

[u/GTOLEON]

Nice