CompTIA Security+ Certification: SY0-401 Exam

"CompTIA Security+ Certification", also known as SY0-401 exam, is a CompTIA Certification. With the complete collection of questions and answers, PrepPDF has assembled to take you through 1790 Q&As to your SY0-401 Exam preparation. In the SY0-401 exam resources, you will cover every field and category in Security+ Certification helping to ready you for your successful CompTIA Certification.

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  • Exam Code: SY0-401
  • Exam Name: CompTIA Security+ Certification
  • Certification Provider: CompTIA
  • Corresponding Certification: Security+
  • Updated: May 26, 2026
  • No. of Questions: 1790 Questions & Answers with Testing Engine
  • Download Limit: Unlimited

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CompTIA Security SY0-401

The SY0-401 exam is part of the CompTIA Security Certification. This exam measures your ability in secure networks, pc, cloud solution for small and big enterprise.

This certification exam is targeted for professional expert who want validate their IT security knowledge and skills. CompTIA Security SY0-401 is a benchmark for best practices in IT security, this certification covers the essential principles for network security and risk management and it is a mandatory step for your IT security career. CompTIA Security SY0-401 exam will verify if professionals have the right skills to secure networks from hackers attacks in cloud computing and on-premis infrastructures and mobile devices too. CompTIA Security meets the ISO 17024 standard and is approved by U.S. Department of Defense to fulfill Directive 8570.01-M requirements. This is a fundamental step in your career advance as obtaining your Security will automatically boost your career because CompTIA Security is a globally recognized credential with certified professionals working in over 147 countries throughout the world. The certification is for administrators, system engineers, functional consultants, partners, and project managers, and developers which want to proof their ability in the Security world. This is a list of covered topics:

  • Summarize risk management best practices
  • Explain the importance of risk related concepts.
  • Given a scenario, select the appropriate solution to establish host security
  • Explain types of wireless attacks
  • Explain types of application attacks
  • Explain network design elements and components.
  • Compare and contrast the function and purpose of authentication services
  • Summarize the security implications of integrating systems and data with third parties.
  • Implement security configuration parameters on network devices and other technologies.
  • Given a scenario, use secure network administration principles.
  • Summarize various types of attacks
  • Explain the importance of application security controls and techniques
  • Given a scenario, use appropriate PKI, certificate management and associated components
  • Given a scenario, select the appropriate authentication, authorization or access control
  • Given a scenario, use appropriate cryptographic methods
  • Given a scenario, use appropriate tools and techniques to discover security threats and vulnerabilities
  • Compare and contrast physical security and environmental controls
  • Explain the importance of security related awareness and training
  • Given a scenario, select the appropriate control to meet the goals of security
  • Given a scenario, implement basic forensic procedures
  • Given a scenario, utilize general cryptography concepts
  • Summarize common incident response procedures.
  • Explain types of malware
  • Given a scenario, implement appropriate risk mitigation strategies.

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CompTIA Security+ Exam Certification Details:

Exam CodeSY0-401
Passing Score750 / 900
Schedule ExamCompTIA Marketplace
Exam NameCompTIA Security+
Sample QuestionsCompTIA Security+ Sample Questions
Duration90 mins
Books / TrainingCompTIA CertMaster for Security+
Exam Price$330 (USD)
Number of Questions90

Reference: https://certification.comptia.org/certifications/security

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CompTIA SY0-401 Exam Syllabus Topics:

TopicDetails
Network Security 20%
Implement security configuration parameters on network devices and other technologies.1.Firewalls
2.Routers
3.Switches
4.Load balancers
5.Proxies
6.Web security gateways
7.VPN concentrators
8.NIDS and NIPS
  • Behavior-based
  • Signature-based
  • Anomaly-based
  • Heuristic
9.Protocol analyzers
10.Spam filter
11.UTM security appliances
  • URL filter
  • Content inspection
  • Malware inspection
12. Web application firewall vs. network firewall
13.Application aware devices
  • Firewalls
  • IPS
  • IDS
  • Proxies

