Customer Reviews

Security+ Study Guide and DVD Training System

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This was the third and final book I bought and used to pass the Security+ exam. I failed the exam the first time after studying Mike Meyers book, it was way to easy. The second book I purchased was the Exam Cram2 book, even easier than Mike Meyers book and I could tell that by the time I had read seven chapters. I simply put the book down and asked around.

This is the book that was recommended to me as the ONLY book to use to pass the Security+ exam. It doesn not candy coat how hard the exam is. It tells you in detail what you need to know to pass the exam. It will tell you you don't need to know this to pass the exam...BUT you should know this for the real world.

Pay attention to the exam alerts and warnings. Trust me they will give you a great idea of what to expect. In my opinion the DVD that comes with this book is worthless, its the book you want!!

I can't say enough about this exam. While it could use a little editing in my opinion. Some of the paragraphs where a little long winded, it does cover unlike other books in extream detail what you need to know. Non of the other 2 books I read covered what this book takes forgranted as the "normal" information you need to know!

CompTIA's Security+ exam is not a easy exam like the A+ and Net+ which in my opinion are used to grade first year IT persons. This exam expects you to know in detail and to be able to figure out situations and how to fix them. This book provides the book knowledge and also points you in the direction you need to go to figure out the situational questions.

This book is definately worth the read IF you want to pass!! This is the only book I recommend as one that will provide you with the tools to pass the exam at all!

Erik; A+, Net+, Security+, soon to be MCSA.

First of all, I passed the test with a 784 first try using only this book as study material and nothing else, so I have to recommend it. Although, it helped that I already had A+, MCSE, and CCNA certifications under my belt. The book is an excellent source of information and should be central to your Security+ study plan.

That said, there are a number of problems with it. First, about 10% of the exam questions simply were not covered anywhere in the book. I was pretty scared when the first question on the actual test was not even covered.

Second, the book is full of typo's and related problems to the point where you actually think that you are the first person to read the book all the way through (they spell explaination as epxlaination 12 times in the same place before each practice test at the end of the chapters, not even a freaking spell check!!!), ESPECIALLY with the end of chapter test questions. The included test questions are absolutely terrible. At least one out of every ten questions is flat out wrong, which makes it difficult to study using these questions. Getting the questions right in the book is more of guessing what the IQ score of the writer is more than knowing the material. A typical example: You are asked to select which "3" items fit a certain question. Answers (A) and (B) have 4 items, (C) has 3 items, and (D) is none of the above. Using common sense you would have already ruled out answers (A) and (B) as being possibilities, and selected either (C) or (D) without even seeing the actual question. But, of course you were wrong and the answer is (A). ???? The practice test questions are riddled with them.

The free online web testing is a joke. There is only one online test, so it is pretty much useless after you take it once. Also, the actual test seemed to test a lot of subject matter that is not on the practice test. I spent a few days reviewing the practice test questions and the subject matter that they covered, but much of that was a waste of time.

Some of the exam tips are wrong. Such as that you are not going to have to know specifics about ACL lists. I got one question that listed a router ACL list with multiple users and groups. The user had no access, but was part of the sales group that did have access. What access level does the user have? The book not only skipped that part, it specifically says that this is NOT tested on. WRONG! Other questions such as the unix command to change permissions and the name of the user password file on a unix machine were also not covered, were told that it was not on the test, and actually was.

Lastly, The training DVD is absolutely useless. First, it looks and sounds like it was made one afternoon with a home video camera in the meeting room at the office. Almost none of the information on the training DVD is on the actual test, because it only gives you very very general information. The Security+ test mostly tests on the specifics, such as what encryption does IPSec use. There is more information in the book chapter summeries than in the entire training DVD.

Security+ is CompTIA's newest exam, it covers a wide variety of security concepts. Having taken the beta, help tech edit a coupe of books, I thought I had certainly seen about everything relating to the exam. The author(s) and editor(s) of this book have put together some of the best reading on the subject I have seen.

