Passing score: 750 (on a scale of 100-900) - roughly 81-83%.
(Yes, you already start with 100 points just for sitting down).
Duration: 120 minutes.
(90 minutes + 30 minute time extension for non-native English speakers. This is automatically applied).
Number of questions: maximum of 90, a mix of multiple-choice and performance-based questions.
Usually, you will get 84 multiple choice questions and 3 performance-based questions.
Overthinking questions. This is probably the BIGGEST reason students fail. All the information you need to know is in the question. Read it carefully and then read it again - the clues are there. Don't add any real-world knowledge of your own. This exam tests CompTIA's World, not the real world.
Spending too long on one question. On this exam, a lot of questions will seem to have more than one right answer. Pick the "best" answer and move on. If you spend more than 60 seconds on a question, just go with your gut instinct.
Port and protocol overload. You don't need to memorise 100+ ports for this exam, just the most common ones.
Studying until the last minute. Your brain will burn out. Take 1-2 days off before the exam with zero studying.
Ignoring the "boring" stuff. Many students ignore Chapters 14-16 about GRC and Data Protection. This represents 20% of the entire exam and it can be learned with memorization. Don't just learn about the "exciting" exploits, learn all the policy and governance.
Cryptography & PKI (Chapter 03)
Risk Management Calculations & Metrics (Chapter 14)
Incident Response & Digital Forensics (Chapter 12)
Governance, Policies & Legal Agreements (Chapters 14 & 16) - heavily tested.
Attack Types & Indicators (Chapters 02 & 13)
Everything about Public Key Infrastructure (CA, CRL, CSR, OCSP)
The full CompTIA incident response lifecycle (order matters): Preparation → Detection → Analysis → Containment → Eradication → Recovery → Lessons Learned
The full Cyber Kill Chain (Lockheed Martin version - order matters): Reconnaissance → Weaponization → Delivery → Exploitation → Installation → Command & Control (C2) →Actions on Objectives
Disaster Recovery Metrics - you must know these and what they mean.
RPO (Recovery Point Objective): Max data loss (time between backups). Lower is better.
RTO (Recovery Time Objective): Max downtime allowed. Lower is better.
MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures): Uptime reliability. Higher is better.
MTTR (Mean Time To Repair): Fix speed. Lower is better.
A lot of this stuff WAS on the exam but isn't anymore! If someone tells you to learn this stuff, ignore them!
nmap -sS -p 1-65535). Know what a port scan does, not the specifc commands.HKLM\Software\Microsoft\...). Know that persistence uses Registry Run keys generally.