Given a scenario, use secure network administration principles.1. Rule-based management2. Firewall rules
2.VLAN management
3. Secure router configuration
4. Access control lists
5. Port security
6. 802.1x
7. Flood guards
8. Loop protection
9. Implicit deny
10. Network separation
11. Log analysis
12. Unified threat management
Explain network design elements and components.1.DMZ
2. Subnetting
​3.VLAN
4.NAT
5.Remote access
6.Telephony
7.NAC
8.Virtualization
9.Cloud computing
  • PaaS
  • SaaS
  • IaaS
  • Private
  • Public
  • Hybrid
  • Community
10.Layered security/defense in depth
Given a scenario, implement common protocols and services.1.Protocols
  • IPSec
  • SNMP
  • SSH
  • DNS
  • TLS
  • SSL
  • TCP/IP
  • FTPS
  • HTTPS
  • SCP
  • ICMP
  • IPv4
  • IPv6
  • iSCSI
  • Fibre Channel
  • FCoE
  • FTP
  • SFTP
  • TFTP
  • TELNET
  • HTTP
  • NetBIOS
​2.Ports
  • 21
  • 22
  • 25
  • 53
  • 80
  • 110
  • 139
  • 143
  • 443
  • 3389
3.OSI relevance
Given a scenario, troubleshoot security issues related to wireless networking.1. WPA2. WPA2
3.WEP
4. EAP
5. PEAP
6. LEAP
7. MAC filter
8. Disable SSID broadcast
9. TKIP
10. CCMP
11. Antenna placement
12. Power level controls
13. Captive portals
14. Antenna types
15. Site surveys
16. VPN (over open wireless)
Compliance and Operational Security 18%
Explain the importance of risk related concepts.1.Control types
  • Technical
  • Management
  • Operational
2.False positives
3.False negatives
4.Importance of policies in reducing riskPrivacy policy
Acceptable use
Security policy
Mandatory vacations
Job rotation
Separation of duties
Least privilege
5.Risk calculation
  • Likelihood
  • ALE
  • Impact
  • SLE
  • ARO
  • MTTR
  • MTTF
  • MTBF
​6.Quantitative vs. qualitative
7.Vulnerabilities
8.Threat vectors
9.Probability/threat likelihood
10. Risk avoidance, transference, acceptance, mitigation, deterrence
11. Risks associated with cloud computing and virtualization
12. Recovery time objective and recovery point objective

Summarize the security implications of integrating systems and data with third parties.1. On-boarding/off-boarding business partners
2.Social media networks and/or applications
3.Interoperability agreements
  • SLA
  • BPA
  • MOU
  • ISA
4.Privacy considerations
5. Risk awareness
6. Unauthorized data sharing
7. Data ownership
8. Data backups
9. Follow security policy and procedures
10. Review agreement requirements to verify compliance and performance standards
Given a scenario, implement appropriate risk mitigation strategies.1. Change management2. Incident management
3. User rights and permissions reviews
4. Perform routine audits
5. Enforce policies and procedures to prevent data loss or theft
6.Enforce technology controls
  • Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
Given a scenario, implement basic forensic procedures.1. Order of volatility2. Capture system image
3. Network traffic and logs
4. Capture video
5. Record time offset
6. Take hashes
7. Screenshots
8. Witnesses
9. Track man hours and expense
10. Chain of custody
11. Big Data analysis
Summarize common incident response procedures.1. Preparation2. Incident identification
3. Escalation and notification
4. Mitigation steps
5. Lessons learned
6. Reporting
7.Recovery/reconstitution procedures
8.First responder
9. Incident isolation
  • Quarantine
  • Device remova
​10.Data breach
11.Damage and loss control
Explain the importance of security related awareness and training.1.Security policy training and procedures
2.Role-based training
3.Personally identifiable information
4.Information classification
  • High
  • Medium
  • Low
  • Confidential
  • Private
  • Public
5.Data labeling, handling and disposal
6. Compliance with laws, best practices and standards
7.User habits
  • Password behaviors
  • Data handling
  • Clean desk policies
  • Prevent tailgating
  • Personally owned devices
8. New threats and new security trends/alerts
  • New viruses
  • Phishing attacks
  • Zero-day exploits
9.Use of social networking and P2P
10. Follow up and gather training metrics to validate compliance and security posture

