My Azure Security Engineer Associate Az-500 Journey
Hi Everyone,
First things first, I hope all of you and your families are safe during this COVID-19 pandemic. Stay Home, Stay Safe and please take care of your loved ones!!
This is my first ever blog, It describes the journey I went through while studying for “Microsoft Certified Azure Security Engineer Associate Az-500”. It will cover how it was started, and what challenges I faced during the course. It outlines my personal experience and therefore is very subjective. I wont be promoting any courses. However, I would be listing the resources which were helpful for me in this journey. I wont go into any details about the Az-500 exam due to restrictions set by Microsoft. I’ve structured this in such a way that it gives the advice that I wish I had gotten when I first started the certification.
So lets begin…
About me:
I’m have 4+ years of hands on experience in AWS and Azure and I have already completed the AZ-900 Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certification. I was pretty confident that my basics were clear. However, I wanted to fill the gaps I had in my understanding of “Cloud Security”. Hence wanted to go for Az-500 as it convers security aspects of all major services in azure.
I always believe that for comprehensive learning following criteria must be met:
Learning — Understand the topic and its concepts
Implementation — Hands on experience, implementing the topics that were learned
Innovation — Apply the knowledge gained to innovate at your organization/personal project to solve real time challenges
Certification — Gaining a certification as it’s a industry recognized one (I won’t get into a debate if a certification is really necessary, however I believe that if done with an intent of learning then a certification does help)
Knowledge transfer — Share the knowledge and the experiences gained with the infosec community, so that it helps others as well
Getting started:
Look at the “Skills measured” section as it gives the topics (exam syllabus) in detail. If you are someone who likes to read then you can refer “Online-free” learning path. It has the theory and a detailed hands on lab details as well .If you are someone who likes video tutorial format then you can refer Alan Rodrigues course in Udemy it is really good.
As I am the video tutorial person, it took me 4 weeks with almost 4–5 hrs per day to complete the tutorial and make notes. However I wanted to get more hands experience on it so I did the labs present in Microsoft Github learning page.
For practice test I have used Whizlabs practice tests. I scored around 80% in 3 tests, looked at the questions where I went wrong, mapped them to the topics and revisited them again. After a few days I did the practice tests again and was scoring(scored) 96%. That boosted my confidence.
Exam day:
I was confident before the day of my exam. On the D-day I woke at 8:00 AM, took a shower, had breakfast and revised some concepts as my exam was at11:00 Am. I logged in at 10.15, completed the verification formalities and was waiting for proctor to start the exam. The exam started exactly on time.
First set of questions were case study, I carefully read them and started attempting the questions, I gained some confidence and was ready for the second section. Even that I completed fairly quickly and reviewed the questions twice. In the last section I got another set of questions which once submitted cannot be reviewed. I utilized the complete time and clicked on final submit
Yahoo!! I passed within an hour received the official congratulatory email. I was elated seeing the result
Key take away:
- Understand what is required in the exam. look at the syllabus
- Do a basic research and collect your resources that you would like to follow. Categorize them into theory, hands on labs and mock tests
- Once resources are finalized, stick to them
- Just create a free account in Azure and get started. Do multiple hands on labs
- Be part of a study group and make sure to surround yourself with like-minded people to propel your success.
Happy Learning !!!!
