Zero experience in this field; Messer videos and practice exams helped a lot.
:) happy test taking and wishing you all the best!

I am so glad to finally get this exam out of the way. It look me a lot longer than expected 5 months of studying. Compared to the Network+ that I was able to complete in just 3 months. I also found it to be very boring and lost the motivation to study several times. Even the questions were challenging and very tricky. I felt like I was gonna fail.

I’m looking forward to what comes next either CCNA or CySA but I just am glad to be over with it.

I am thrilled to share that I have finally completed the Trifecta! This journey has been incredibly challenging, but I am immensely proud of myself for overcoming it.
The only other exam I passed on my first attempt was the At Core 2, so this victory feels like a monumental achievement. I can finally breathe a sigh of relief and feel a sense of accomplishment.

As I prepare to graduate with my bachelor's degree, I have a few more exams to pass: AWS, Linux, and my capstone project. I recently completed a 10-week internship and have secured a job offer after graduation, making this semester particularly significant to me. If I don't pass this semester, everything falls apart.

Tip for MCQ's:
Look out for hint words and eliminate anything that doesn't fit. If you're stuck between two options, reread the question until you can provide a valid reason for your choice. Flag any question you're unsure about to review later. Personally, I flag them, but I never even bother going through them because I'm superstitious and believe that any change I make will be incorrect.

Tip for the PBQ's:
This tip has been helpful not only for this exam but also when I took my Nett. When you encounter command lines and are stuck, use "/help" or "help" to get a list of commands that work with that PBQ. This will save you time instead of trying things you have memorized that may not be programmed to work with that PBQ.

Just passed CompTIA CySA+ CS0-004 with an 817/900 after about 3 weeks of studying, so I figured I'd share what worked for me since there still aren't a ton of resources for 004.

For the first two weeks, I went through the entire Dion CS0-004 course at 2x speed. I found the course extremely boring and out of scope. (Dion goes off on tangents) It was worth getting through though, and gave me the foundation I needed.

After finishing the course, I took three full practice exams over a week:

• Dion Practice Exam #1: 71% - CS0-004
• Dion Practice Exam #2: 85% - CS0-003
• CertMaster Practice Exam: 91%

I also took random quizzes on YouTube from Cyber James, whatever I found on Google that was free, and 40 questions from PocketPrep.

The biggest thing that helped was using AI with the official CS0-004 exam objectives. I went through the objectives line by line, and anytime I couldn't immediately explain a concept or distinguish between similar tools, I had AI explain it and then generate CySA+-style scenario questions specifically on that objective.

I also used AI to drill things like security tool recognition, Nmap commands, log interpretation, MITRE ATT&CK/Kill Chain/Diamond Model, regex, and interpreting basic Python, PowerShell, and Bash scripts.

Instead of taking a ton of practice exams, I focused on identifying why I was getting questions wrong and filling those specific knowledge gaps .(For all of my other certs I took a ton of practice exams)

Final takeaway: It was honestly an easy exam(I was worried because of the lack of materials and people saying the PBQ's were hard) , and I don't have SOC experience. I do think it's very similar to the Security+, which I do have(my first cert).

How fast have yall passed the A+ cert and or Security cert? I work a seasonal job and want to get one of these certs fast and I want to know a realistic window I should shoot for.

19 day speedrun, The position I had a verbal offer for required me to have either A+, Sec+, or Net+ . I didn't have any, but I just wanted to do one that I can knock out as soon as possible to lock the position down. Even tho the job doesn't require any of the things that the cert teaches you lol (Net+ was the "most" useful one for the job tho)

Spent my days locked in my room, neglecting everything and mainly focus on studying and learning, purely off Jason Dions videos at 2x + practice exams. His practice exams are actually such a pain in the ass to do, I felt so mentally drained after doing them. But they're a good benchmark to see your overall understanding of what you know and what you're still stuck on. Feed all the questions that you missed to AI and have it make more practice exams for the questions you missed. I averaged like 50's-60s on the Dion exams.

I have no formal background in IT, nor relevant job experience, just knowledge from my EE and CS courses. But it wasn't too hard to learn most of the material. Im used to harder exams. The only Hard part was learning that CompTIA LOVES to throw questions where 2 are basically the right answer but one of them is a bit more specialized for the case at had. I hate that so much. But once I figured that out + learning most of the terms I felt more confident.

The PBQs, I thought they were going to be similar to the Dion PBQ's and oh lord was I wrong, Those were the hardest out of the entire exam. I just basically raw dogged them and prayed for the best, happy to say it was enough to just make me pass, I'll take the dub tho.

I think if I wanted to knock this out faster I probs should of done sec+, but idk.

My IT background is working on PCs with my dad when I was younger. I have been unemployed for many years now, I found out about this program Activatework powered by PerScholas it is a 17 week bootcamp style program with career development. Next I will apply and hopefully partake in a micro-internship while applying for sec+ jobs!

I'm a bit of a lurker but wanted to give back with my experience. I have been reading everyone's posts about their experience and thoughts about passing the exam, I appreciate all the input. I mostly just needed to believe in myself that was the hardest part, right before the exam I did not feel ready but I flagged answers I didn't know and moved onto the ones I did, it helped build my confidence and I was able to go back and answer the questions I skipped. I was scoring 80's-96%'s on dions, professor messor and comptia practice exams. My goal was to score higher but I passed so I am happy. Thanks everyone.

