I struggled, but defended my AWS Security Specialty qualification in August 2025.
Let me share my experience of taking the exam.
I have held the qualification for 6 years, during which I passed 2 exams – initial certification and renewal. August 2025 was due for a second renewal and the third test.
I thought I’d have it easier this time. I kept all my prep notes from the previous exams, and the exam territory is well familiar to me. I’ve also learned many more things about AWS and gained more hands-on AWS experience.
However, I have built fair amount of fatigue preparing for GCP CSE and GCP PCA exams this year. Prepping for a third exam in a row was a tiring task.
Last time I used Adrian Cantrill’s preparation course, and it was good quality. Not only he teaches how to pass the exam, but he also teaches AWS and security overall, which is useful for people newish to the topic. Check it out here: learn.cantrill.io I am not affiliated – it is a genuine recommendation.
This time, though, in line with my GCP exam experience – I stuck with the official training plan. The path is 42 hours long, but 25 of these hours are Cloud Quest. The idea of playing the game and “enter a virtual city and choose a pre-defined role like “Security Specialist” turned me off, so I completely skipped it. Was it a mistake? Should I take control over a virtual doll and move around in a virtual city to meet other virtual dolls and talk to them? Please tell me if you know.
The other 17 hours of the plan felt doable and not too much work. It would be a relief after extensive GCP preparation.
The official training was not bad – I appreciated it was delivered by a real person, not AI text-to-speech machine. However, it just scratched the surface. There are free and paid parts of it, and the paid subscription is cheap, you can take it just for a few months. There are only few labs in the plan, and they feature much less hand-holding compared to GCP labs.
The most useful part of the official training plan is the official practice exam. It gives you very good indication of the real exam difficulty. When I took it, I could not believe how hard it was. Walls of text in questions, walls of text in answers, just to read and understand what is being asked was already a challenge. By the question of 40 of 65 I was completely spent, and I could barely read anymore. I would move my eyes across lines of text over and over and force myself to comprehend what I was reading.
The practice exam gives you the right answers and justification why the other answers are incorrect. It was disappointing to find several mistakes in it, which I have reported.
I hoped that the real exam would be better and simpler. Oh boy, it was better … but not simpler. The actual exam questions were definitely clearer. However, there was still a lot of reading, and the scenarios in the questions were still complex.
I am not allowed to disclose or disseminate the content of the exam or testing materials, so let me give you just general feelings:
What I struggled the most is how they combine of several questions into one. There would be 3 nuances related to AWS security, and they would combine all 3 in one question. They then throw 4-6 options at you, each option with different variations of different nuances, some overlapping. You’d have to play a OR, AND, XOR logic a lot. If you know 2 nuances well enough, but not sure about the 3rd one – you will fail to answer the whole question. Instead of 65 triple-questions it would be easier to have 195 single questions… or maybe it would be too easy?
There were few troubleshooting questions with an error message and potential causes. The error message itself would be not descriptive enough, and the potential causes all plausible. I don’t know all the error messages by heart, and I don’t think anyone does, but I felt that to answer that question you’d need to have experience of dealing with that error before. Perhaps these questions were part of the non-scored portion of the exam. They have warned there would be a few.
I feel I need improvement in multi-account aspects of AWS security. It would help if I knew all the intricacies of how security services work across accounts, how they are connected, managed, and automated across several accounts. For my next exam, I will review all services in the context of multi-account setup.
I work predominately with Terraform for infrastructure provisioning, but it would help if I get more knowledge of CloudFormation for security hardening use cases.
Also, there are several overlapping AWS products, and product features, which seem to provide similar outcomes. For the next exam preparation, I would identify these overlaps and go into smallest details to distinguish when to use what.
I struggled on the real exam. Looking at the questions, I often could not figure what knowledge I was missing or where would I get it if I wanted to go for retake. I felt out of my depth. I was sure I failed the exam.
Yet I somehow passed.
I scored 793 out of 1000, with 750 minimum required.
Good job – till the next renewal.
Sigh of relief.
Small tip – I would take all further exams in the training center, instead of home. They do allow breaks and drinks in the center. It is valuable to have a break, refresh your brain, and stretch your legs on 3-hour long exam. They don’t allow you to move when you take the remote proctored exam option.