Reddit reviews CompTIA Security+ SY0-301 Exam Cram (3rd Edition)

I would highly suggest getting an exam prep book such as this or this

Pay attention to concepts, not just memorization but ask yourself in what situations would these concepts apply. For example...when they discuss Business Continuity, understand why one plan would be better used in certain situations than another.

Pay attention to ports and protocols, incident response techniques, attack types. Don't get caught up in the nitty gritty, but have a baseline understanding of the differences between certain items in the same category (phishing techniques, malicious codes, different attack/defense types) and why someone might use one item vs another.

Some of it will be straight memorization, but a lot more of it will be concepts. Concepts Concepts Concepts!

Good luck, I felt completely underpreped when I took my test, a lot of my test prep kicked my ass. Even as I was taking the test there were times when I sat back, stared at my screen and wondered what the hell I was doing with my life. Ended up with a score in the high 800's...so this test is beatable...just make sure you put in the book time beforehand.

Edit: Also, look around here and on some other forums, the info on how to do well is out there, just go find it!

I took Security+ a long time ago, and it was pretty tough then, but you should be fine with some studying. I highly recommend this one:

http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-SY0-301-Exam-Edition/dp/0789748290

The first edition was pretty solid, at any rate. Good luck!

I mostly used TestOut-Labsim for a majority of it and even then mostly the practice tests. I have a very hard time paying attention when it comes to instructional videos and I have an easier time with studying texts. The text I read through was Exam Cram - CompTIA Security+ by KirkHausman (http://smile.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-SY0-301-Authorized-Edition/dp/0789748290/). I used Microsoft OneNote for taking notes (this is my favorite application ever) and Cram.com for flash cards on my phone. I memorized 25 different protocols and their corresponding ports using the cards. About half (maybe more) I had already memorized for Net+, but those are just further concrete in my mind.

The problem with Security+ is there is a lot of studying and memorizing facts, where Net+ and A+ has a lot of "hands on" situations, like configuring devices. I think this is because a lot of the security principles have been around long before computers. Cryptography has been found in Egypt dating back to like 1900 BC!

It looks like the site cram.com (which isn't a porn site, oddly enough) lets you create your own flashcards. I've used the ExamCram books and there are others that have electronic flash cards or other fun things. If you sail any high seas, you can find them there too I'm sure.

If you're already thinking about looking for other jobs and are looking to get your Bachelor's, look at local colleges. A lot of places will offer tuition reimbursement or will cover your courses completely, which is fantastic if you can find it. Smaller shops also let you get your hands into a lot of different tools that you might not otherwise get to play with, which gives you experience and lets you refine what your career goals are.

For networking, I'm terrible at that too. I've found local user groups in my area (or within a couple hours from my city) that I go to frequently. There's a quarterly tech ed group, a quarterly System Center group, a powershell group, and even a generic sysadmin group. I had no idea they were out there until I started looking. Most of the time the "small talk" is about what's on our plates at work, how we're having trouble filling some position, how we got killed by xyz vulnerability/some Microsoft patch boned us, or how our kids are keeping us up and we're so tired. Each of the groups has a LinkedIn page too, but most of the meat is in the face-to-face interactions.

People inherently like to talk about themselves--if you strike up a conversation with someone and say "I overheard you guys talking about the ShellShock vulnerability, here's how we handled it." they'll just say "Oh, cool." and turn away. But if you were to say "I wasn't listening in, but I overheard you guys talking about Shellshock... It killed us...I mean, I should probably still be at work right now. How'd you guys handle it?" and then they'll launch into Puppet or Zabbix or Nagios or some tech that they use and you can ask them about that, too. It sounds exhausting, because it kind of is, but the connections actually come in really useful.

If you're getting 94% on your practice exam you're probably ready to go. Get a few more practice exams (you can buy books of practice exams on Amazon pretty cheaply) if you continue to get mid 90s you should be good to go.

Make sure you have your standard ports memorized. They came up a lot for me.

To pass my Security+ I watched the CBT Nuggets and read
this and [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Security-Certification-Official-published-McGraw-Hill/dp/B00E6TOT2Q/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394728491&sr=1-8&keywords=security%2B+clarke) but I really had to learn a lot, I don't do much security work in my day to day. In the end I was way overprepared. I think I only missed one question.