--Originally published at Stories by Juan Andrés Rocha on Medium

A Certification, a word which here means a paper to show off you know enough of certain topic, is sometimes required in industry to prove you’re prepared enough in certain fields.

CompTIA is a non-profit, non-vendor related organization that offers neutral certifications to professionals, students, and other organizations. One of the several certification CompTIA offers is Security+.

Security+ is focused on validating “foundational, vendor-neutral IT security knowledge and skills”. Among the companies that use this certification are Apple, HP, Dell, The Department of Defense, and others.

Most of the time, certifications consist in an exam that validates your knowledge through a series of questions. Security+ uses 90 questions in 90 minutes. These questions can be multiple option, or Performance Based, which here means that you have to perform a task in a simulation.

In case you’d like to take this certification, you need $320 USD if you live in the US, or $179 if you live in an emerging market (like México) and it’ll be valid for the next 3 years.

If you want to take the certification, but have never studied security or anything related, there are courses in Udemy that’ll prepare you for the test (but more importantly, for your job).