Security+

Taking the Security+ certification test was one of the hardest and most stressful exams that I took at the time. I took it right after I graduated from high school because it was a requirement for an IT job that I was working at the time. Today, the Security+ certification is regarded as one of the basic certifications that are needed to be competitive in the IT job market, and mainly consists of general IT security concepts like access control, device vulnerabilities, and social engineering to name a few. You can go here to learn more!

The test consisted of a multiple choice section, and a practial application section. The multiple choice section was self explanatory, and was the same as every other test that I have taken before. For the practical section, we were supposed to configure a network firewall, an access control list, and other types of configurations as well, and contributed to a majority of the stress that I was feeling throughout the exam. Practice exams were my saving grace, as it provided some exposure to the kinds of questions that were on the exam, this was one website out of many that I used

To prepare for the exam, myself and a few of my coworkers were placed in a 2 week class where all of the information was fed to us with a firehose. Then, I continued to study all of the concepts that were reviewed in class to ensure that I understood each term that was in the book. I learned study techinques that I still use in my classes for university, and set me up for success in the classes that I have taken so far. Another thing that I have learned was the importance of having hands on practice and experience. I felt like I had a good understanding of the theory behind the questions in the practical portion of the exam, but I wasn’t familiar with the types of things that I’d be working on at all, which caused me to suffer during that portion of the exam. This can be applied to learning programming/software engineering because hands on expereince is almost just as important as understanding the theory. I will be using the things I learned to set myself up for success in future classes, and for my career.