CompTIA

CompTIA is classified as a vendor-neutral certification along their pages and they are good beginner-level certifications at an accessible price, especially if you are a student.

If you are a student you can search for CompTIA academics and the country you are studying in. It usually asks you to register with your university credentials for a sweet 50% off!

CompTIA Academics UK

As a provider CompTIA has various certifications for different levels, for example, they have the A+ for someone who just started their IT career and is focused more on support, there is Network+ that covers as the name stands networks with a pinch of security and management here and there. Certifications are plenty and achievable with the right amount of studying.

A+

This certification is a starting point in IT, being quite an all-rounded certification covering a large number of topics from cabling and connectors to networks and from hardware to software. In my opinion, this looks like a good starting point for anyone who wants to delve into the field and wants to get started with certification.

The overall certification not only is good for people starting but also gets you familiar with the way CompTIA questions are worded.

Resources

Your core resources should be Professor Messer’s videos on YouTube available at the following location - A+ 220-1101 and A+ 220-1102 and the following book from Amazon.

CompTIA A+ Complete Study Guide: Core 1 Exam 220-1101 and Core 2 Exam 220-1102

Final thoughts

The certification is good if any of the following applies to you:

• You start your IT career
• You want to showcase your development in IT
• You want to get familiar with CompTIA exams
• You have spare $ and you want to get some certs
• Do you like collecting certs? (CompTIA does a thing called stackable certifications)

If any of the above apply to you, then the certification is right for you :).

Network+

This certification is a good baseline for people who want to get started in Networking but also security. It teaches you a lot of the basics such as OSI layers, the basics about network devices, basic routing/switching commands, and some basic Windows commands for troubleshooting network connectivity.

All the above are good things to give you a head start in the field of security.

Resources

Your core resources should be Professor Messer’s videos on YouTube available at the following location - N+ 10-008 and the following book from Amazon.

CompTIA Network+ Study Guide: Exam N10-008 (Comptia Network + Study Guide Authorized Courseware)

Final thoughts

This certification is a good starting point on your journey towards a security-focused and you may wonder why you need networks. Networks, routing, DNS, load balancers, IPs, and packets are the meat and bones of all that are related topics. The more you know from the beginning the better off you are in the long run.

It’s also a good primer in understanding how CompTIA exams are structured and at the same time, quite a bit of the content from one exam repeats in the others so the content you learn in the Network+ exam is going to be present in the Security+ exam.

Security+

The Security + exam is a fundamental exam in the Security world, it teaches you about basic security concepts and tooling. It also covers numerous examples and topics including phishing, email inspection, troubleshooting, and more! It also teaches you some other basic Linux/Cisco iOS commands.

Resources

Your core resources should be Professor Messer’s videos on YouTube available at the following location - S+ SY0-601 and the following book from Amazon.

CompTIA Security+ Study Guide: Exam SY0-601

Final thoughts

This exam provides you with the foothold into the majority of entry-level jobs nowadays as it covers the core concepts of what security is and why it is important and it does broad strokes on the majority of technologies and their use cases.

So if security is what you want to dive into, then getting your Security+ might be the right step forward.

Cyber Security Analyst+

The CySA+ exam and study material start diving deeper into tooling such as Wireshark and the command line functionality compared to the previous exam. This is where stuff starts to get more interesting and technical, compared to the previous exams.

This exam also covers vulnerabilities, CVSS scores, and preventative and mitigation actions, which is something useful in today’s world. Everyone knows about vulnerabilities but not everyone knows how to interpret, mitigate and prevent them.

Resources

The only core resources I found useful for this exam were the previous exams and the following book from Amazon.

CompTIA CySA+ Study Guide: Exam CS0-002

Final thoughts

In my opinion, this exam is the tipping point where the CompTIA exams start getting interesting, don’t get me wrong the exam is quite difficult if you haven’t had enough field experience, but it was a pleasant experience overall.

Pentest+

This exam is the first great milestone on your journey to offensive security topics as it covers a large number of tools from the Kali environment such as SQLmap or Nmap, however, it still covers some of the topics studied in the CySA+ exam but, into a greater extent than previously learned.

All the preparation you had from the previous exams and all the learning notes that you’ve gathered and made so far should help you ensure that you pass this exam with no difficulty. So, make sure that you had enough practice and learned enough to pass it as it’s going to be a challenge otherwise.

Resources

A good resource is the Pentest+ is Pentest + path on TryHackMe on top of that I would possibly recommend the following book from Amazon. I did not have access to other resources as I was part of the beta testers for the exam.

CompTIA PenTest+ Study Guide: Exam PT0-002

Final thoughts

This was, in my opinion, a really good exam in which a lot of tools that are used across multiple lab environments are being tested, so make sure you practice.

Conclusion

I hope that the above provides a good overview of my opinion related to the CompTIA exams I've come across so far. However, depending on the demand I can provide a more thorough post on each of them if required :).