CompTIA SecurityX (CAS-005) Practice Exam

CompTIA SecurityX (CAS-005) Practice Exam

About CompTIA SecurityX (CAS-005) Practice Exam

CompTIA SecurityX (formerly CASP+) certification has been developed for cybersecurity professionals seeking to validate their expertise in designing, implementing, and managing secure enterprise environments. This certification ensures that candidates are equipped with the technical skills required to protect organizations against evolving cyber threats while maintaining compliance with industry standards.

Who should take the exam?

CompTIA SecurityX is an advanced cybersecurity certification designed for security architects and senior security engineers responsible for enhancing an organization's cybersecurity posture. Unlike management-focused certifications, SecurityX is hands-on and performance-based, ensuring professionals can design, implement, and integrate secure solutions across complex environments.

Exam Details

• Exam Code: CAS-005
• Number of Questions: Up to 90
• Question Types: Multiple-choice and performance-based
• Duration: 165 minutes
• Recommended Experience:
• Minimum of 10 years of IT experience
• At least 5 years of broad, hands-on IT security experience
• Passing Criteria: Pass/fail (no scaled score)

Key Skills Validated

The CompTIA SecurityX certification confirms expertise in the following areas:

Security Architecture

• Develop enterprise-wide security architectures, including zero-trust frameworks.
• Design and implement advanced security solutions for cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments.

Security Operations

• Utilize automation, monitoring, and detection tools to enhance security operations.
• Implement proactive incident response strategies and digital forensics analysis.

Governance, Risk, and Compliance

• Ensure regulatory compliance with frameworks such as CMMC, PCI-DSS, SOX, HIPAA, GDPR, FISMA, NIST, and CCPA.
• Apply risk management strategies to improve enterprise security resilience.

Security Engineering and Cryptography

• Integrate cryptographic technologies for secure enterprise-wide communication.
• Configure security controls for endpoints, cloud systems, and hybrid networks.

Career Opportunities

The CompTIA SecurityX certification opens doors to senior-level cybersecurity roles, including:

• Security Architect
• Cybersecurity Engineer
• SOC Manager
• Cyber Risk Analyst
• Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

Course Outline

The CompTIA SecurityX (CAS-005) Exam covers the following topics - 

Domain 1 - Governance, risk, and compliance (20%)

• Security program documentation: policies, procedures, standards, and guidelines.
• Program management: training (phishing, security, privacy), communication, reporting, and RACI matrix.
• Frameworks: COBIT, ITIL, etc.
• Configuration management: asset life cycle, CMDB, and inventory.
• GRC tools: mapping, automation, and compliance tracking.
• Data governance: production, development, testing, and QA.
• Risk management: impact analysis, risk assessment (quantitative vs. qualitative), third-party risk, confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
• Threat modeling: actor characteristics, attack patterns, and frameworks (ATT&CK, CAPEC, STRIDE).
• Attack surface: architecture reviews, data flows, and trust boundaries.
• Compliance strategies: industry-specific standards (PCI DSS, ISO/IEC 27000).
• Security frameworks: NIST, CSF, CSA, and others.

Domain 2 - Security architecture (27%)

• Cloud capabilities: CASB (API-based, proxy-based), shadow IT detection, shared responsibility model, CI/CD pipeline, Terraform, Ansible, container security, orchestration, and serverless workloads.
• Cloud data security: data exposure, leakage, remanence, insecure storage, and encryption keys.
• Cloud control strategies: proactive, detective, and preventative controls; customer-to-cloud connectivity, service integration, and continuous authorization.
• Network architecture: segmentation, microsegmentation, VPN, always-on VPN, and API integration.
• Security boundaries: asset identification, management, attestation, data perimeters, and secure zones.
• Deperimeterization: SASE, SD-WAN, and software-defined networking.
• Zero trust concepts: defining subject-object relationships.

Domain 3 - Security engineering (31%)

• Automation: scripting (PowerShell, Bash, Python), event triggers, IaC, cloud APIs, generative AI, containerization, patching, SOAR, and workflow automation.
• Vulnerability management: scanning, reporting, and SCAP (OVAL, XCCDF, CPE, CVE, CVSS).
• Advanced cryptography: PQC, key stretching, homomorphic encryption, forward secrecy, and hardware acceleration.
• Cryptographic use cases: data at rest, in transit, and in use; secure email, blockchain, privacy, compliance, and certificate-based authentication.
• Cryptographic techniques: tokenization, code signing, cryptographic erase, digital signatures, hashing, and symmetric/asymmetric cryptography.

Domain 4 - Security operations (22%)

• Monitoring and data analysis: SIEM (event parsing, retention, false positives/negatives), aggregate analysis (correlation, prioritization, trends), and behavior baselines (network, systems, users).
• Vulnerabilities and attack surface: injection, XSS, insecure configurations, outdated software, and weak ciphers; mitigations include input validation, patching, encryption, and defense-in-depth.
• Threat hunting:  internal intelligence (honeypots, UBA), external intelligence (OSINT, dark web, ISACs), TIPs, IoC sharing (STIX, TAXII), and rule-based languages (Sigma, YARA, Snort).
• Incident response: malware analysis (sandboxing, IoC extraction, code stylometry), reverse engineering, metadata analysis, data recovery, and root cause analysis.