On 10/11/2022 I decided to take the CySA+ beta exam because CompTIA was offering it for $50 (š„ smoking deal!). At the time I hadnāt taken any certification exams before and had only studied for (but never took) the Security+. I scheduled my exam attempt on 11/22/2022 so I only had a little over a month to study for it. Figuring it was only $50 if I failed, I started studying.
For the first week or two I watched ALL of Mike Chappleās videos surrounding the exam and its topics on LinkedIn Learning. There are a ton of great tips within those videos on strategies involving the exam as well; like skipping the scenario questions and leaving them until youāre done with the multiple-choice questions. Once I completed the videos, I hammered out some of the practice tests.
The practice tests themselves are great (if from an official source like Sybex) because if you get a question wrong it explains WHY the correct answer is correct. This helps build your knowledge base and gives you the reasoning behind the answer. This is huge because some of the questions on the exam will have several answers that could technically be correct under certain conditions, but they want you to choose the best answer. I went through their practice questions several times and plugged some of them into a Google dork (ā[insert question] site:quizlet.comā) for public Quizlet flashcards others had made to study them from my phone or computer. With the exam date quickly approaching I continued hitting those questions over and over, and then searched Quizlet for other sets of flashcards people had made that were different from the bookās questions and practiced those as well.
11/22/2022 came quickly and I went to the exam center. I used the entire time limit for all of my questions and only finished with 10 minutes to spare. Since it was a beta exam, they donāt give you the results right away and you wonāt be assigned a certain score. On 5/10/2023 I received the email that I passed the exam!
Completing this exam was great for solidifying a lot of my knowledge and for completing the requirements to hold certain jobs (within the government and outside of it). At the time of taking it I already held a Bachelor's and Master's degree in the field of cybersecurity and had already taken a Security+ class, so there was some prior knowledge involved in the process as well.