FR FieldReady Academy
CompTIA Security+ SY0-701

Every lesson in SecPlus Academy

Self-paced CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 course with adaptive training and practice exams.

Start the free course Read the cheat sheet

The exam

ExamCompTIA Security+
CodeSY0-701
QuestionsUp to 90
Time90 minutes
PassingThe real exam passes at 750 on a 100 to 900 scale. This course's official-format test uses 83%, that score divided by 900.
Lessons54 lessons across 15 units, about 7.6 hours of reading

Exam domains

DomainWeightLessons
General Security Concepts12%9
Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Mitigations22%11
Security Architecture18%10
Security Operations28%16
Security Program Management and Oversight20%8

How the course works

  1. Cheat sheet. Everything the exam expects you to recall cold, printable.
  2. Starter test. A few questions per exam domain, with a confidence rating on each.
  3. Your tutorial. Lessons chosen from what you missed or guessed, each with a checkpoint and a deeper explanation.
  4. Practice tests and retraining. 50 questions, weighted like the real exam. Every miss is explained and feeds back into your lessons.
  5. 3 of your last 5 at 80%. That unlocks one full-length test on the real exam's clock: 90 questions in 90 minutes, at its real passing score of 83%. Pass it once and you are ready to book.

Every lesson

The first 15 lessons are open to read here. Every lesson, with its checkpoint, is free inside the course.

Unit 1: Security Foundations

How the exam classifies every control, the three goals of security, zero trust, and the physical layer.

  1. Security Controls: Categories and Types 9 min
  2. CIA, Non-repudiation, AAA, and Gap Analysis 8 min
  3. Zero Trust 9 min
  4. Physical Security and Deception 7 min

Unit 2: Change Management and Cryptography

How changes are made safely, and the encryption, hashing, and certificate machinery behind nearly every other control.

  1. Change Management 8 min
  2. Symmetric, Asymmetric, and Key Exchange 10 min
  3. Hashing, Salting, Signatures, and Key Stretching 9 min
  4. PKI and Certificates 10 min
  5. Encryption Levels, Hardware Tools, and Obfuscation 8 min

Unit 3: Threat Actors and Vectors

Who attacks, why, through which doors, and how they manipulate people.

  1. Threat Actors and Motivations 8 min
  2. Threat Vectors and Attack Surfaces 8 min
  3. Social Engineering 9 min

Unit 4: Vulnerabilities

The weaknesses attackers exploit, grouped the way the exam groups them.

  1. Application and Operating System Vulnerabilities 8 min
  2. Web, Hardware, Virtualization, and Cloud Vulnerabilities 9 min
  3. Supply Chain, Cryptographic, Misconfiguration, Mobile, and Zero-Day 7 min

Unit 5: Attacks, Indicators, and Mitigation

Malware, network, application, cryptographic, and password attacks; what each looks like in the logs; and the mitigations that stop them.

  1. Malware in the course
  2. Network and Wireless Attacks in the course
  3. Application and Cryptographic Attacks in the course
  4. Password Attacks and Indicators of Compromise in the course
  5. Mitigation Techniques and Hardening in the course

Unit 6: Architecture Models

Cloud, code-defined infrastructure, networks, virtualization, special-purpose systems, and how to weigh one design against another.

  1. Cloud, Infrastructure as Code, Serverless, and Microservices in the course
  2. Networks, Virtualization, Containers, and Special Systems in the course
  3. Architecture Considerations in the course

Unit 7: Enterprise Infrastructure

Where devices go, how they fail, the appliances that protect the network, port security, firewalls, and secure remote connections.

  1. Device Placement, Zones, Failure Modes, and Appliances in the course
  2. Port Security and Firewalls in the course
  3. Secure Communication and Access in the course

Unit 8: Data Protection and Resilience

What kinds of data exist, how to classify and protect them, and how to keep services running and recoverable.

  1. Data Types, Classifications, States, and Sovereignty in the course
  2. Data Protection Methods in the course
  3. High Availability, Sites, Continuity, and Capacity in the course
  4. Backups, Testing, and Power in the course

Unit 9: Securing Resources

Baselines and hardening for every kind of device, wireless and mobile security, application security, and the asset lifecycle.

  1. Secure Baselines and Hardening Targets in the course
  2. Wireless and Mobile Security in the course
  3. Application Security and Sandboxing in the course
  4. Asset Management in the course

Unit 10: Vulnerability Management and Monitoring

Finding weaknesses, deciding what to fix first, proving it was fixed, and watching the environment continuously.

  1. Finding Vulnerabilities in the course
  2. Analyzing, Responding, Validating, and Reporting in the course
  3. Monitoring Activities and Tools in the course

Unit 11: Enterprise Security Capabilities

The controls an enterprise turns on: firewall rules, intrusion detection, filtering, secure protocols, email security, and the endpoint and identity tools that watch everything.

  1. Firewalls, IDS/IPS, Web and DNS Filtering in the course
  2. OS Security, Secure Protocols, Email, FIM, DLP, NAC, EDR/XDR, and UBA in the course

Unit 12: Identity and Access

Creating and removing identities, proving them, federating them, controlling what they can do, and automating all of it.

  1. Provisioning, Identity Proofing, Federation, and SSO in the course
  2. Access Control Models and MFA in the course
  3. Passwords and Privileged Access in the course
  4. Automation and Orchestration in the course

Unit 13: Incident Response

What to do when something goes wrong: the process, the investigation, and the evidence.

  1. The Incident Response Process in the course
  2. Digital Forensics in the course
  3. Log Data and Data Sources in the course

Unit 14: Governance and Risk

The documents that direct security, the structures that oversee it, and the arithmetic of risk.

  1. Policies, Standards, Procedures, and Guidelines in the course
  2. External Considerations, Governance Structures, and Data Roles in the course
  3. Risk Identification, Assessment, and Analysis in the course
  4. Risk Register, Tolerance, Strategies, and Business Impact in the course

Unit 15: Third Parties, Compliance, and Awareness

Managing the risk that vendors bring, meeting the rules that apply, proving it through audits and testing, and training people.

  1. Third-Party Risk and Agreements in the course
  2. Compliance and Privacy in the course
  3. Audits, Assessments, and Penetration Testing in the course
  4. Security Awareness in the course

On exam day