CompTIA Security+ (SY0-801) — the full course

This course teaches SY0-801, the Security+ exam that launches on or around 17 November 2026. If you are booked on SY0-701, which can be taken until 11 June 2027, use our SY0-701 course instead.

Every lesson and every lab is free to read, mapped one-to-one to CompTIA’s published exam objectives.

47written lessons
78hands-on labs
75hours of lab work
18audio episodes
Start with lesson 1 — Security controls: the four categories and the six types

Jump to a domain: 1. General Security Concepts · 2. Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Attacks · 3. Security Architecture · 4. Security Operations · 5. Security Program Management and Oversight

What the exam weighs

Domain Share of the exam Lessons here
1. General Security Concepts 16% 7
2. Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Attacks 24% 11
3. Security Architecture 19% 9
4. Security Operations 27% 13
5. Security Program Management and Oversight 14% 6

The curriculum

1. General Security Concepts 16% of the exam

  1. 01 Security controls: the four categories and the six types objective 1.1 part single
  2. 02 Defence in depth: CIA, AAA and non-repudiation, stated precisely enough to be useful objective 1.1 part single
  3. 03 Zero trust and least privilege, as principles rather than products objective 1.1 part single
  4. 04 Change management, which is a security control and is examined as one objective 1.2 part single
  5. 05 PKI and certificates, and the key management that decides whether any of it works objective 1.3 part single
  6. 06 Encryption: algorithms, key length, key exchange, and where to apply it objective 1.3 part single
  7. 07 Hashing, salting, digital signatures and obfuscation objective 1.3 part single

2. Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Attacks 24% of the exam

  1. 01 Characterising threats and vulnerabilities: intelligence, scoring and what to fix first objective 2.1 part single
  2. 02 Threat actors and their motivations, sorted by what they can afford objective 2.2 part single
  3. 03 Threat vectors: messages, attachments, networks, remote access and the supply chain objective 2.3 part single
  4. 04 Threat vectors: browsers, endpoints, people, IoT and OT, physical access and radio objective 2.3 part single
  5. 05 Application, code and operating-system vulnerabilities objective 2.4 part single
  6. 06 Attack surfaces: systems, credentials, devices, identity providers and exposed data objective 2.4 part single
  7. 07 Social engineering: phishing in all its forms, impersonation and deepfakes objective 2.5 part single
  8. 08 Recognising malware, and the indicators of compromise it leaves objective 2.5 part single
  9. 09 Credential attacks, and the controls that end them objective 2.5 part single
  10. 10 Network, application and physical attack indicators objective 2.5 part single
  11. 11 AI threats and vulnerabilities, from the defender's side objective 2.6 part single

3. Security Architecture 19% of the exam

  1. 01 Cloud and on-premises architecture, compared by where the risk lands objective 3.1 part single
  2. 02 Operational technology, air gaps, segmentation and infrastructure as code objective 3.1 part single
  3. 03 Device placement, security zones, diversity and failure modes objective 3.2 part single
  4. 04 Secure communication and access: VPNs, tunnels, SSE and out-of-band management objective 3.2 part single
  5. 05 Zero trust architecture and identity infrastructure objective 3.2 part single
  6. 06 Data types, states, classification and the methods that protect them objective 3.3 part single
  7. 07 Data roles, handling, the data life cycle and compliance categories objective 3.3 part single
  8. 08 High availability, site resilience and power objective 3.4 part single
  9. 09 Backups, recovery testing, continuity and recovery metrics objective 3.4 part single

4. Security Operations 27% of the exam

  1. 01 Secure baselines, hardening, segmentation and access control objective 4.1 part single
  2. 02 Mobile device management, application security, sandboxing and deception objective 4.1 part single
  3. 03 Firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, and choosing the network control objective 4.1 part single
  4. 04 Content filtering, DLP, NAC, EDR/XDR and email security objective 4.1 part single
  5. 05 Asset management, from purchase order to certificate of destruction objective 4.2 part single
  6. 06 Vulnerability management, end to end objective 4.3 part single
  7. 07 Alerting and monitoring, and the tools that do it objective 4.4 part single
  8. 08 Provisioning identity, account types, single sign-on and federation objective 4.5 part single
  9. 09 Multifactor authentication, passwords and passkeys objective 4.5 part single
  10. 10 Automation and orchestration, AI assistance, and when not to automate objective 4.6 part single
  11. 11 The incident response process, and the preparation that decides the outcome objective 4.7 part single
  12. 12 Threat hunting, digital forensics, root cause and the post-incident report objective 4.7 part single
  13. 13 Reading logs, images and other sources to support an investigation objective 4.8 part single

5. Security Program Management and Oversight 14% of the exam

  1. 01 Policies, standards, procedures, plans and guidelines, and the difference between them objective 5.1 part single
  2. 02 Risk management: identification, analysis, the register and treatment objective 5.2 part single
  3. 03 Third-party risk: selecting a vendor, the agreement, and monitoring after the ink dries objective 5.3 part single
  4. 04 Compliance, privacy, and the cost of getting it wrong objective 5.4 part single
  5. 05 Audits, assessments, gap analysis and where penetration testing fits objective 5.5 part single
  6. 06 Security awareness that changes behaviour rather than completion rates objective 5.6 part single

Supplementary not examined — background reading

  1. 01 A lab you can break safely, and why your laptop is not it part single

18 of the 47 lessons have an audio episode so far, and each plays in the lesson itself — there is nothing extra to sign up for.

The episodes are also a podcast: listen on Spotify.

This is an independent study companion for CompTIA Security+ SY0-801 and is not produced by or endorsed by CompTIA.