My first 50 certifications

I did my first (vocational) IT exam in 1999. This was after an annual appraisal from my (then) manager, who said “I’ve spoken to lots of people, and they’re all very impressed with your work. However, there’s no way for me to quantify your performance, so you don’t get a pay rise.” Based on that, …

CySA+ (CS0-001)

In March 2020, I took CompTIA’s CySA+ (Cybersecurity Analyst) exam. Along with PenTest+, this bridges the gap between Security+ and CASP. In simple terms, PenTest+ is about “red team” activities (attack) whereas CySA+ is about “blue team” activities (defence). This certification was launched in 2017 as CSA+, but it was rebranded in January 2018 because …

PenTest+ (PT0-001)

In April 2019, I took CompTIA’s PenTest+ exam. Along with CySA+, this bridges the gap between Security+ and CASP. As the name suggests, it’s all about penetration testing. This is a relatively new exam, and it’s still on the first release (PT0-001). Because of that, it’s not very well known, so I haven’t seen any …

Security+ (SY0-401)

In November 2016, I took CompTIA’s Security+ exam. NB I did the SY0-401 syllabus; CompTIA replaced it with SY0-501 in October 2017, so some of the info in this blog post will now be a bit out of date. In brief, I think that this is a worthwhile certification. It emphasises breadth rather than depth, …