Compare and contrast physical security and environmental controls.1.Environmental controls
  • HVAC
  • Fire suppression
  • EMI shielding
  • Hot and cold aisles
  • Environmental monitoring
  • Temperature and humidity controls
2.Physical security
  • Hardware locks
  • Mantraps
  • Video surveillance
  • Fencing
  • Proximity readers
  • Access list
  • Proper lighting
  • Signs
  • Guards
  • Barricades
  • Biometrics
  • Protected distribution (cabling)
  • Alarms
  • Motion detection
3.Control types
  • Deterrent
  • Preventive
  • Detective
  • Compensating
  • Technical
  • Administrative

Summarize risk management best practices.1.Business continuity concepts
  • Business impact analysis
  • Identification of critical systems and components
  • Removing single points of failure
  • Business continuity planning and testing
  • Risk assessment
  • Continuity of operations
  • Disaster recovery
  • IT contingency planning
  • Succession planning
  • High availability
  • Redundancy
  • Tabletop exercises
2.Fault tolerance
  • Hardware
  • RAID
  • Clustering
  • Load balancing
  • Servers
3.Disaster recovery concepts
  • Backup plans/policies
  • Backup execution/frequency
  • Cold site
  • Hot site
  • Warm site

Given a scenario, select the appropriate control to meet the goals of security.1.Confidentiality
  • Encryption
  • Access controls
  • Steganography
2.Integrity
  • Hashing
  • Digital signatures
  • Certificates
  • Non-repudiation
3.Availability
  • Redundancy
  • Fault tolerance
  • Patching
4.Safety
  • Fencing
  • Lighting
  • Locks
  • CCTV
  • Escape plans
  • Drills
  • Escape routes
  • Testing controls


Threats and Vulnerabilities 20%
Explain types of malware.1. Adware2. Virus
3. Spyware
4. Trojan
5. Rootkits
6. Backdoors
7. Logic bomb
8. Botnets
9.Ransomware
10. Polymorphic malware
11. Armored virus
Summarize various types of attacks.1. Man-in-the-middle2. DDoS
3. DoS
4. Replay
5. Smurf attack
6. Spoofing
7. Spam
8. Phishing
9.Spim
​10. Vishing
11. Spear phishing
12. Xmas attack
13.Pharming
14. Privilege escalation
15. Malicious insider threat
16. DNS poisoning and ARP poisoning
17 Transitive access
18. Client-side attacks
19.Password attacks
  • Brute force
  • Dictionary attacks
  • Hybrid
  • Birthday attacks
  • Rainbow tables
20.Typo squatting/URL hijacking
21.Watering hole attack
Summarize social engineering attacks and the associated effectiveness with each attack.1. Shoulder surfing2. Dumpster diving
3. Tailgating
4. Impersonation
5. Hoaxes
6.Whaling
7.Vishing
8.Principles (reasons for effectiveness)
  • Authority
  • Intimidation
  • Consensus/social proof
  • Scarcity
  • Urgency
  • Familiarity/liking
  • Trust
Explain types of wireless attacks.1. Rogue access points2. Jamming/interference
3. Evil twin
4. War driving
5. Bluejacking
​6. Bluesnarfing
7. War chalking
8. IV attack
9. Packet sniffing
10. Near field communication
11. Replay attacks
12.WEP/WPA attacks
13.WPS attacks
Explain types of application attacks.1. Cross-site scripting2. SQL injection
3.LDAP injection
4. XML injection
5. Directory traversal/command injection
6. Buffer overflow
7. Integer overflow
8. Zero-day
9. Cookies and attachments
10. Locally Shared Objects (LSOs)
11. Flash cookies
12. Malicious add-ons
​13. Session hijacking
14. Header manipulation
15. Arbitrary code execution/remote code execution
Analyze a scenario and select the appropriate type of mitigation and deterrent techniques.1.Monitoring system logs
  • Event logs
  • Audit logs
  • Security logs
  • Access logs
2.Hardening
  • Disabling unnecessary services
  • Protecting management interfaces and applications
  • Password protection
  • Disabling unnecessary accounts
3.Network security
  • MAC limiting and filtering
  • 802.1x
  • Disabling unused interfaces and unused application service ports
  • Rogue machine detection
4.Security posture
  • Initial baseline configuration
  • Continuous security monitoring
  • Remediation
5.Reporting
  • Alarms
  • Alerts
  • Trends
6.Detection controls vs. prevention controls
  • IDS vs. IPS
  • Camera vs. guard




