CySA+ Certified: Incident Response & Threat Expert

CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst (CySA+) is the premier certification for cyber professionals tasked with incident detection, prevention, and response through continuous security monitoring. It validates a tech professional's expertise in incident response and vulnerability management processes, emphasizing the critical communication skills necessary for effective security analysis and compliance.

Build skills with CompTIA training and validate them with CySA+ certification.

Enhance security operations processes, differentiate threat intelligence and threat hunting, and identify malicious activity using appropriate tools.

Conduct vulnerability assessments, prioritize vulnerabilities, and recommend effective mitigation strategies for vulnerability management.

Apply attack methodology frameworks, perform incident response, and understand the incident management lifecycle to handle security incidents effectively.

Utilize communication best practices to report on vulnerability management and incident response, providing stakeholders with actionable plans and meaningful metrics.

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Exam version: V3

Exam series code: CS0-003

Launch date:
June 6, 2023

Number of questions: maximum of 85 questions, a mix of multiple-choice and performance-based questions

Retirement: usually three years after launch (estimated 2026)

Duration: 165 minutes

Passing score: 750 (on a scale of 100‑900)

Languages:

English, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish

Recommended experience:
Network+, Security+, or equivalent knowledge, with a minimum of 4 years of hands‑on experience as an incident response analyst, security operations center (SOC) analyst, or equivalent experience

DoD 8140 work roles: all source analyst, warning analyst, forensics analyst, cyber defense forensics analyst, cyber crime investigator, systems security analyst, cyber defense analyst, cyber defense incident responder, vulnerability assessment analyst, security control assessor

• System and network architecture: explaining log ingestion, operating system (OS) concepts, infrastructure, network architecture, identity and access management (IAM), encryption, and sensitive data protection.
• Malicious activity indicators: analyzing network anomalies like bandwidth spikes and rogue devices, host issues like unauthorized software and data exfiltration, application irregularities like unexpected communication and service interruptions, and threats like social engineering attacks.
• Tools and techniques: detecting malicious activity using tools like Wireshark, security information and event management (SIEM), and Virus Total, along with techniques like pattern recognition and email analysis, supported by scripting languages like Python and Power Shell.
• Threat intelligence and hunting: comparing threat actors, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP); confidence levels; collection methods; intelligence sharing; and hunting techniques.
• Process improvement: standardizing processes, streamlining operations, integrating tools, and using a single pane of glass.
• Vulnerability scanning: implementing asset discovery, internal vs. external scanning, agent vs. agentless, credentialed vs. non‑credentialed, passive vs. active, static vs. dynamic, and critical infrastructure scanning.
• Assessment tool output: analyzing network scanning, web application scanners, vulnerability scanners, debuggers, multipurpose tools, and cloud infrastructure assessments.
• Vulnerability prioritization: interpreting common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS), validating findings, assessing exploitability, and considering asset value and zero‑day vulnerabilities.
• Mitigation controls: recommending controls for cross‑site scripting (XSS), overflow vulnerabilities, and data poisoning.
• Vulnerability response: explaining compensating controls, patching, configuration management, maintenance windows, exceptions, governance, service‑level objectives (SLOs), secure software development life cycle (SDLC), and threat modeling.
• Attack methodology frameworks: explaining cyber kill chains, diamond model of intrusion analysis, MITRE ATT&CK, Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual (OSSTMM), and OWASP testing guide.
• Incident response activities: performing detection, analysis, containment, eradication, and recovery.
• Incident management life cycle: explaining incident response plans, tools, playbooks, tabletop exercises, training, business continuity (BC), disaster recovery (DR), forensic analysis, and root cause analysis.
• Vulnerability management reporting: explaining compliance reports, action plans, inhibitors to remediation, metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and stakeholder communication.
• Incident response reporting: explaining incident declaration, escalation, reporting, communication, root cause analysis, lessons learned, and metrics and KPIs.