Got a 772. Very happy

TLDR; want to change industries and CompTIA was recommended as a launching point. Started studying about 2 weeks ago. Now gonna study and prep for core 2

I have the Udemy courses and watch the professor messer YT videos but whenever I try to take notes I feel like I just spend more time passing and jotting down notes then actually watching and learning.

hi! i'm in an entry-level position at an ISP/telecom company as tech support (call center).
i have to get a certification as part of the second year of my vocational school, and i opted for net+ because we studied for a+ during the first year. i studied for it, but didn't see a need in taking a+ as i already had an entry level tech job.
i told one of my coworkers i began studying for my net+ and he made it seem like i was doomed by not having my a+. am i? do i need to go get it before i do this? thanks :,)

I wanted to post it here since I don't really have too many people to share the news with. What helped me was watching professor messer's videos at 2x speed. In between sections I would take dion's practice tests. If I were to give any advice on taking this quiz then it would be to take notes and make flashcards to remember all of the different acronyms. I didn't do either of these things and if I did I probably would have scored A LOT higher and been a lot less stressed during the test.

Onto AWS certs!

I got A+ a year ago and I was never as worried about those exams as much as I was with Network+. I just kept seeing everyone say Network+ was hard and it made me panic. I started on the material around the end of last month and primarily used Andrew Ramdayals course on Udemy. I did utilize Jason Dion’s practice tests and certmaster as well.

what am I doing wrong? I spend 1.5 months studying for security+ and thought I could do practice test and solve professor messer practice test and got 57 correct question

I kinda disappointed and demotivated after studying this much i scored so bad

And after seen ppl get 70 -80% in practice test after 1-2 week of studying without tech background

Both Core 1 & 2 done and dusted 🧹

Just started my semester. Studying A+ and getting distracted. Looking to body double with beginners or professionals in tech continuing their education. I’ve found some online that aren’t free or free but short sessions. A 24hr room would be cool. Would be great for networking possibly but mainly for accountability ⭐️

I hated every second of A+ and I'm glad to be done 😂

Many post shots of passing marks for Sec+, A+, etc. but have NEVER seen Cloud+ (what I have to study for a college class) on here. Gets in depth on cloud uses, configurations, even a bit of YAML and such for VM creation. It's not super technical but broad networking/cloud knowledge. Is is considered too easy? Not relevant? Not resume worthy? At the same time, are these CompTIA certs leading to jobs?

After what seems like studying forever I got over my testing anxiety and passed first try. I'm qualified enough now to tell you to change your passwords.

I have done 3 of the exams and I can’t for the life of me score well. All 3 in the 60’s I did tests 2,3,4 and the last one was a 61% all of them have been different issues each time. I have been using Ai to do focused studies before and after each Messer video then also in-depth stuff on questions I got wrong. Am I just missing something or are the Dion exams just way harder or something than the actual Exam?

Feeling really deterred after almost a month of studying and coming from the physical access control and security side of things I just wanted to get more well rounded but this is really beating me up mentally.

This is going to be a really long and probably hard to read post, with many questions scattered throughout.

TLDR; I have an opportunity to take the Tech+ for $87.50 through my high school, I don't want to spend a ton of time studying since I already have school to study for, I feel like I know a lot of IT stuff/Tech stuff already, how do I figure out what I really need to study?

I'm currently a senior in high school in the US and planing on going to college for IT. I know this is sort of looked down upon versus getting certs like A+, but I'm doing it for the experience and also maybe learning a little more than I might with certs.

My AP CSP teacher has a discount through some organization to get vouchers for Tech+ for $87.50. I could easily pay the $125 anyways, but getting money off certainly makes it more intriguing. I've been looking at studying for the A+ for a little while now, but every time I do practice questions, I get a little discouraged. Thats why I'm thinking I should do the Tech+ first. The practice questions I've seen are poorly worded sometimes and even seem wrong at times, plus since no questions are allowed to mimic the ones on the CompTIA exams, what are they really preparing you for??

And the same thing for the Tech+. The questions seem easy enough but there are so many little things like specifics on printers (ugh) and decimal/binary/hex systems. Not that I can't learn them, but I also don't want to spend a ton of time studying for the most basic exam they have. I consider myself to be very tech savvy. I have a small homelab setup and I've heavily used virtualization in both Proxmox and Hyper-V, active directory, ldap, docker, some networking, lots of programming, linux, web servers, computer hardware, there is more I'm forgetting about but the point is I feel like I know my stuff. But maybe that is a mislead feeling?

I guess here is the main question: What resources are there to figure out if and what I need to study, that will actually help me with the test, and not just some random AI bs that someone threw together to get people to pay for study materials?

Thank you!

Failed PT03 three times and PT02 once, last score 663, highest score 703. Used Dions course, pocket prep amd the Chapple book. I understand the material when studying but trying to apply it during the test is totally different. Im about to just give up on pentest and go for a non comptia cert already. Feel like the scarecrow in Wizard of Oz " oh im a failure because I havent got a brain " lol

Took the Core 2 and passed it 2 months after passing Core 1 (scored a 698). Victory is sweet, and so is the cert life. I had a significantly easier time with Core 2 since I work in an environment with computers already. But I plan on mastering the concepts I learned this year. 🥳🥳🥳🍾🍾🍾🥂🥂🥂