How I Passed the AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C02) Exam in 2025

Breaking into cloud security isn’t easy — and staying sharp is even harder.
This April, I finally earned my AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C02) certification, and in this post, I want to share exactly how I prepared, what worked, and a few things I wish I knew earlier.

If you’re aiming for this cert, I hope this helps you navigate the journey more smoothly.

My Background

Last year I finally became a Cloud Security Engineer after years chasing this position, because of that I knew I needed to deep dive into AWS Security, so this certification became my goal.
Before specializing fully in security, I spent several years in DevOps — which gave me a strong foundation in infrastructure, but cloud security demands a very different mindset.

How I Studied

My study journey was a bit unusual:
I actually started back in September 2024 by watching Zeal Vora’s course on Udemy and working through the practice exams included.

However, due to a sudden workload spike at my job, I had to put studying on hold until 2025.
When I resumed, I found an amazing recommendation thread on Reddit:

Reddit AWS Certifications Study Resources Thread Special thanks to u/madrasi2021 for his masive threads

That thread pointed me towards:

Total Study Time

All combined — including my earlier September sessions — I estimate I spent about 80–100 hours preparing:

  • Watching video lectures
  • Taking practice exams
  • Reading explanations of wrong answers
  • Playing around in AWS (hands-on really helped)

Exam Focus Areas

While the exam touched almost every domain, I noticed a stronger emphasis on:

  • AWS Organizations and multi-account management
  • Fleet management (managing large numbers of resources securely)
  • CloudFront security configurations

Oddly, no questions about CloudHSM came up for me.

Practice Exams

Tutorial Dojo’s practice exams were incredibly helpful.
They weren’t exact replicas of the real exam questions — but the style, difficulty, and experience were very close to what I faced on exam day.

✅ I consistently scored 85%+ in both Udemy quizzes and TD practice exams.
✅ My real exam score was 839, almost perfectly in line with my mocks.

What Helped Me Most

The biggest game-changer for me was reading the explanations for every wrong question — not just noting the right answer.

Over time, this helped me deeply understand:

  • Subtle differences between similar services (like Macie vs GuardDuty vs Inspector)
  • How AWS expects you to prioritize security controls (least privilege, defense in depth, managed services when possible)

My Advice to Future Candidates

If I could give just a few tips, it would be:

  • Finish at least one good video course completely (Stephane or Zeal are great)
  • Hammer through practice exams — and focus more on WHY an answer is correct/incorrect than memorizing
  • Track your weak areas and reinforce them aggressively
  • If possible, get hands-on in an AWS account (even if it’s free tier)

It’s a technical exam, but it rewards understanding AWS security philosophy, not rote memorization.

Final Thoughts

The SCS-C02 isn’t easy — but it’s fair.
And more importantly, it teaches you to think like a Cloud Security Engineer, not just a certification chaser.

If you’re preparing, stick with it.
You’ll come out not just with a certification, but with real skills you can immediately apply.

Good luck — and see you at The Hidden Port for more cloud security deep dives!

📩 Stay Tuned

I’m planning more AWS security, incident response, and hands-on content soon.
If you found this helpful, feel free to check out thehiddenport.dev.