Certification guide
CompTIA Security+ is the most widely held entry point into a cybersecurity career — a vendor-neutral certification that tells employers you can assess an organization’s security posture, recommend and implement controls, monitor hybrid cloud and on-premises environments, and operate with an awareness of the laws and policies that govern the work. It appears in more early-career security job listings than any comparable credential and satisfies U.S. DoD 8140 requirements for a long list of defense work roles.
The current exam version is SY0-701, released by CompTIA in November 2023. CompTIA typically refreshes the exam on a roughly three-year cycle, with a successor (SY0-801) expected to begin rolling out in late 2026 and SY0-701 remaining available for a transition period after that — check CompTIA’s official Security+ page for retirement dates before scheduling your test.
What the exam covers
CompTIA publishes official exam objectives that organize SY0-701 into five domains, each with a defined share of the exam. The domain names and weightings below are cited from those official objectives; the descriptions of what each one means in practice are our own.
General Security Concepts
The vocabulary and mental models everything else builds on: categories of security controls, the CIA triad and non-repudiation, Zero Trust principles, change management’s role in security, and foundational cryptography concepts from key management to hashing. Small in weight, but these ideas reappear inside questions across every other domain.
Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Mitigations
Know your adversary. This domain tests whether you can recognize threat actors and their motivations, spot attack techniques from phishing and business email compromise to injection attacks, malware families, and password attacks, understand common vulnerability classes, and pick the mitigation that actually addresses a given scenario.
Security Architecture
How to build environments that are defensible by design: comparing cloud, hybrid, virtualized, and industrial-control architectures; network design elements like segmentation, screened subnets, and secure remote access; protecting data across its states and jurisdictions; and the resilience patterns — clustering, backups, recovery sites — that keep a business running through failure.
Security Operations
The largest domain, and the day job: hardening and baselining systems, securing wireless and mobile fleets, vulnerability management and alerting, identity and access management from SSO to just-in-time privilege, automation, and the incident response lifecycle through forensics fundamentals. Expect scenario questions that read like tickets from a real SOC queue.
Security Program Management and Oversight
The governance layer: policies and standards, risk management from registers to quantitative analysis, third-party and vendor risk, compliance and privacy obligations, audits and penetration-test concepts, and building a security-awareness program. This is where technical practitioners often lose easy points — and where a well-drilled candidate quietly banks them.
How our practice exam prepares you
Our Security+ mock is built to the same blueprint: up to 90 questions in a 90-minute timed sitting, with the question mix weighted to the five domains in the same proportions as the official objectives. Every question is tagged to its domain, the order shuffles on every attempt, and each question comes with a full explanation covering why the right answer is right and why each distractor is wrong — because the explanation you read after a miss is where the real studying happens. Retake it as often as you like; your score history tracks your progress on your results page.
Mock Exam Simulators
CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) — Practice Exam A
Full-length SY0-701 mock exam covering all five domains, weighted to the official exam blueprint, with an explanation for every question.
Subscribe to startCompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) — Practice Exam B
Full-length 90-question SY0-701 practice exam (B series). Weighted to the official domain blueprint: General Security Concepts 12%, Threats, Vulnerabilities & Mitigations 22%, Security Architecture 18%, Security…
Subscribe to startCompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) — Practice Exam C
Full-length 90-question SY0-701 practice exam (C series). Weighted to the official domain blueprint: General Security Concepts 12%, Threats, Vulnerabilities & Mitigations 22%, Security Architecture 18%, Security…
Subscribe to startCompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) — Practice Exam D
Full-length 90-question SY0-701 practice exam (D series). Weighted to the official domain blueprint: General Security Concepts 12%, Threats, Vulnerabilities & Mitigations 22%, Security Architecture 18%, Security…
Subscribe to startCompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) — Practice Exam E
Full-length 90-question SY0-701 practice exam (E series). Weighted to the official domain blueprint: General Security Concepts 12%, Threats, Vulnerabilities & Mitigations 22%, Security Architecture 18%, Security…
Subscribe to startCompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) — Practice Exam F
Full-length 90-question SY0-701 practice exam (F series). Weighted to the official domain blueprint: General Security Concepts 12%, Threats, Vulnerabilities & Mitigations 22%, Security Architecture 18%, Security…
Subscribe to startCompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) — Practice Exam G
Full-length 90-question SY0-701 practice exam (G series). Weighted to the official domain blueprint: General Security Concepts 12%, Threats, Vulnerabilities & Mitigations 22%, Security Architecture 18%, Security…
Subscribe to startCompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) — Practice Exam H
Full-length 90-question SY0-701 practice exam (H series). Weighted to the official domain blueprint: General Security Concepts 12%, Threats, Vulnerabilities & Mitigations 22%, Security Architecture 18%, Security…
Subscribe to startCompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) — Practice Exam I
Full-length 90-question SY0-701 practice exam (I series). Weighted to the official domain blueprint: General Security Concepts 12%, Threats, Vulnerabilities & Mitigations 22%, Security Architecture 18%, Security…
Subscribe to startCompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) — Practice Exam J
Full-length 90-question SY0-701 practice exam (J series). Weighted to the official domain blueprint: General Security Concepts 12%, Threats, Vulnerabilities & Mitigations 22%, Security Architecture 18%, Security…
Subscribe to startTrademark and content notice. CompTIA® and Security+® are registered trademarks of CompTIA, Inc. The SY0-701 exam objectives, including the domain titles and weightings referenced above, are the copyrighted property of CompTIA, Inc., and are cited here for identification and educational reference only. Candidates should download the complete, official exam objectives directly from CompTIA at comptia.org.
Certifym.net is an independent study resource operated by Paquin Business LLC. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by CompTIA, Inc. All practice questions, answers, and explanations on this site are original works created by Certifym; they are not actual CompTIA exam questions and are not derived from any live exam content. Use of this site does not guarantee a passing score on any certification exam. Exam details (question counts, duration, scoring, and version timelines) are subject to change by CompTIA — always verify current details on CompTIA’s official website.