So I passed CompTIA SecurityX (CASP+) in just over two months, on top of a full-time IC design job, and naturally people had questions.

“What stimulants got you through this?”
“Did you use AI to fool the proctor?”

For the record, here’s my official statement: coffee is the single greatest drink ever invented, and my cat sat the exam on my behalf. She’s very proud of her new certification. I was just there for emotional support and to refill the coffee.

The Actual Truth (Boring Version)

No shortcuts, no substances, no AI proctor trickery — just a lot of late nights covering advanced security architecture, threat hunting, governance and risk management, and cryptography, while a cat judged my flashcard technique from across the room.

Plot Twist: Defense in Depth, Except Not

Here’s the ironic part. While studying “defense in depth,” I discovered my own home security camera was possibly livestreaming to anyone on Earth with the right link. So if you’ve seen my cat wandering around at 2am looking supremely unbothered, no, you didn’t see that.

Fixing my own camera is now officially higher priority than the certificate on my wall.

Okay, But Seriously — How I Actually Studied

I don’t have real industry experience in cybersecurity, but I do have a Linux background, and my electrical/telecommunications engineering roots meant a lot of the networking concepts weren’t totally new. I also did a lot of independent research at home.

For SecurityX, I studied from Dion Training materials, search engines, and AI, but honestly relied most on analytical thinking. A lot of questions came down to reading carefully, thinking about the real-world scenario, and asking myself: if I were the person who actually had to build this, what would I do?

Most questions ask for “the best” or “the most effective” solution with operational efficiency in mind — which doesn’t mean the other options are wrong, just not the most suitable for that specific scenario. Sometimes the technically “best” fix isn’t the right answer either, because the question is only asking you to mitigate the problem, not fully solve it.

Just my personal take — your mileage may vary. 😄

Lessons Learned

• Coffee: still undefeated.
• Cats: surprisingly bad at multiple-choice exams, suspiciously good at looking qualified.
• Cameras: check your default credentials before you get the security cert, not after.

Onward to the next chapter of the cybersecurity journey. 🔐

If you want the method in one phrase: cat-supervised exam prep protocol. She contributes nothing and takes full credit, which is also how most certifications work.