Preparing for the ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity exam
As someone looking to break into the cybersecurity field, I came across a great opportunity to take an entry level certification for free (almost). In particular, ISC2 is giving (at the point of writing) free training material and an exam attempt at their Certified-in-Cybersecurity (CC) certificate. Having successfully passed the exam, I want to share my experience on how I prepared for the exam.
What is the CC certificate?
This certificate is an entry level certification that demonstrates the candidate’s knowledge about the cybersecurity domain. The topics covered in the exam are:
- Security principles
- Incident response, business continuity, and disaster recovery concepts
- Access controls concepts
- Network security
- Security operations
The topics covered are a beginner friendly version of what is covered in ISC2 Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP) which is a highly recognized certification for more experienced cybersecurity professionals.
It gives a good exposure to knowledge required in the cybersecurity domain at the entry level.
Preparation
In preparation for the exam, I read the book CC Certified in Cybersecurity All-in-One Exam Guide. The book is a great resource to learn from, it assumes no prior experience of cybersecurity, and explains the concepts with great detail while still being easy to absorb. It also contains practice questions that reinforces key points and gives the reader a sense of what the exam questions are like.
Overall, I found that it helped me tremendously in the preparation for the exam, and I would recommend using it as a way to prepare. It can be a bit dry at times, a way that I try to make it more interesting is to relate the content to real life experiences, or to look up videos related to the topic to further the learning.
Another resource that I used in preparation are these practice exams:
Practice Exam 1 for ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity (CC) Online Class
Practice Exam 2 for ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity (CC) Online Class
Practice Exam 3 for ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity (CC) Online Class
Practice Exam 4 for ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity (CC) Online Class
These practice papers have pretty good questions to test your overall understanding of the concepts, and gives feedback on questions after submitting the paper. I found that the questions were slightly simpler than the actual exam, so these might not be sufficient.
By attempting the timed practice, I got a good feel of how to pace myself through the actual exam. Something to note is that the actual exam does not allow turnback (in my experience) and therefore you should keep that in mind while practicing.
There are a lot of other free resources online to help you prepare for the exam, do use them to prepare if the mentioned material is not sufficient in helping you feel prepared.
Should you take it?
ISC2 CC is a good certificate as an introduction to the cybersecurity field, it covers a wide range of topics, and it is free to take (for now). The only cost to attain the certificate is to pay the membership fee which cost $50 USD for a year.
If you are looking to explore the field of cybersecurity without much commitment or financial investment, this is a good option to consider.
However if you are looking to get a well recognized certificate, the CompTIA Security+ certificate is more sought after but comes at a higher cost. I can’t speak to the difference in content between the two certificates as I have not attempted the Security+ exam, but hope that I can do so sometime in the future.