In just over 800 pages, the exam, which covers a vast amount of information, is taken apart and pieced together in a logical and well written format. What I found is that the book is written to the level of the intermediate skill set and this make the learning process a bit better.

The section on attacks, as well as the wireless section goes beyond the exam objectives; in fact the wireless section could be used for other exams such as CWNA. There is a good flow of information and it is well documented and well organized, each section building on the previous.

There are a few well thought out add-ons, such as the exercises, which seem to draw from real life, rather than simulation. Also the exam tips and warnings are very helpful; anyone preparing for the exam should take a close look at these.

At the end of each chapter you find a review test of the material, the question are well explained and I was impressed with the FAQ section in each chapter, no other book I have seen has this.

Finally there is a DVD with over 2 hours of instructional material. While this could be used as a stand alone tool I found it to be more helpful working with the book. Overall I think this book gives you a very good shot at passing - well done.

I am writing this to inform the 'negative posters' here of comments that your posts here relate to the fact that you think this book is not good advanced security topics like for the CISSP - well I have news for you... this book was made for the SECURITY+ exam, not the CISSP exam - surprise! The Security+ exam is an entry-level cert for security beginners looking to advance to the CISSP, etc next, not the other way around. If you think that this book is lame because you're studying for your CISSP, then your actually just facing reality that the CISSP exam is like 10x harder than this one, and you SHOULD know all this stuff already, so why did you read it anyway, and why would you make ridiculous comments against a book that was written to help you pass an entry level exam? If you are actually using this 'certification study guide' to pass the 'certification exam' then that's why the book is repeats things... to reinforce difficult concepts for newbie's... repetition will also build the concepts up in your head so you can remember them come test time. Also if you follow the actual CompTIA exam objectives online at CompTIA.org, you will see that the actual objectives are repetitive. If you work through this book completely, your guaranteed to pass. For those of you looking for a quick pass and don't want to read a book like this, I suggest not bother taking the exam, and stop slamming the book because you failed. You're only embarrassing yourselves. For those of you serious about taking the exam, then this is what you need to read... from start to finish, and you'll pass - for sure. For the posters who are just 'upset' because they failed... its not the books fault, its yours.

I just passed my exam with a narrow escape of 788. This book did definitely play a major role in my preparation. But, I should also admit that I wouldn't have passed the exam if I relied on this book alone. Even though this book covers most of the details, there are a couple of drawbacks too. 1) It lacks a good number of practice questions. 2) There are some typos 3) At least in my opinion, it's not comprehensive. As some people were, you should be lucky enough not to get anything beyond the scope of this book if you want to pass the exam by relying only on this book. But my personal experience is that I did come across some details in the exam that were never covered in the book. The Boson practice tests came to my rescue. There are a total of 3 tests and you can get about 800 questions which are very very useful. Some of the questions I encountered in the exam were exactly the same as those in the practice tests with different wordings though.
My advice to future test takers is to read this book covering every little detail and buy some practice questions instead of trying different books. Especially test#2 and test#3 from Boson have some good questions. It is as much important to practice as many questions as you can as it is to read good comprehensive material.
Mike Meyers' Security+ Certification Passport is total waste of money. I found it to be utterly useless. If you are buying this Study guide, don't buy the passport.
I also tried the book from Microsoft press. It's even less comprehensive than the Study guide. Other than that no big complaints about the MS's book. But I liked the Study Guide much better especially the presentation of topics. The topics in the Microsoft's book were so jumbled up that I had to refer to the contents all time to see into which domain the topics fall.

I've read countless study guides over the last few years for all the major certs. from Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA, etc. And I can honestly say this is really one of the best ones that I've seen. The auhtors have done a really masterful job of covering absolutely everything that is on the exam, but also including the right amount of coverage on things that may not be tested, but you really need to brush up on to understand the stuff that is being tested. I also haven't seen sample question and answer sections as in depth as the ones in this book. If you read all the answer explantions you really begin to understand what the questions are all about, and this helps you that much more for the exam. I also like the idea of having a DVD with the book and them getting all the other stuff that is usually on a CD from the Web site. You just get so much more by doing it this way.

