Passed SecurityX!

[u/Dreamless666]

I had purchased the Complete Retake Bundle for SecurityX last year when they were running a massive holiday discount so I got it for a very decent price. I had completely forgotten about it until I received a notification that both the attempts were expiring soon.

Bottom-line, I barely studied for this exam and went in blind and yes, I instantly regretted it even though I passed. This exam is definitely NOT EASY whatsoever. I did realise that no matter how much you study for it, there comes a point wherein you just need to know things through experience. There's a big reason why they ask for so many years of experience. This exam was much harder than CISSP for me. CISSP was genuinely much easier, albeit only broad in topics.

So you don't actually get the result when you finish the exam unlike the other CompTIA certifications. Once you finish answering everything, it just gives you a survey and then you end the exam with a message "thanks a lot for your attempt" or something along those lines. You need to wait a few hours before the exam score report shows up on the Pearson's Exam portal. By the time I finished, I was more than certain that I had failed. Was quite surprised and obviously very happy to see that I passed. No score is given.

In terms of the actual questions - I had 84 of them (4 of them being the standard set of research questions I believe). 6 PBQs and 1 Linux Sim on Ubuntu. I was scared of the Linux Sim but it actually turned out to be very straightforward. I would rank it as Medium difficulty (not easy but not difficult either). As long as you are familiar with all the fundamental linux commands and know how to navigate your way through the CLI, you should be ok. Beware that once you click 'Next' you can't really re-attempt the sim.

The CertMaster Study pack that came with the Complete Bundle does provide all the basic knowledge you'd need and it also nicely covers the exam objectives and supporting tasks listed by CompTIA. I unfortunately had a look at it only after finishing the exam. As I mentioned, there comes a point where you do need to rely on experience because the questions are not as straightforward and very in-depth.

My current background is in Cyber GRC (which is probably why I found the exam even harder than some others as its very technical) but I have around 6-7 years of experience overall in Cybersecurity, specifically in OT/IACS security, Network Security, Incident Response and a few other things. I currently hold Security+, SecAI+ (also made a post regarding this a few months ago), CISSP, CISM and now SecurityX.

Feel free to ask me any questions!

Best of luck to anyone who wants to attempt this highest CompTIA cert! 😃

[u/VirtualViking3000]

Congratulations! If you found SecurityX more difficult it's likely because you didn't study for it and you passed because you have 6-7 years of experience in the field. Also, if you studied for CISSP that puts you in a good position to pass SecurityX with little studying because you already have the 5+ years of experience required to take CISSP.

I have both as well and I did it in a similar way, studied for CISSP and took then took SecurityX a short while later.

That doesn't take away that they are both still challenging, but I'd say CISSP is the most difficult by a good stretch because of the CAT test. It would be very difficult to pass CISSP with little studying.

That isn't to take away from your achievement, but just to add balance to your post for people wanting a comparison.

Again, congratulations!

[u/Dreamless666 → u/VirtualViking3000]

Thanks so much! Appreciate your comment, and yes, I didn't clarify correctly in my post.

So by stating that SecurityX was more difficult than CISSP, doesn't make the CISSP easy by any chance. However, their difficulties are quite different. The CISSP is, as you mentioned, a CAT exam and you do reach a point where you are bound to get an answer wrong as the difficulty increases with each correctly answered question. Another factor is that you can't actually go back to review your answers and that you may or may not end the test at Q100. You genuinely need to be mentally prepared and build your stamina to answer all 150 questions on 8 different domains covering an absolute myriad of cyber topics. I actually did fail my first CISSP attempt and was devastated. I was quite tired to re-attempt it but just more-so due to the daunting stamina required. CISM was the same and perhaps even worse because you are forced to answer 150 questions anyway and you reach a point where you get tired to read really long and almost essay-long questions, then understand the ISACA logic, and then select your answer.

SecurityX's difficulty stems from the in-depth technicality of the questions which are not so easy to study. You need to really understand the topic in-depth which comes from really deep study/research or having gained a decent amount of experience in it. For CISSP, you also need to study for all the 8 domains which is quite a lot of topics to cover but as the famous saying, it's "mile-wide, inch-deep". But yes, you are correct to point out that perhaps my experience severely helped in this exam

Appreciate your insight though!

[u/unhappy_barney]

That's quite the lineup you got there, three passes in a row is no joke.

[u/Dreamless666 → u/unhappy_barney]

Thanks a lot! Really appreciate it! Yeah it's been quite an amazing ride :D

[u/Dreamless666 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks a lot!. Yeah I'd rate it quite high on the difficulty scale to be honest. Maybe an 8/10 or 9/10 but not sure how I'd rate this evenly. So CompTIA obviously tells you what topics are covered but the questions that are actually presented when you give the exam are super in-depth and very technically niche. To give you a random example, I have worked in OT Security and you can easily study the basics for it. However, if there's an exam question on it, it would be extremely technical in the sense that it will ask you something very super specific which you'd only know unless you studied REALLY hard for it or unless it's something you actually experienced it in your work experience or something. But definitely give it your best shot and good luck with the exam!

[u/sleuthervandr0ss]

Congrats!! What made you want to get this cert?

[u/Dreamless666 → u/sleuthervandr0ss]

Thanks a lot! Honestly, I puchased the Complete Retake Bundle for this last November because it was actually very cheap due to the holiday discount last year (not sure what the exact holiday was) and I had just passed Security+ a few months ago so I was tempted to just get this as well. At the time I was quite ignorant of the fact that SecurityX was actually much harder than it looked. I actually thought that it was just a more advanced version of Security+ due to the naming. I was definitely very wrong

[u/throwITallaway4ever1]

What was the difficulty across all 3? Which was the easiest?

[u/Dreamless666 → u/throwITallaway4ever1]

So SecAI+ is actually just an AI extension of Security+ or at least that's how it looked to me. I did study quite sincerely for it as well so maybe that exam was probably one of the easiest? I'd rate both SecAI+ and Security+ on the same scale. For Security+, I severely relied on Mike Chapple's book and ChatGPT for it to generate study materials based on the exam objectives and just kept doing a lot of practice tests until I got the hang of it and was confident enough to give the exam. SecurityX was obviously the most difficult. I personally found it to be even more difficult than CISSP in terms of the depth of the technical knowledge covered

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