Hello everyone. I am back after completing my master’s capstone paper. I will have a post up about the process after it is concluded and may have the paper available for download. I need to make some edits first but that should be available after the beginning of the year.

This post is about my process studying for the Security+ exam. I want to go over how I heard about it, what I have done so far, and where I am in the process. To begin, I heard about the Sec+ exam from a professor at the beginning of 2022. It was portrayed as an excellent certification to show baseline competence in cybersecurity and I believe that has remained true from what I have seen. I know that some people would recommend other certs, such as the A+ or Network+ as well as other non-CompTIA certs, but I started down this route and want to finish. For studying, I stumbled onto a video series by Mike Chapple on LinkedIn Learning. I personally learn better by hearing the content so that was invaluable to me. Anyone who prefers to hear content over read it, I would highly recommend his series of 10 videos. I also have the book by Ian Neil that I have read almost all of. Listening to the videos first helped me to have a better grasp of the book but I think it comes down to personal preference.

My original aim was to complete the exam before August so that I could begin looking for and applying to jobs this fall. However, between my capstone project and other obligations that did not happen. I have still completed a large amount of my studying but need to refresh before I aim to take the exam this winter. To do so, I took one of the practice exams in the Neil book (it was ugly don’t ask too much about it), reviewed practice questions online, and am working to identify areas of particular weakness right now. Hopefully I will have this completed by about February. I will make sure to make a post on here once that has happened!

For now, I hope anyone reading this has a happy Thanksgiving and I will catch you soon. Expect the next post to either be on my capstone project or a run-through of some training. I want to get back into Burpsuite which I haven’t touched for a while.