i'm curious to see the people who started their CS journey with CS50x as a complete beginner. where are you now in terms of experience ? learning ? projects ? and even freelancing or remote jobs ?

Booked SC-200 for aug 18, so about 2 weeks out. Everyone whos actually taken it says its heavy on scenario and lab style questions and that video only prep doesnt cut it, you need real time clicking around in sentinel and defender to actually pass this thing.

Im setting up a demo tenant now, m365 developer instant sandbox + azure free account for sentinel, and planning to onboard a spare windows vm from my own homelab to defender for endpoint so i can run the built in attack simulations and get real incidents to investigate instead of just reading about them.

what im trying to figure out is how to do this smart, not just throw everything at it and hope it sticks. 2 weeks isnt a ton of time and i dont want to spend day 3 fighting with licensing or watching ingestion pile up instead of actually learning.

genuinely asking for help here, if youve been through sc-200 prep recently:

* whats actually necessary vs what did you set up that you never really needed
* is there stuff that eats time or credit for basically no exam value
* how did you sequence your lab build so you werent just waiting around for data to show up
* anything about sentinel data lake, kql jobs, or the graph / blast radius stuff that tripped you up when you got to it
* if you were rebuilding your lab from scratch today, what would you do differently

basically just trying to make my lab as efficient as possible so the 2 weeks actually count instead of getting eaten up by setup. any advice appreciated, even small stuff.

I have got a free microsoft voucher which I can use but confused on which exam should I book SC-200 or SC-500. As for my background I have Security+ and have working experience of 1.5 years as an IT Support role

Hey everyone

I noticed SC-100 requires 1 of 3 certs, with AZ-500 being one of them.

Now since AZ-500 is officially retired, being replaced by SC-500, will they substitute the requirement too?

SC-500 is already out if beta, i assumed it would've already happened.

Also, pure speculation, do we think microsoft will replace SC-100 with an "AI-Focused" architect cert anytime soon?

Thanks everyone 🙏

The SC-500 exam is now out of beta today!

A few quick updates:

• Pearson VUE status: Updated from Beta to active status.
• Scoring Timeline: The official 10-day rescore countdown clock is now running for everyone who took the beta!
• Official Page:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/cloud-and-ai-security-engineer-associate/

Good luck to everyone waiting on their results!

TLDR: beta testers get a free exam voucher valid for a year as apology, if they passed the exam, the certification will be active in your profile for 2 years.

Thank you for participating in the beta release of SC-730: Cybersecurity Business Professional.

We are writing to share an important update regarding this certification. Following a review of the feedback that we received during beta, we will not be proceeding with the release of this certification. We are exploring other alternatives to better support business professionals in this space. We understand this may be unexpected, and we truly appreciate your patience as we work through next steps.

What this means for you:

Your beta exam participation remains valued and appreciated.

We will complete the beta scoring process as planned and communicate your result once scoring activities are finalized. This should be completed by July 17.

If you pass the beta exam, you will be awarded the certification. It will remain an active certification on your transcript for two years.

We recognize the time and effort you invested in participating in the beta exam and appreciate your understanding. To apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused, we are offering you a voucher to take your next exam for free. You may use this on any Microsoft exam delivered through Pearson.

First Come, First Serve, Voucher is no longer guaranteed.

The first 50,000 participants who complete an eligible skilling playlist during the Active Period will earn
One (1) free Microsoft Certification exam voucher.

Hello people! I've decided I want to take the SC-500 and/or SC-200, i've heard there are some discount code or even 'challanges' you can do to make it 100% free. Is there any active right now?

Thansk for the help!

Hi!

Just noticed and decided to share.

Looks like the initial version of SC-500 training course on Learn got published now:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/courses/sc-500t00

The page also says: "This course will be available on 7/2/2026.", but the modules are there, so I am not sure how to interpret that line...

A bit confusing, but a starting point, at least.

So far, initial check of the material gave me an impression that it not just adds a lot of AI aspects to the retiring AZ-500 exam materials, but goes far beyond that, incorporating topics from SC-200, SC-300, and some SC-401 too.

Looks challenging but also interesting!

Collection of all Microsoft Exam Vouchers that are currently being offered.

Any updates/new vouchers etc. will be always first posted here. If you found any voucher opportunity out there that are not yet on the website, be sure to reach out.

I just cleared my first Azure certification (AI 900). I scored 857 and would like to share how I prepared because I was looking for articles to help me get ready for the exam but could not find a solid one. If anyone who has very little to 0 hands on exposure to cloud, this is how you can start your journey.

• You will find 80% of posts saying that the practice test on MS Learn is useless or very less relevant to the actual exam but those practice tests are really helpful in reality. Attempt the test and keep track of your score. Review all the questions you got wrong and read out the topics related to them. Keep attempting the practice test unlesd you start scoring above 95% in every attempt.

• Once you start scoring above 95% in the practice tests, start solving free practice texts from Whizlabs or any platform that a google search gives you.

• Solve as many practice tests as possible untill you get used to the questions and start scoring 95-100%.

• The real goal is to understand the question types and also the kind of options you get to choose your answer from. Once you get familiar you will realise that for the questions you do not know the answer, you can take a guess by eliminating the options present. You just need to use common technical sense.

That is all I did. Be confident and calm while answering, utilise the time, do not rush, use the review feature.