CompTIA CASP+ CAS-004 Certification Guide: Develop CASP+ skills and learn all the key topics needed to prepare for the certification exam

The CASP+ CAS-004 content is solid, but the print quality is disappointing. There’s a recurring issue where one line is missing in the same spot on every page. Sometimes it’s minor, but other times it leaves out critical information, which I can’t recover. This printing flaw disrupts the flow and, at times, impacts understanding.

I commend the author for attempting to condense such a large exam into a single book, which aids professionals aiming to pass the CompTIA CAS-004 CASP+ exam and seeking a more comprehensive description than what is offered by the dry list in the official exam syllabus.However, the book covers the exam topics only briefly, falling short in providing a thorough understanding of many subjects. The first chapters are well-structured and organised, but as the book progresses, it presents several disjointed topics with brief descriptions, leaving readers to seek deeper insights elsewhere — perhaps this is the book's intended purpose? — with most paragraphs and concepts disorganised, resulting in a narrative lacking depth and featuring a long sequence of overly simplistic descriptions. Additionally, most figures are rendered with low resolution or without explanation, further hindering understanding.Regarding content correctness, particularly in the 'Security Operations' part, I found several errors, inaccuracies, or misleading viewpoints. I understand the need to simplify given the breadth of topics to address, but this might result in oversimplification.While the book includes six practical exams (four of which are online), providing a useful way to test knowledge, they contain inaccuracies, simplifications, or unstated (and questionable) assumptions. The end-of-chapter questions focus solely on memorisation.In conclusion, while the book serves as a basic review and testing resource, and overall the author has done a commendable job, in my opinion, it lacks the depth and coherence necessary for effective exam preparation. I would not recommend relying solely on this book; only critical, experienced readers might find some benefit in recalling known topics purely for exam preparation. (I would rate this book 3.5/5, but since this is not possible, I prefer to rate it 3 rather than 4, which feels too high.)For future editions, I recommend implementing the following improvements:-Have experts in each of the four CASP+ areas review related chapters to identify any inaccuracies.-Include better-quality figures and explain them in the body text rather than leaving them unexplained.-Introduce numbering of chapters, sub-chapters, etc. for clarity in the hierarchical structure of content.-Incorporate some narrative to better connect topics.-Avoid introducing acronyms in titles; instead, keep titles extended and introduce and explain topics within the body of the text.-Reduce unnecessary bold formatting, as it currently seems inconsistently applied.-Improve or remove the end-of-chapter questions as they are currently too easy.-Verify all mock exams for correctness and add more questions to better mimic the real exam.

This book is easy to read, although the layout and format seem poorly thought out. Some of the review questions are incoherent or fail to challenge the reader, and some of the given answers are incorrect (based on the material in this book and other related references. The book makes extensive use of tiny url links, which are widely regarded as a security issue as the destination URL cannot be determined. Keeping these poorly thought out items in mind, the book is a good summary of the body of knowledge covered by CASP. While I ultimately used other materials to prepare for the CASP exam, others have used the book as a primer to prepare for their own certification.I have over 20 years of cyber security experience and have used several different references to prepare for other exams (CISSP, GSEC, CCNP, SSCP, etc) and have a lot of materials to compare this book to. While I appreciated the easy reading of this book, I found the depth of material and level of detail slightly lacking.TL;DR - if you are just starting out in cyber security and preparing for CASP, this book is a good starting point, but has some room for improvement.

I found this guide to be a "solid resource" when studying for the CASP+ exam. This book adequately, and arguably completely, covered all the CASP+ exam objectives, and was well-written and well-organized IMO. Although I learned a few new things, no doubt, this book should serve mostly as a "refresher" if you're an experienced security practitioner and not just a test-taker. The former will find this guide beneficial and they will excel on the exam with a little due-diligence/dedicated study. While the latter will struggled with the array of unfamiliar terms and foreign concepts being thrown at them. They will be folks who whine and pout about this Guide not giving them the answers to the exam because...well, that's actually what want, and not having a apply acquired knowledge so solve problems. 'Nuff said.In my case, I used the CASP+ Guide to help study for the ISC2 ISSAP (Security Architecture) certification exam because 1) there is a CASP+ domain on Security Architecture and, IMO, 50-60% overlap in objectives and 2) the ISSAP CBK was 11-years old and outdated. Using this guide (and having prerequisite knowledge, skills, and experience) I was able to pass the CASP+ exam, and the ISSAP exam 4-days later. So I didn't plan on becoming CASP+ certified, but why not since there's a great deal of overlap with the ISSAP...just a more hand-on/operations focus versus business/solutions focused. Cheers!

This is a well written text for CASP+ preparation. It has enough mock exams and chapter tests to prepare you for the real exam. This was the only book that I used to prepare for the CASP+. I took the exam this month (December 2023) and I am happy to report that I passed. By the way, the exam was very challenging. Be prepared for a couple of performance based questions.