2019-12-09 12:53:00
Another day taken off from work for fun stuff! This time around I went in for yet another CompTIA beta exam, the new CS1-002 CySA+. Like before I sat the exam at my favorite testing center: IT Vitae in Amersfoort. The old Onze Lieve Vrouwe monastery and green surroundings make for a relaxing atmosphere! What was new this time, is that I sat the exam in tandem with my colleague D. She's great company, darn clever and she was looking to get back into the certification-game.
First up, let me point you at a great review of the CS1-002 beta exam, by u/blackvapt on Reddit. And here's the official thread on Reddit, inviting people to take part in the beta.
I will echo everything /u/blackvapt said. The new CySA+ exam is in fact good! The questions are in-depth and technical, without overly focusing on commandline options and flags. In that regard it matches my experience with the PenTest+ exam in 2018: the exam tests for insight and experience in the field of incident response. It's not something you can simply cram books for, you'll need to have experienced many of the situations discussed on the test. The thing is: it's nigh impossible to learn every log format and every OS out there, but if you can intuit the meaning of logs and commands based on your experience, you'll go a long way!
The PBQs (performance based questions) were great! I enjoyed most of them and thought them to be actually fun and a nice multi-layered puzzle. So much better than my experience with the Linux+ exam which only managed to frustrate me with its strict and limited PBQs.
Preparation-wise I'll admit that I took it easy. I was relying mostly on A) my experience from the past 5-10 years, B) the Jason Dion practice exams for CS1-001 on Udemy and C) the Chapple & Seidl book from Sybase. I spent about twenty hours reviewing and researching, over a month's time.
I didn't spend more than $25 on the preparations, as the practice exams were on discount down to $10 and I got the C&S book through Humble Bundle in a large stack of awesome Sybex books. One note about Humble Bundle: I cannot recommend the Packt books or bundles! Skip those. But snag anything you can get from Sybex, NoStarch or O'Reilly!
Regarding the Dion practice tests: I was not passing any of these while preparing as I mentioned earlier this week. It was odd because I felt good on most of the answers I gave to Jason's questions, but I kept missing the passing grade by a fair margin. During the beta exam I felt great about ~85% of the questions, so it's really a crap-shoot on whether I passed the beta or not. :)
If I didn't pass, I wouldn't mind at all! This was a great exam, with solid challenging questions. If I don't make it, I will definitely take the exam again (at full price), now know what to expect.
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