Given a scenario, use appropriate tools and techniques to discover security threats and vulnerabilities.1. Interpret results of security assessment tools
2.Tools
  • Protocol analyzer
  • Vulnerability scanner
  • Honeypots
  • Honeynets
  • Port scanner
  • Passive vs. active tools
  • Banner grabbing
3.Risk calculations
  • Threat vs. likelihood
4.Assessment types
  • Risk
  • Threat
  • Vulnerability
5.Assessment technique
  • Baseline reporting
  • Code review
  • Determine attack surface
  • Review architecture
  • Review designs

Explain the proper use of penetration testing versus vulnerability scanning.1.Penetration testing
  • Verify a threat exists
  • Bypass security controls
  • Actively test security controls
  • Exploiting vulnerabilities
2.Vulnerability scanning
  • Passively testing security controls
  • Identify vulnerability
  • Identify lack of security controls
  • Identify common misconfigurations
  • Intrusive vs. non-intrusive
  • Credentialed vs. non-credentialed
  • False positive
3.Black box
4. White box
5.Gray box

Application, Data and Host Security 15%
Explain the importance of application security controls and techniques.1.Fuzzing
2.Secure coding concepts
  • Error and exception handling
  • Input validation
3. Cross-site scripting prevention
4. Cross-site Request Forgery (XSRF) prevention
5. Application configuration baseline (proper settings)
6. Application hardening
7. Application patch management
8. NoSQL databases vs. SQL databases
9. Server-side vs. client-side validation
Summarize mobile security concepts and technologies.1.Device security
  • Full device encryption
  • Remote wiping
  • Lockout
  • Screen locks
  • GPS
  • Application control
  • Storage segmentation
  • Asset tracking
  • Inventory control
  • Mobile device management
  • Device access control
  • Removable storage
  • Disabling unused features
2.Application security
  • Key management
  • Credential management
  • Authentication
  • Geo-tagging
  • Encryption
  • Application whitelisting
  • Transitive trust/authentication
3.BYOD concerns
  • Data ownership
  • Support ownership
  • Patch management
  • Antivirus management
  • Forensics
  • Privacy
  • On-boarding/off-boarding
  • Adherence to corporate policies
  • User acceptance
  • Architecture/infrastructure considerations
  • Legal concerns
  • Acceptable use policy
  • On-board camera/video

Given a scenario, select the appropriate solution to establish host security.1. Operating system security and settings
2.OS hardening
3.Anti-malware
  • Antivirus
  • Anti-spam
  • Anti-spyware
  • Pop-up blockers
4. Patch management
5. Whitelisting vs. blacklisting applications
6. Trusted OS
7. Host-based firewalls
8. Host-based intrusion detection
9. Hardware security
  • Cable locks
  • Safe
  • Locking cabinets
10.Host software baselining
11.Virtualization
  • Snapshots
  • Patch compatibility
  • Host availability/elasticity
  • Security control testing
  • Sandboxing

