Join us for the CIN TTT series covering the next release of the CompTIA CySA+ certification. Our guest instructor, @Nick Pierce , will lead us through the eight-session series covering the exam objectives and provide hands on examples as you strengthen your cybersecurity analysis skills. We will discuss how to cover the content with students and suggest various labs to let students gain hands-on experience as they prepare for certification.

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.

Skills covered in this series:

• 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.

What: CIN TTT Series CySA+ V4
When: June 8 through July 1, 2026, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm CT
Who: Nick Pierce
Where: ON24
Register Here
(Please note, registering will automatically register you for all 8 sessions. You will be able to add each session to your calendar on from the confirmation email.)

Today I passed the CompTIA SecAI+ (CY0-001). Thank you for the opportunity to learn through the CIN TTT Series and @Stephen Schneiter.

Join us for the CIN TTT series covering the new CompTIA AI Fundamentals Compcert course. Our guest instructor, @Jill West, will lead us through the four-session series covering the course objectives and provide hands on examples as you strengthen your AI skills. We will discuss how to cover the content with students and suggest various labs to let students gain hands-on experience using AI safely, effectively, and responsibly.

AI Fundamentals is a credit-bearing, hands-on course designed specifically for the academic market to help institutions teach students how to understand and use artificial intelligence safely, effectively, and responsibly. This three-credit course equips non-technical learners with foundational AI literacy and practical skills that are increasingly required across academic programs and entry-level careers, regardless of major.

What: CIN TTT Series: AI Fundamentals
When: July 13th - July 23rd, 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM CT
Who: Jill West, Professor, Georgia Northwestern Technical College
Where: ON24
Register Here

Hi, I hope topics like this are allowed in here if not please kindly delete this.

So I missed my online exam schedule. In my defense I'm in the part of the Philippines that got hit hard by a recent earthquake, we are still experiencing after shocks and intermittent power/internet loss. It was a free voucher from the TTT-series but its still a waste that I was not able to take it. I already contacted Pearson Vue hoping they'd consider my situation.

Im just here to ask if there's anything else that I could do to help with my situation
Id appreciate your suggestions thank you.

My Training partner is not able to get this. pls help for suggestion

From now on ward this is where i will be posting Birthday Celebrant

Hi All,

It has been a while since I used CertMaster, and I'm a little bit confused as to the inclusion/integration of the laboratory aspect. I can distinctly remember being able to launch Virtual Laboratory environments in CertMaster Learn for both A+ and Security+, but much has changed since then (I think this was around 2022, give or take a few years). I've been looking at the product pages and even used the chatbot, but can't get the answer I'm looking for.

Basically, my company is looking into these Certifications:

1. A+ (both cores)
2. Network+
3. Security+
4. Server+
5. Tech+

If we bought just the CertMaster product, which ones would also have an integrated laboratory? For example, in the product page of Network+, it has the following bullet point

• Extensive practice: Engage with simulated labs, assessments, and questions to reinforce your learning.

So I would assume Network+ CertMaster Learn does have an integrated lab, and there is no need to purchase the standalone laboratory. Is this the same case for the others listed?

Looking for guidance for use of Competency Exams for CertMaster Perform courses. Are the Competency Assessments certs for courses like Pentest, CySA, Sec+, etc.. used by individuals or employers?

There is also practice exams in the courses that seem just as good if not a better tool for the student's to gauge their own level of preparedness before taking an actual certification exam.

What is the progress of Security 8+

Hi Everyone!

I was not able to attend the TTT series for SecAI+ on live so I've been following on demand using the webinar sessions as well as the material in there. I noted something and is the access to certmaster is not longer in the links and @Stephen Schneiter mentioned people will receive the access code after completing the first session even for "on demand" learners.

I've already completed session 1 to 3 (started on Jun 16/2026) and haven't receive anything yet on my email. Does the certmaster access have some type of "valid time"? like, you must access or complete the training up to 15 days of finishing the live sessions?

I appreciate your comments.

So... I've had a CompTIA SecurityX exam voucher sitting in my account for quite a while. I must have rescheduled this test a dozen times because of work commitments, family schedules, not enough time to study, kids screaming in the background, and life in general.