The security+ study guide is a book written as an aid to pass the CompTIA Security+ exam, an entry level exam. For people new in the security field, it offers a basic and wide overview of common security aspects and principles. For security professionals, the book is not suitable and a disappointment.

For `new' people it might be useful - but be careful! The book contains lots of fluff and should be handled with caution as it contains faults.

Some notes: some chapters are too vague and a real laugh for this exam and offers no essential foundation for the "real world" or the exam (e.g. firewalls, cryptography, SSL, ...) while other chapters are packed with badly written technical explanations at a high rate (e.g. wireless chapter). Also, how are you able to understand important wireless issues when the crypto chapter is
positioned after the wireless chapter and doesn't offer almost any decent crypto basis at all?

Basic exercises are weak and might result in a wrong impression or understanding of security oriented actions and terms - that might result in a false sense of security.

The quality of the DVD lectures is very low and a waste of (your valuable study) time. It offers no or little additional value to the book.
Also note that the practice test is only available online through the website of Syngress.
Review by: Stijn Huyghe (stijn.huyghe@thti.telindus.be).

I bought this book along w/ a couple of the others to study for the Security+ exam. I wanted to make sure I used the best book, so I read the first couple of chapters of each before deciding to use this one as my primary book. I continued to use Passport for quick, review stuff. This book was by far the most comprehensive and gave the most detailed and thorough explanation of the objectives. A lot of the other book throw terms at you with quick definitions, but never really give you any context or production examples. I also found this book mapped better to the official CompTIA objectives than any of the other books. The book has all of the objective numbers in the margins, so you always know which objecitves you're studying. This makes is a lot easier to make sure you've covered everything. The test questions were also very good, and the explanations of the quesitons and answers were very informative. The book help me pass. Well done.

This was the 3rd book I used to study for the Security+ exam. I started with the Mike Meyers book for security+, which was a good starting point for anyone just starting out on the subject and it's concepts. I then moved to the Sybex book.

The last book I picked up was this book. I found it to be very informative and interesting. The one great thing about this book is how in depth they get into the subject of Security.

I think this book goes past the scope of the exam. This book is not meant for those who are study for just the Security+ objectives. I think this book is for those who are more interested in the subject on a larger scale.

The last thing about this book I can say is that this is not a book to start with. If you are just starting out with security concepts and have no experience or study of any other kind then I would suggest you start with a different book and work your way up to this one.

In regards to the DVD... I watched the first 3 chapters and I was bored to tears. I thought (from what I had seen) that the DVD was a waste of time.

Luke - A+, Network+, Security+, MCP, CST, CNST

I've always liked Syngress books and found them refreshingly thorough. The "Security+ Study Guide" is no exception. If you are looking for a book that will give you a very thorough education in computer security you can't go wrong with this book. Some of the areas covered include access control, authentication, active attacks, passive attacks, malicious code attacks, remote access security, protocols and their vulnerabilities, e-mail security, PGP, hoaxes, wireless vulnerabilities, site problems, web server lockdown, instant messaging, Java, Active-X, CGI, FTP, LDAP, device based security, firewalls, routers, modems, IDS, servers, coax cable, fiber optics, removable media, topologies, tunneling, system hardening, updates, configuration issues, application hardening, data repositories, cryptography, public key certificates and management, forensics, risk identification and assessment, security policies, privilege management, documentation, and disaster recovery. This is a very small sampling of the areas covered in this massive book of over 700 pages.

One of the things that I generally have not liked about other study guides is that they tend to give the student the information to pass the exam without them really learning anything. Like the other Syngress books that I have reviewed, this one provides a thorough and useful education along with the information necessary to pass the certification exam. If you want to pass the certification exam and get a valuable education in the process this is the book for you.