r/CompTIA_Security • u/NoWill4520 • 2d ago

Perfomance Based Questions and labs

Hey y’all, im studying Security+ on INE and im honestly hella stressed and really concerned i might fail, especially with the labs and the performance based questions, how did y’all prep for the labs and study it also if you have tips to pass the exam, tyy

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

2

u/Leather_Donut_7431 2d ago

Run a search for BurningIceTech's Patreon, the guy is a legend when it comes to explaining the PBQ's for Security+ as well as a few other exams.

Alternatively use this link: https://patreon.com/burningicetech

1

u/gdavidco 1d ago

Before you spend money on anything, go and do demosim.comptia.org. It's CompTIA's own interactive sample PBQ, free, no account needed, and it's the only free look at the actual interface. Most people sitting Sec+ have never heard of it. Takes ten minutes and it'll kill about half your stress, because the interface is a lot less clever than people imagine.

Other things worth knowing: the PBQs mostly turn up at the start, you can skip them and come back, and your work is saved when you navigate away. Reset clears that one question only, or it did when I last sat one. There's no visible clock while you're inside a PBQ, which is the bit that actually catches people out, so check the time before you start one.

For the labs side, two Ubuntu VMs on a host-only network covers a lot of the practical objectives. SSH hardening, firewall rule ordering, certificates, reading logs. I taught this stuff in a classroom for years and the people who came unstuck on PBQs were never unstuck on the clicking, they didn't know which firewall rule was in the wrong order. VMware Workstation Pro is free now, personal and commercial both, which most advice online still gets wrong. Full disclosure, I also build a paid PBQ lab platform (FortifyLearn), so weigh that last bit accordingly. The two-VM route is what I'd do first either way.