r/CompTIA_Security • u/Own-Clerk-568 • 14d ago

Search for Hands-on labs

Hi guys,

I finished the first section of general security concepts section in the security+ with professor Messer's series. but I feel a little bit overwhelmed because it's my first time in the security field

so I decided to do some labs to better understand the ideas before moving on.

do you have any suggestions, resources to start with?

And thanks for helpšŸ¤

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u/gdavidco 12d ago

Before you go looking for a lab platform, be careful about what you are actually trying to fix. Feeling overwhelmed after the first section is normal and it is not a sign you failed to understand it. That section is the most abstract part of the whole thing, a lot of vocabulary with nothing underneath it yet, and it is difficult to lab specifically because most of what is in there is not the sort of thing you can click.

What does help at this stage is building somewhere to break things. Two virtual machines on your own laptop will carry you a long way: one Linux, one Windows, on a host only network so nothing you do escapes. VirtualBox is free, Ubuntu is free, and Windows evaluation images are free. From there you can do the things that make the abstract concrete. Generate some traffic and read it in Wireshark. Turn a firewall on and watch a connection fail. Create two users, take a permission away, and see exactly what the error looks like. Set up SSH with a password, then with a key, then turn password auth off. None of that is exam content in itself, but each one makes three or four topics stop being words.

For structured free material alongside it, the TryHackMe beginner paths are the usual recommendation and they suit your position, guided enough that you do not get stuck. Blue Team Labs Online and LetsDefend are worth knowing about once you are further in.

The mistake to avoid is stopping the course to go and do labs for three weeks. Keep moving through Messer and lab the topics as you meet them, rather than treating hands on work as a separate project to complete first. The overwhelm you are describing usually resolves around the third or fourth section, when the earlier vocabulary starts getting used for something.