How To Pass AWS Security Specialty On Your First Try 

Good luck!

Good luck!

Did you pass?

My pleasure!

Thanks Manyam, that's the plan 😄

Glad you found it helpful!

You are very welcome

Good luck!

I noticed you have a video on the Cloud Practitioner cert, have you done Solutions Architect Associate? If not, I'd thoroughly recommend doing that first.

@@PatrickB1111 Yep I've done SA Associate and Developer Associate :)

Sounds good! Good luck with the security cert 👍

Nice job!

@@PatrickB1111 thanks man. I’m going for sysops admin associate next. I imagine it won’t be as granular. I have the SAA and that one wasn’t nearly as bad.

I just passed last week with an 810. I felt completely lost on the exam and thought I failed

Thanks for sharing your failed attempt also. I also failed yesterday and going to retake soon. I will consider your tips along wiith my own tips. This was my fourth certifications and I never failed before and I was over confident and did practice test oly once (failed) but still went to take the real test... sometime, overconfidence kills! lol

Great job and I second the topics you mentioned!

Thanks Sameesh!

You're welcome, good luck with whatever you're working towards!

The new one. The legacy one was by Adrian Cantrill, who has some fantastic solutions architect courses at cantrill.io, but even he says the old legacy content is a waste of time. Security Specialty has got to be the most under-resourced cert for its popularity. Hopefully there'll be a Maarek course on it soon.

'Recommended hours per day' and 'how many hours per day did I do' are different things 😂 Looking at all the certs as a whole, for a few months last year I probably averaged 4 hours a day on top of full time work. Not recommended unless you're happy to give up your weekends and/or other commitments. I was in lockdown so it helped keep my mind off everything else and gave me something to work towards. If I were to do it again this year (with basically no covid restrictions right now) I'd probably spend about half as much time working on it and let it take longer. I completed 6 certs (all of them were professional/specialty level) in 5 months. Security Specialty was one of the easier ones, it took around 2 weeks if I remember correctly. If I were to do it over again I'd watch Zeal Vora's course though, as I felt like I didn't have any fantastic content to work with and spent way too long reading irrelevant documentation.

Glad you liked the content 👍🏻

Well, is your goal to get security specialty or to land a job working with AWS? If the latter, that's how you'll get experience 😉 In short: you can do security specialty without any industry experience. It's an intermediate cert at most. But, if you do it right, the skills you'll learn along the way will make you good enough at AWS that companies will start wanting to talk to you, so don't shy away from those opportunities. Good luck!

If you see pass on the screen, you passed. You'll get the actual score and topics breakdown (competent / needs work) pretty soon.

You're welcome John!

You're welcome :)

What do you mean by the long route? Associates first? You are allowed to do Security Specialty without any other exams under your belt, but I wouldn't recommend it. A couple of months working with AWS is the perfect amount of time to go for Solutions Architect Associate - I'd definitely go for that at the very least first.

Well, Security Specialty would be the one that comes to mind there, but if you're a total beginner to AWS I'd recommend you start with Solutions Architect Associate and/or Cloud Practitioner first.

Definitely will consider it!

Certs like these can certainly help with moving towards higher paying roles, and working towards them using high quality resources will teach you many best practices. On top of that, focus on getting as much practical experience as possible while working towards the cert. That way you can demonstrate your value to companies and have leverage when negotiating salary.

Cloud practitioner is a bit of a bludge to be honest. If you want to learn AWS, do Solutions Architect Associate first then Security Specialty I'd say. Can't talk much about Azure since I'm not so familiar with it but I'd imagine if you do one of the Azure/AWS Security certs the other probably wouldn't be too hard. Generally I'd say pick a single cloud to learn on though, you'll get further with it and the knowledge is very transferable. There are small but important differences between them though which can trip you up if you try to learn multiple cloud platforms at once - think of it like trying to learn Italian and Spanish at the same time 😉

Yes, most of the things you need will be under the free tier.

Brother please answer.

I think they've reinstated it after the backlash - for a while they were hiding courses from the course list and they were only accessible via URL. Thanks for the heads up!

Probably not, and kind of defeats the point of passing since you wouldn't have the skills. I suggest working on hands on projects to familiarise yourself, alongside a good course.

@@PatrickB1111 can you recommend a platform where we can have projects to boost our experience

For security specialty, probably Zeal Vora's, it seems the most thorough. As I said in the video I didn't use it though, but I would if I were to start over.

@@PatrickB1111 it was said in the reviews on udemy that he talk about his life and work alot and not really about the security specialty stuff. isit true?

Good question! I'd say no, not really. It's never going to hurt, but it didn't really come up on this exam. Some exams you do need scripting knowledge - Developer and DevOps come to mind - but Security is mostly focussed around encryption, IAM, monitoring and incident response. I'd recommend you check out the exam guide for an in depth idea of what's expected: d1.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-security-spec/AWS-Certified-Security-Specialty_Exam-Guide.pdf

@@PatrickB1111 thank you so much! Btw based on your videos I signed up for Adrian Cantrills course and it’s just awesome the way he teaches. Keep going with this channel I think you have some solid content!

@@aphonic7164 thanks a heap, I really appreciate it. Feedback like this keeps me going 💪

Certs are a way to gain targeted and well defined expertise and a great excuse to explore an area of interest. I've always found years of experience to be a bit of a misleading idea since it's at best only somewhat correlated with actual skill. If you can earnestly learn and apply the content - including branching off to learn things that aren't explicitly covered by the cert, but that look interesting - then you're basically simulating what that experience would do. Couple that with real life projects and you greatly accelerate your learning rate. On that note as well, I know plenty of people who hit the experience criteria who would have no clue about certain aspects of things covered by the cert, since their actual work is so specialised. Doing certs helps you broaden your knowledge base.

Naw don't make me blush 🥰

Good luck, you've got this 🤞

Just FYI. I passed! Oh my goodness

Solutions Architect Professional video is here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-23DodP-gaG8.html

@@PatrickB1111 Hi bro.. Thanks I mean For associate

tomayto tomahto my friend