About This Study Plan
This 30-day study plan breaks the SCS-C02 (AWS Security Specialty) exam preparation into 8 focused study sessions with a total of 32 actionable tasks. The plan covers all 6 exam domains — Threat Detection & Incident Response, Security Logging & Monitoring, Infrastructure Security, Identity & Access Management, Data Protection, Management & Security Governance — ensuring complete coverage of the exam blueprint. A balanced four-week study plan covering all SCS-C02 domains with daily practice and weekly assessments.
Prerequisites
- AWS Associate certification or 1+ year hands-on AWS experience
- Basic understanding of security concepts (IAM, encryption, networking)
- 2–3 hours of study time per day
Study Schedule
- IAM policies, roles, evaluation logic, conditions
- Cross-account access patterns, STS, resource policies
- Organizations, SCPs, OUs, delegated administration
- Practice: 30 IAM & access questions
- IAM Identity Center, permission sets, account assignments
- SAML and OIDC federation, external IdPs
- Cognito User Pools, Identity Pools, MFA
- Practice: 30 identity questions
- CMK types, key policies, grants, encryption context
- Envelope encryption, key rotation, multi-region keys
- S3 encryption options, Object Lock, Block Public Access
- Practice: 30 encryption questions
- Secrets Manager rotation, cross-account, replication
- Parameter Store SecureString, ACM, CloudHSM
- Mini mock: 30 IAM and data protection questions
- Review IAM and KMS cheat sheets
- GuardDuty: data sources, findings, multi-account
- Security Hub: standards, ASFF, aggregation, scoring
- CloudTrail: organization trails, data events, log integrity
- Practice: 30 detection questions
- VPC security, Network Firewall, GWLB
- WAF rules, Shield, Firewall Manager
- DNS Firewall, PrivateLink, VPC Flow Logs
- Practice: 30 infrastructure security questions
- IR procedures, containment, forensics, automation
- Config rules, conformance packs, remediation
- Control Tower, compliance standards, Audit Manager
- Practice: 30 governance questions
- Take two full 65-question mock exams (170 min)
- Review all incorrect answers
- Final cheat sheet and flashcard review
- Focus on weak areas identified in mocks
Study Tips
IAM and KMS together make up a huge portion of the exam
Practice writing IAM policies by hand to internalize the syntax
Know how every detection service (GuardDuty, Inspector, Macie, Config) integrates with Security Hub
Practice incident response scenarios: detection → containment → recovery
Ready to Practice?
Put your study plan into action with AWS Security Specialty practice questions.