I passed the security exam today and thought I’d share my feedback while it’s fresh in my mind.
I began this journey seven months ago when I purchased and read "Mastering AWS Security" by Albert Anthony. That said, after reading the book in September of 2019, six months went by in a blink and I now found myself quarantined at home due to government responses to COVID-19. I decided to use some of this time to focus on getting the AWS Specialty – Security certification and turned to A Cloud Guru.
I found the structure of the video based training helped tremendously in merging in some study time into my new schedule. I completed the online training videos in three days (mostly over the weekend.) I then spent a day reviewing my notes, taking the practice tests a couple times and reviewing exam preparation materials on AWS before schedule the exam the following day, and passing.
While I am more on the management side and less hands-on-keyboard, I do have an extensive background in security certifications (CISSP, CISA, CRISC) so this likely helped with getting this done within a period of five days.
That said, it was a difficult test and recommend you take notes and highlight any areas you don’t fully understand. Read AWS white papers on those areas and ensure you are comfortable with the concepts.
The test questions felt like they were more targeted towards an AWS Security Architect than a SecOps role (more concepts, less syntax.)
The content from A Cloud Guru was spot on, the questions on the real test are obviously different than those in the practice tests but if you are doing good in the practice tests you have a good shot of passing the real test.
Be prepared to use the entire time, I think I had 10 minutes left when I finished my first review of questions I tagged.
Overall great experience and I recommend this training to anyone working towards this certification. I also HIGHLY recommend this training for ALL cloud architects regardless of whether or not their role is focused on security.
Thanks to the team that put this together!
Congratz and thanks for your notes!