Last night, while the kids were outside following the classic rule of "come home when the streetlights come on," I headed to my home office testing center and finally sat for the exam.

I felt calm, focused, and confident. But I knew that Linux simulation question was coming, the one you can't go back to. It showed up around question 10, and honestly... I completely botched it. At that moment, I was convinced the exam had beaten me. After all, it had defeated me back in February 2025 and my older version recently expired.

I pushed forward, finished the remaining questions, went back through my flagged items, and even had some fun working through the Performance Based Questions (PBQs).

Then came the infamous 13 question survey. If you've ever taken a CompTIA exam, you know exactly what I'm talking about! I clicked Submit, and unlike most CompTIA exams, there was no immediate pass or fail message. I walked away wondering where I stood.

This morning, I was texting my friend Nancy, who is a huge part of my Facebook community, and I was telling her all about my experience. I was convinced I hadn't passed.

Then... I received an email from CompTIA congratulating me and asking me to accept my digital badge.

Wait... what?!

I logged into the CompTIA portal, pulled up my score report, and there it was.

PASS!

The biggest lesson I took away from this experience is simple. Don't doubt yourself. One tough question, or even one tough exam experience, doesn't define the outcome. Set a goal, commit to it, and keep moving forward. Sometimes the biggest obstacle standing in your way is your own self-doubt.

Today I passed the CompTIA Data+ (DA0-002). Thank you for the opportunity to learn with CIN TTT Series: Data+ V2.

Nous souhaitons être de formateurs COMPTIA; Quels sont les prérequis ?

First, apologies for taking so darned long to get this back up. I had to search around for a compiled list from the v1 cache - but landed on something I had rebuilt from Dec 2025. But, I think it's time to get it put back up.

So, here it is...

The Black Fedora Cyber Cache v2​

Go check it out and if you have a contribution for the Cache, send me a DM and I'll get it added.

Enjoy!

Rick

Join us for the new CompTIA Expansion Series certification launch for AutoOps+ V1! Our guest instructor, @Tyler Harris, will lead us through the six-session series covering the exam objectives and provide hands on examples as you strengthen your DevOps skills pertaining to cybersecurity. We will discuss how to cover the content with students and suggest various labs to let students gain hands-on experience as they prepare for certification.

CompTIA AutoOps+ validates your skills to automate, secure, and optimize IT operations across cloud and hybrid environments. As part of CompTIA’s new Expansion Series, AutoOps+ is designed to augment your core IT competencies with specialized expertise in automation, scripting, and infrastructure management. Gain hands-on experience to bridge traditional IT roles with modern DevOps practices.

What: CIN TTT Series: AutoOps+ V1
When: June 23rd - July 9th, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM CT
Who: Tyler Harris, Instructor, ARIMA Consulting, LLC
Where: ON24
Register Here

OK CINers. I'll confess. I build and distribute flashcards to my students. I've been using Quizlet for years. In 1-on-1 engagements, it has always worked well. It's always handy to have a flashcard deck available for small-group training so students can interact, compete, and demonstrate what they've learned. I've found that I sometimes have to monitor the level of competitiveness in some small group settings. When I have too many Type-A personalities, I'll team people up (I pick the teams) to diffuse that. The problem is that some of my students have started distributing my flashcards. Without asking, and after I asked them not to. Quizlet has no DRM solution to limit sharing. And if that wasn't bad enough, somebody tried selling one of my decks, and Quizlet sent me a 'That's Not Allowed' notice.

What tools are other CINers using for flashcards? I've heard of Anki. I have a friend who uses and swears by Notion. Thoughts? Comments?

I passed CompTIA SecAI+ with a perfect score. The exam shows you the score right after you finish, but the official report only says “Pass.” My previous highest CompTIA score was an 885 on Security+ back in 2014, so this one felt good. I used CertMaster through our academic partnership, which also covered the voucher. I also did the TryHackMe AI Path, and that combination made a big difference. SecAI+ is not something I would recommend approaching only through the exam outline or a few theory notes. I have seen people in the forums say they studied just from the outline, and yes, maybe you can pass that way, but you missed sooooooo much approaching the exam just as another bunch of questions you go and try to wing. In the real world that won't help, and the bigger question is: can you actually do what the certification says you should be able to do in real life?

