Fundamentals of Cyber Security DSST

[H-bomb]

Hello all,eeya:

I’m scheduled to take the Fundamentals of Cyber Security DSST exam tomorrow!

My background:
I’m currently working on my Bachelors at APUS (American Public University System). I’m around the 70% threshold, with the bulk of the remaining credits being courses that I can CLEP/DSST out of. I have a cyber security background so I figured it would only make sense to knock this one out first.

To be clear, I’ve not studied for this exam. Last night I purchased (2) official DSST practice tests consisting of 25 questions each and took a shot at them. I scored a 68% on practice test #1 and a 71% on practice test #2. After being pleased with the results, I spent an additional $20 on the Peterson practice exams (3 practice exams were included). I took the Petersons practice exam #1 which consisted of 100 multiple choice questions within a two hour time limit and scored a 77%. I’ve always heard that the Peterson exams were more difficult that the real exam but IMO the questions were rather easy. With this in mind, I’ve scheduled the exam for tomorrow and I’ll share my results/feedback.

Thanks for reading!

[Ideas]

Congrats on being this close, and welcome

[H-bomb]

I sat the exam yesterday and passed with a 460 out of 500. Overall, i'm pretty happy with that score for no study. The test itself wasn't extremely difficult if you have a general knowledge of IT Security concepts. The test didn't go very in depth with the questions which made it easy to conduct the process of elimination of the ones I was unsure about. I did spot one question on the exam related to threats, vulnerabilities, risk and exploits that was obviously incorrect. This was very annoying as they don't give you the option to select correct multiple choice answer.... If you sit the exam you'll see what I mean banghead

If you already have Security+, I'd instruct you to go ahead and take the exam. I choked up on some questions related to SDLC as i'm not very strong in that area. Things to know: ICMP, Kerberos, IPsec, nmap, sniffers, vulnerability scanners, Cross-Site Scripting, DoS, honeypots, botnets, zombies, CIA Triad, digital certificates, CA's, hashing, Symmetric and Asymmetric encryption, DR recovery sites, SDLC process, etc.

According to the DSST website, "This exam was updated June 8, 2017 and includes new content and content outlines reviewed by the American Council on Education (ACE)."

I. Application & Systems Security – 15%

II. Authentication, Authorization, & Access Controls – 12%

III. Policies, Compliance, & Governance – 12%

IV. Operational Security – 10%

V. Network Security – 20%

VI. Vulnerability Management – 15%

VII. Physical & Environmental Security – 6%

VIII. Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity – 10%

[UserMike]

Thank you for sharing, I sat for a Security + Test and was wondering what this DSST covered.

[22gunsonfire]

Since the test was "reviewed" it has become alot easier. The last iteration was alot more in the weeds.