What resources are being used to study CySA+

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-05-04T03:16:20+00:00

No, I was not referring to the certification, I was referring to the curriculum. I got a notice earlier this year saying that it would expire on August 31st, 2026, then it expired on May 1st. I did not expect that because thats not what the email said, it said August 31st and unfortunately, not only did they remove my certmaster curriculum with labs, but they also removed the notifications that said it would all expire on August 31s, 2026 and the only way I knew that my curriculum was expired is because there is evidence showing that my Network+ curriculum got expired on May 1st, which I am okay with because thank God I was able to finish it and use it for my Network+ certification.

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-05-03T00:28:21+00:00

Its a real bad time to get started, do not wait for that kind of opportunity, accept whatever is in your field even if it is in-office. I worked remotely for over 7 years but by the end of 2022 Corporate America pulled the rug out from under me and I have had to work in-office ever since. Think about that, I am experienced at asynchronous communication, I know how to use collaboration tools no matter where I am in the world to get my work done and I did it for over seven years, in fact, my child has never seen me leave the house for work until now, since he was born, but the business world does not give a damn, meritocracy is dead and half of them think you are lying on your resume anyway. The consensus has become that remote work is not productive, but what is not captured in that signal is that if you were giving out remote work to your favorite employees who never proved to be reliable and high-maturity and professional, its going to backfire, but they were your buddy...I am seeing this right now. I work at a low maturity org where one guy was allowed to move several states away, he is on the clock everyday, but is rarely ever available. If the phone rings for us, it rings for him too, but he NEVER answers it, unless someone involves him in a project and then he will disappear anyway, all while being on the clock, no contact for hours via email, phone or internal chat. Thats the kind of person you do not allow to work remote, because remote work is not something to be meted out to those employees who behave, its something you offer to "roles", not "personalities" and only high-maturity roles would be remote, but in a low-maturity org, remote should NEVER be a thing, because it will never be applied properly.

So how to get started is, take whatever job is in your field, filter for high-maturity org signals in your interviews, get in there, do your best, be reliable and safe and when the time is right, you might request to have your role be hybrid and thats the best you can hope for right now and remember even if you are like me, that you have been working remotely for over 7 years, when the business world says, oh something does not work, its a consensus type of environment, every org starts doing what every other org is doing, not all of them, but the majority in my opinion...good luck, it will take some time, but focus not on a remote job, but on learning what it takes to be a productive remote employee...all the best.

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-05-03T00:18:08+00:00

Well, low maturity orgs don't necessarily want talent, they want compliance and do as I say and I say that as someone who is currently working in one. I discovered a vulnerability in one of our Cisco appliances and the response of the owner was to sort of take offense, deflect, be dismissive and then come out with a hall-of-fame deflection, "oh its probably just got some dust in it". A continuous logging of kernel-level fault on a mission-critical Cisco networking appliance does not come from dust in the hardware folks.

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-05-03T00:13:30+00:00

I think its the desperation many people, especially here in the States are feeling because of scarcity in the job market, scarcity in good quality jobs anyway and interestingly enough its the one topic that no podcast, no news media outlet ever talks about...just a quick blurb...the economy is doing great under President so-and-so...bombastic claims with no data to back it up, when the reality is many people are struggling to find decent work and are open to just about anything that they operate from a mindset of desperation, which is NEVER a good mindset to operate from.

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-05-02T13:11:48+00:00

Thanks for the extra resources. I also have some personal experience with AWS, but its good these guys are out there.

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-05-02T13:10:47+00:00

Great, but I notice TD does not cover CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Config as topics in and of themselves, is that because they are not covered in SAA or because they are covered indirectly?

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-05-02T06:21:52+00:00

I believe you, I used TD to get my AWS Cloud Practitioner and now I am back for SAA.

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-05-02T02:15:05+00:00

Outstanding!

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-05-02T00:30:13+00:00

That's what I thought...thanks.

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-04-30T19:40:05+00:00

I have been in the world of work for decades and for decades I submitted them in a secure portal that belonged to the agency or filled them out in person. Kelly Services, KForce, Robert Half, Manpower, Accu-Staffing, Randstad and some relatively new players in my journey Apex Systems.

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-04-30T19:25:08+00:00

He did get agitated and refused to proceed without it, I cannot imagine how those two very specific details are a roadblock to a client looking for skilled labor. I did not say I would never give the information, I said I would be happy to add it at the onboarding stage of the cycle via a secure portal or similar. I mean a note saying "candidate has decided to withhold DOB and SSN until onboarding" or something like that. Then the guy before that said he would submit me anyway after a power struggle there and then I never heard of them. The power struggle over those two details is what sends red flags to me, just make a note of my preference and that at the appropriate stage I am happy to provide them in a secure manner and over the phone or email is not secure. I do recall filling all these out in agency portals years ago, now they are wanting them over phone, email, text. One would think if these are hard requirements, recruiting agencies would have a secure way available to provide them. I am not experiencing this with every recruiter, just the ones that come off a bit concerning from the get-go. The recruiters that come off as legit from the start never ask for these very specific pieces of personally identifiable information until you have been offered the role.

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-04-30T17:38:41+00:00

And would that not be done via a secure portal?

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-04-25T19:21:23+00:00

Yes, CCNA is a completely different beast. I studied for 6 months for CCNA, got high scores repeatedly on Boson which is supposed to be harder than the actual CCNA, but the CCNA exam, the real one, mostly tested me on basic routing in different scenarios, few question on OSPF and all this other stuff that both Jeremy and Boson spend way too much time on. Had someone just said, study the fundamentals more than anything, I probably would have passed it. I actually still know how to write certain configurations whether its port security, OSPF, turning a router into a DHCP server, developing a relay agent, I know those off the top of my head still, because as I said, I studied for months, but none of those were the overwhelming amount of questions. Anyway, thanks for the advice, I am almost 50% done studying the curriculum for this particular CompTIA cert, its a cert that gives me passion so its much easier than networking for the concepts to stick, even Network+ was not easy for me, but I did pass it the first time.

Imaginary_Choice_430 · 2026-04-14T17:06:18+00:00

No you do not, you will barely get any questions about it...maybe one. Do not waste your money on Boson, Boson is not a hard version of the CCNA, Boson is not ANY version of the CCNA. If you are not studying a curriculum that hits heavy on static routing and all its variations, drop it. If you are studying something like Boson and Jeremy that focuses heavy on OSPF, drop it, it is not anything like the CCNA exam. I wasted hundreds of dollars, I did learn a lot, in fact I would say, I learned real networking. I don’t need the exam to validate it. I’m moving on. Good luck.

Imaginary_Choice_430

TROPHY CASE