Security professionals looking to demonstrate and validate their knowledge of how to secure the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform can now do so by taking the new AWS Certified Security – Specialty exam.
Intended for individuals who hold either an Associate or Cloud Practitioner certification, the security exam covers a broad range of areas, including incident response, logging and monitoring, infrastructure security, identity and access management, and data protection.
Individuals interested in taking the exam should have at least five years of IT security experience designing and implementing security solutions, Amazon says. At least two years of hands-on experience securing AWS workloads is also recommended.
By taking the exam, candidates validate their ability to demonstrate and understand specialized data classifications and AWS data protection mechanisms, as well as data encryption methods and secure Internet protocols, along with AWS mechanisms to implement them.
The exam also allows candidates to demonstrate working knowledge of AWS security services and features of services to provide a secure production environment, and competency gained from two or more years of production deployment experience using AWS security services and features.
The candidates would also show an ability to make tradeoff decisions with regard to cost, security, and deployment complexity given a set of application requirements, and would demonstrate an understanding of security operations and risk.
In addition to announcing the AWS Certified Security – Specialty exam, Amazon also published training and other resources that would help candidates prepare for the exam (focused on AWS fundamentals, architecture, security operations, and security services).
There are also a couple of AWS whitepapers candidates are encouraged to glance over (Security and Compliance documentation and Compliance resources), as well as exam preparation resource guides they can take advantage of.
The Speciality exam includes 65 questions, should take around 170 minutes to complete, and is in English. Candidates are required to pay a $300 fee to participate.
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