Time to Tackle CompTIA’s CSA+ Certification (CS0-001)

The problem in “volunteering” is sometimes you place yourself in a box. At least I did it with my eyes wide open this time. A few weeks ago I “volunteered” to teach a 5-day “train-the-trainer” course relating to this new CompTIA certification for West Coast community college faculty at the WASTC Conference scheduled for the late June in Southern California. Problem is, with the exception of a single “textbook,” authors and publishers have not been quick to react to the production of learning materials. The single resource, based on my research continues to be the CSA+ GTSlearning Book. Having a primary role as a community college instructor, sometimes I’m able to gain access to a “pre-publication” copy of instructional materials. Thankfully that was the case with this Book.

Earlier this week I was able to complete the process of reading the instructor version of the book with 280 pages, and my honest assessment is it is worth purchasing. Admittedly it is hard to judge how well the book covers the actual exam’s content, but if CompTIA follows the expected approach where exam questions are aligned with the published Exam Objectives, the book is closely aligned with those objectives.

With exam voucher in hand, I plan to spend the remainder of the month playing around with the cybersecurity tools that are detailed in Section 4.5 (Compare and contrast the general purpose and reasons for using various cybersecurity tools and technologies) of the Objectives. Having gone through this section carefully, I prepared a reference document providing information that may be helpful and can be viewed HERE. As an additional effort I prepared another reference document listing videos for a large number of software and tools utilized by cybersecurity professionals that is available from TechTarget. They can be viewed HERE.

Always looking for clues as to exam content, I read with interest the PowerPoint slides that were posted in conjunction with a recent CompTIA presentation on the new exam. I’m paying special attention to Slide 16 in the slide deck relating to “Performance Based Assessment” and the tools that are mentioned.

CompTIA recently provided a list of marketing resources designed to inform a variety of groups about this new certification. Flyers cover a variety of audiences that include:

Additional marketing tools included a “product positioning sheet” and a “pathways flyer.” According to CompTIA the new CSA+ certification will contain “performance based questions.” To familiarize yourself with how these simulated questions work, click HERE. My experience relative to this style of question is be sure the testing center you use has large monitors, and focus on the simulations AFTER you have answered the multiple choice questions.

On March 27th CompTIA issue the following website content:

CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst (CSA+): Your Questions Answered

I’ll provide an update shortly before and shortly after I take the CS0-001 exam.

UPDATE: Scheduled the exam for this Friday (April 21st). I’m feeling fairly comfortable. Recent forum comments indicate the degree of difficulty has question somewhere between the Security+ and CASP exams, with not too many complaints about the quality of questions. Hope the simulations make sense. Otherwise I’ll follow my usual approach and ignore (a.k.a. skip) them……

 

 

2 thoughts on “Time to Tackle CompTIA’s CSA+ Certification (CS0-001)

  1. Hi there!

    Thank you so much for sharing this insight, I just stumbled upon this today. It seems the first GDrive link that you posted no longer works, and it would have been really useful for me. Could you please update that link either with a Dropbox link or some other cloud service that you’d prefer? Thank you so much!

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