CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst (CSA+) Cert Guide

Well, I used this book (almost exclusively) and I passed. I tend to prefer the Pearson IT books to the Sybex and "All-in-one" offerings, so I purchased this book in order to help me study for CSA+. For some background, CSA+ is intended to be taken after you have passed some of CompTIA's other exams, such as Network+ and Security+. CompTIA's highest security cert is CASP; CSA+ is intended to slot in between Security+ and CASP, so it's an intermediate level security cert. As others have noted, you may need more material or more explanations than just what's in the book. However, most of this will be on the internet, if you feel confident that you can research what you don't know. Also, I've previously done other CompTIA certs (Network+, Security+, Cloud+, Linux+), and that knowledge helped me fill in various gaps that the book didn't cover. (Mostly Linux commands, in my opinion.) I purchased the upgraded test pack on the Pearson website; once you have the book, you can pay $15 for two extra practice exams you can take in the Pearson testing software. By the time I got to the 4th exam, I was able to get an 87% on the practice exam. (The publisher considers 70% passing.) When I went to take the real exam, I scored 835 out of 900, with 750 being the minimum passing score. As other reviewers mentioned, there are some simulated lab questions that the book doesn't help with. However, there weren't many, so don't let the simulated labs discourage you too much. Also, if you've taken other CompTIA exams with simulated labs recently, the CAS+ labs are basically the same, except a bit harder (for me, at least). Good luck-

Update: I passed my test on the first try. I ended up going through this book about four times total as part of my own study method. I used this book as my main study material. I felt it had the most detailed explanations of the three available books, along with more descriptions than you probably need. I would recommend this book. Previous: I’ve read his book once so far, but will read it another two times before I actually take my test. Out of the three books available for the CSA+ I would say that this one has a vey straight forward way of explaining each objective. I felt there were some areas that had way too much explanation that could have been cut shorter. I would definitely pair this with the other books as they all explain things a little differently that may help you understand the topic better.

I passed this exam using this book as well as the certmaster program from Comptia. This book does a great job at telling you exactly what the topics are in a broad sense. It's like they took the exam objectives and divided them up in the chapters and used them as headings. It has a lot of information and assumes you know stuff that would have been a prerequisite for this course (Net+/Sec+). It is a dry read that just presents facts about everything in a neat and tidy format. It doesn't try to relate to the reader on any personal level. The online practice exams are nice. The web interface is responsive and you can choose to include all of the questions in the book. The answer explanations not only explain why the correct answer is correct but why the wrong choices are wrong. It is purely a good exam prep resource, which is what I was looking for and it proved invaluable. However, what they fail to do is get into reading/diagnosing of logs files and output from all of the various tools/programs described in the book. A lot of the questions on the exam concerned the reading of output from the tools mentioned in the book. The tools are all described by function, and various attacks are all described, so you have the information to almost piece them together completely. However, after the sheer amount of this type of question on the exam, I can say I wish it did a little more hand holding and actually walked through a few more examples of output data for all the tools. Still passed!

I originally purchased the kindle version for my Fire HD 8, and found it to be amazing. The only complaint is that I had to purchase the paperback as well to access to the pearson examine engines and the codes for the premium content. With two weeks of preparation, I was able to study immensely from book and all of the extra content from Pearson and have successfully achieved my Cybersecurity Analyst (CSA+) certification. With honesty, I can say that this book will provide you the knowledge to be successful; however, I must caution anyone because you must take the time and understand the concepts. I am very pleased that this book helped me achieve my CSA+. I'm trying for CASP next. Good luck to everyone.

I used this book in conjunction with videos and another book that just had practice exam questions. I would recommend this book. I can't say if other books are better or worse because this was the only book I used to read the material covered on the exam. I passed the actual CySA+ exam so I don't see any reason to give it less than a 5 unless I want to be picky on wording or typos. It's worth the buy.

This book was written before the first version of the exam was released and is structured according to the CompTIA CSA+ exam objectives. Unfortunately, the objectives are not organized in a manner conducive to learning the material. Thus, the book is just as disorganized and, at times, incomprehensible. This book will probably serve you well if you're already familiar with the material, but don't expect to use this book to learn material from scratch -- it really is a "cert guide" and not a "teaching" book.

Book was very in depth. I also used Comptia certified study guide. Both these books and the online practice tests that comes with each book helped me pass the exam. You do have to know a lot of stuff a mile long but an inch deep. Definitely, know how to use the security tools and reading graphs and reports.

This book is well written. I initially use Sybex to study for the exam, and I found that their line of questioning is unlike Comptia's questions. However, when I used CSA+ by Troy McMillian, I found the questions to be on par with Comptia questioning style. The book used real world senarios that is very similiar to Comptia. I would recommend this book to anyone who is attempting to pass CSA+.

I have previously used the Pearson Network+ book which was very good, but this book is a disappointment. So far I have read up to the end of Ch.3, and have added lots of little notes to various pages where the content states something but doesn't elaborate. Also, I have noticed quite a few mistakes which have required corrective notes being made on the pages. I am not sure which edition this is (it might be a first ed.) but wouldn't really recommend this book as a sole source of info for the study subject. As I've already said, I have used Pearson books before - I like the layout, good contents page, glossary (mostly). I like the Key Topic highlights indicating the need to take extra notice of some information in each chapter. The 'Define Key Terms' at the end of each chapter is also helpful before taking the chapter exam. Ref the chapter exam, some of the questions are useless. It feels like they were obliged to put something in to get the required number of questions - but to the detriment of quality. All in all - it is something to use as a study aid, but wouldn't rely on it solely.

Exactly what I need to study up for this exam

Delivery was really fast. Subjets are explained in an easy way to understand. I totaly recommend this book if you need to obtain certification or increase your expertise.

This book was only one of two I used for study materials. I used some online training as well, but also had a few years of hands-on experience. Though I believe the real-life experience was probably the key factor, this book was probably the best of the training materials I used.