How I passed Sec+ 601

I studied for a little over 2 months straight - from 9/28/21 to 12/3/21.

Finally passed the exam on 12/3/21. I literally studied up until I walked inside the testing center. I have 3 college degrees but I’ve never studied so hard in my life until I studied for the Sec+ SYO-601. I did not have any formal tech experience aside from web design and volunteering to do tech stuff for my husband’s company.

I utilized these tools and I highly recommend them if you’re ever considering them:

• Bought Jason Dion’s Udemy course on Sec+. He is a great instructor that explains things so well. He helped me understand the overall concept and fundamentals of what to know for the Sec+ exam. I also recommend buying his practice exam course.
  

• Professor Messer Sec+ 601 training course. 100% free to watch the videos. It helped that I watched Jason Dion’s course first to give me the basic understanding because I feel that Professor Messer might be a little advanced if you are coming into Sec+ without experience and without obtaining the A+ or Network+ first. Professor Messer filled in gaps I had from Dion’s training and stuck to the objectives and went in order.

• Professor Messer Sec+ 601 study groups on YouTube. I liked this a lot better because it was interactive and he explains why the answer is right, and why the other answers were wrong.

• CompTIA’s own Security+ Study Guide (book). It was expensive since I bought the entire exam prep bundle from CompTIA for $699 which included:

- Voucher.

- Free-Retake.

- CertMaster Practice Quizzes and Exam.

- Study Guide

Many, many, many practice tests from:

- ExamCompass

- CompTIA Cert Master Practice.

- Professor Messer take 10 challenge.

- Processor Messer Practice Exams.

- Jason Dion’s Practice Exams.

- ITproTV practice exam simulator.

• Jason Dion’s “Passing Certification Exams with Strategic Test Taking” Udemy Course. I highly recommend this if you’re terrible at taking exams or need tips on how to study more effectively, take better notes, etc.

My very own tips when taking the exam:

• Take the exam at an actual testing center. There are many horror stories I’ve read about people having technical issues taking the exam at home and the proctors always giving out some warning signs that you aren’t supposed to do something (like looking up, mouth moving if you read the question in your head but your mouth is moving, standing up for a quick second to stretch, etc…).

• Get to the testing center 30 minutes early but sit in your car and review your material. You aren’t allowed to bring study material inside of the center.

• Use a cheat sheet. The testing center gives you a white dry-erase “board”.

• Before the exam starts, there are some terms and conditions you have to agree to and they give you 30 minutes to mark them before the exam. Use this time to write on your cheat sheet some brain dump info like Port Numbers, The OSI Model, Acronyms you sometimes forget, etc…

• Skip PBQ (performance-based questions). In my exam, they were the first 4 questions. I went straight to multiple-choice and if there was a question I did not know the answer to, I flagged and skipped it. I had 82 questions and only an hour and a half to take this test. It’s me against the clock, so I wasted no time with the questions I wasn’t sure about and went ahead and answered the questions I knew right away. Don’t feel discouraged! I skipped and flagged so many questions, like 5 or 6 in a row.

• When I finally got to question 82 I had about 30 minutes to look over all the questions I skipped, except for the PBQ’s.

• I left 3 multiple choice questions unanswered because I could not for the life of me figure it out. I completely skipped the PBQ’s and never looked at them so I have no idea what they looked like or what they asked about.

• I felt like I failed the exam. When I had to fill out the 12 demographic questions at the end, in the back of my head I was preparing myself to be mentally ready to re-take this exam again.

• And then I saw that I passed! I started to tear up because all the hard work I put into his finally paid off.

In summary:

1. Use a cheat sheet for brain dumps.

2. Skip PBQ’s.

3. If you don’t know the answer, skip it right away. Do not waste any time.