CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) Study Guide

Preparing for the CompTIA Security+ exam (SY0-701)? This is the complete study guide — six chapters covering all five official exam domains, written in plain language for working administrators and engineers who want security to make sense, not just to memorize.

The real exam: a maximum of 90 questions — multiple-choice and performance-based — in 90 minutes, with a passing score of 750 on a scale of 100–900. CompTIA recommends a minimum of 2 years of experience in IT administration with a focus on security; there is no mandatory prerequisite. The certification is valid for 3 years and renews through CompTIA's Continuing Education program.

What's inside:

- Chapter 1 — General Security Concepts: the two-axis control grid (technical, managerial, operational, physical × preventive, deterrent, detective, corrective, compensating, directive), the CIA triad and AAA, zero trust split into its control and data planes, physical security from bollards to sensors, deception technology (honeypot, honeynet, honeyfile, honeytoken), change management end to end, and cryptography in full — PKI, symmetric vs asymmetric encryption, hashing and salting, digital signatures, and the certificate lifecycle from CSR to revocation

- Chapter 2 — Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Mitigations: the six threat-actor types and what motivates each, every threat vector from phishing and typosquatting to supply chain, the vulnerability catalogue (buffer overflow, race conditions, SQLi vs XSS, VM escape, side loading, zero-day), malicious activity taught as indicator→attack pairings (impossible travel, missing logs, concurrent sessions), and the mitigation menu — hardening, segmentation, isolation, patching, least privilege

- Chapter 3 — Security Architecture: architecture models from on-premises to serverless, the cloud shared-responsibility matrix worked across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, securing enterprise infrastructure (security zones, fail-open vs fail-closed, WAF vs UTM vs NGFW, 802.1X, VPN/TLS/IPSec, SD-WAN, SASE), data types, classifications, and states with the method that protects each, and resilience — high availability, hot/warm/cold sites, backups, and power

- Chapter 4 — Security Operations Foundations: secure baselines established, deployed, and maintained; hardening every target class from workstations to ICS/SCADA and IoT; wireless site surveys and WPA3; mobile deployment models (BYOD, COPE, CYOD) and MDM; the full asset lifecycle from procurement to certified destruction; the vulnerability management loop with CVSS/CVE prioritization; and the monitoring toolkit — SIEM, NetFlow, SNMP traps, SCAP, DLP

- Chapter 5 — Security Operations: Enterprise Capabilities and Response: firewall and web-filter operations, the insecure→secure protocol pairing table, email security (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) with a worked authentication failure, EDR/XDR, NAC, and file integrity monitoring; identity and access management — SSO with LDAP vs OAuth vs SAML, access control models, MFA, passwordless, and privileged access management; automation and orchestration, benefits and traps; the seven-step incident response process walked through one full ransomware incident; digital forensics; and which data source answers which investigation question

- Chapter 6 — Security Program Management and Oversight: the governance hierarchy (guidelines, policies, standards, procedures) and who owns what — owners, controllers, processors, custodians; risk management with the arithmetic done for you (SLE, ALE, ARO worked examples, plus RTO, RPO, MTTR, MTBF distinguished in one business impact analysis); third-party risk and the agreement family (SLA, MOA, MOU, MSA, SOW, NDA, BPA); compliance and privacy, including controller vs processor and the right to be forgotten; audits and penetration testing; and security awareness that actually changes behavior — closing with a capstone that runs all five domains through one enterprise scenario, plus performance-based-question strategy

Files included (1):

- security-plus-study-guide.pdf — the complete 6-chapter guide (100 pages)

Want practice questions too? The Deluxe tier adds the full 500-question practice bank and the cheat sheets, plus license-key access to the online practice hub.

Independent study material. Not affiliated with or endorsed by CompTIA.