That is where CertMaster shines. It is not just a bank of questions or a traditional PBQ-style experience. The best part of the preparation was the applied work. The 19 activities put you in scenarios where you have to compare AI types, work with prompt engineering, process data, conduct threat model analysis, build defensive policies, handle access requests, apply data masking and anonymization, audit AI behavior, analyze AI life cycle decisions, work through model inversion or theft, complete post-incident analysis, perform AI-assisted vulnerability analysis, identify deepfakes, review AI-assisted approvals, design governance structures, conduct risk assessments, create compliance reports, and analyze an organization’s AI structure. All activities are done via interaction with the CompTIA AI agents that guide you through the process like you have to do in real life. Then another AI agent corrects your work, gives you feedback and ask you if you want to try again

The 17 live labs were even more valuable because they made the material feel connected to actual security work. I worked through prompt engineering and bias detection, prompt design and optimization, RAG solutions, data integrity, AI threat analysis using public resources, AI threat modeling frameworks, Azure OpenAI deployment, structured prompt templates, securing Azure OpenAI, data sanitization for AI analysis, AI log analysis, prompt injection testing, AI-assisted attack vector identification, AI-assisted scripting, documentation transformation, and workflow automation. That is not just “study material.” That is the kind of work that helps you understand how AI systems are built, where they break, how they expose risk, and how security controls have to be applied.

The TryHackMe AI Path helped from a different angle. It gave me a more hands-on, attacker-and-defender view of AI security. You learn how AI-enabled systems behave, then you perform prompt injection, jailbreak, indirect prompt injection, make an agent leak or misuse information, poison the data of a model, perform threat modeling and get to a point where you change the application to the point where the system you are probing is no longer just deterministic code. That part matters because AI security is not only about knowing vocabulary. You have to understand behavior, context, trust boundaries, controls, and failure modes and actually perform AI pentesting.

That is the real value of SecAI+. Passing is nice. But the goal should not be just to collect another certification. Using CertMaster and THM AI Path will help you walk away with practical skills. For us; educators, this is exactly the kind of material we need to bring into the classroom. Students do not need only AI definitions. They need to understand how AI systems are designed, how they fail, how they are attacked, and how they are defended. I just received access to the Auto OPS+ Cert Master and it's the same amazing methodology with a lot of labs and AI powered activities. SecOT+ will be on the same line as informed to me by one of the SME's that also created the Cert Master and teaches OT Pentesting, OSINT and OT Fundamentals, workshops that I took. If you are looking for any of those 3 certs please, use Cert Master or take trainings, you will kill the tests.

Very happy with this one.

771/750

Great exam overall. Passed the 401 in 2018. This will be my 2nd Trifecta. Passed A+ and Network+ in 2023
This is now a Course I can teach at my school using Testout In the future!

Super excited. Cysa+ 003 next up

Just finished the AI TTT ondemand, Nick Pierce did a great job. Really believe this is going to be a cornerstone of IT going forward.
If you are an instructor the TTT videos are a must see. Lots of good information and ideas for teaching and engaging your students

Video training

Glad to be part of the team that is helping these students to succeed:
https://www.comptia.org/en/resource...tan-cc/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social

Was notified this morning, that I passed the AutoOps+ Beta Exam. This was enjoyable to prepare for and take. I hope others get positive feedback as well today.

Has anyone ever posted a youtube video for your students on how to navigate a CompTIA lab and receive a notice it was removed due to copyright violation?

Dear fellow instructors,

I am reaching out on behalf of Youth Development Project SA (YDP SA) – an accredited QCTO/SAQA training provider in South Africa.
Company Website

We are expanding our CompTIA course delivery in 2026 and are looking to connect with active CompTIA CTT+ certified trainers (or those with equivalent CompTIA instructional experience) who would be interested in partnering with us or being considered for training opportunities.

Specifically, we are looking for trainers who can deliver any of the following CompTIA courses:

• ITF+, A+ for Cybersecurity, Network+,
• Security+, CySA+, PenTest+, SecurityX (formerly CASP)
• SecAI+ (Expansion Series)
• AI Essentials Series: AI for Marketing, AI for Sales, AI Agent Essentials, AI Help Desk Essentials

If you are a qualified CompTIA instructor, please email my team at: [email protected]