Implement the appropriate controls to ensure data security.1. Cloud storage2. SAN
3. Handling Big Data
4. Data encryption
  • Full disk
  • Database
  • Individual files
  • Removable media
  • Mobile devices
5.Hardware-based encryption devices
  • TPM
  • HSM
  • USB encryption
  • Hard drive
6. Data in transit, data at rest, data in use
7. Permissions/ACL
8.Data policies
  • Wiping
  • isposing
  • Retention
  • Storage


Compare and contrast alternative methods to mitigate security risks in static environments.1.Environments
  • SCADA
  • Embedded (printer, smart TV, HVAC control)
  • Android
  • iOS
  • Mainframe
  • Game consoles
  • In-vehicle computing systems
2.Methods
  • Network segmentation
  • Security layers
  • Application firewalls
  • Manual updates
  • Firmware version control
  • Wrappers
  • Control redundancy and diversity
Access Control and Identity Management 15%
Compare and contrast the function and purpose of authentication services.1. RADIUS2. TACACS+
3.Kerberos
4.LDAP
5. XTACACS
6. SAML
7. Secure LDAP
Given a scenario, select the appropriate authentication, authorization or access control.1. Identification vs. authentication vs. authorization2. Authorization
  • Least privilege
  • Separation of duties
  • ACLs
  • Mandatory access
  • Discretionary access
  • Rule-based access control
  • Role-based access control
  • Time of day restrictions
3.Authentication
  • Tokens
  • Common access card
  • Smart card
  • Multifactor authentication
  • TOTP
  • HOTP
  • CHAP
  • PAP
  • Single sign-on
  • Access control
  • Implicit deny
  • Trusted OS
4.Authentication factors
  • Something you are
  • Something you have
  • Something you know
  • Somewhere you are
  • Something you do
5.Identification
  • Biometrics
  • Personal identification verification card
  • Username
6.Federation
7.Transitive trust/authentication



Install and configure security controls when performing account management, based on best practices.1. Mitigate issues associated with users with multiple account/ roles and/or shared accounts
2.Account policy enforcement
  • Credential management
  • Group policy
  • Password complexity
  • Expiration
  • Recovery
  • Disablement
  • Lockout
  • Password history
  • Password reuse
  • Password length
  • Generic account prohibition
3. Group-based privileges
4. User-assigned privileges
5. User access reviews
6. Continuous monitoring
Cryptography 12%
Given a scenario, utilize general cryptography concepts.1. Symmetric vs. asymmetric2. Session keys
3. In-band vs. out-of-band key exchange
4. Fundamental differences and encryption methods
  • Block vs. stream
5. Transport encryption
6. Non-repudiation
7. Hashing
8. Key escrow
9. Steganography
10. Digital signatures11. Use of proven technologies
12. Elliptic curve and quantum cryptography
13. Ephemeral key
14. Perfect forward secrecy
Given a scenario, use appropriate cryptographic methods.1. WEP vs. WPA/WPA2 and pre-shared key2. MD5
3.SHA 
4.RIPEMD
5. AES
6. DES
7.3DES
8.HMAC
9. RSA
10.Diffie-Hellman
11.RC4
12. One-time pads
13. NTLM
14.NTLMv2
15. Blowfish
16. PGP/GPG
17. Twofish
18. DHE
19. ECDHE
20. CHAP
21. PAP
22. Comparative strengths and performance of algorithms
23. Use of algorithms/protocols with transport encryption
  • SSL
  • TLS
  • IPSec
  • SSH
  • HTTPS
24.Cipher suites
  • Strong vs. weak ciphers
25.Key stretching
  • PBKDF2
  • Bcrypt

Given a scenario, use appropriate PKI, certificate management and associated components.1. Certificate authorities and digital certificates
  • CA
  • CRLs
  • OCSP
  • CSR
2. PKI
3. Recovery agent
4. Public key
5. Private key
6. Registration
7. Key escrow
8. Trust models

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