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CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) flashcards

5 decks · 365 cards · built into Willys · free samples below

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Written against: Exam SY0-701 objectives; SY0-701 can still be sat in English until 11 June 2027, and SY0-801 launches on 17 November 2026 (as of October 2026). Updated 2026-10-10.

What's in it

Every deck follows the course outline, with tags you can study or suspend topic by topic. Open a deck to study its free sample right here.

Learn · 2 decks · 130 cards

Concepts, mechanisms and the questions a course or exam asks about them.

Concepts, Threats & Attacks Domains 1 and 2 of SY0-701 as scenario questions: CIA and AAA, zero trust planes, control categories and types, threat actors and vectors, social engineering, malware, application, network, password and cryptographic attacks, indicators of compromise and vulnerability classes. 10 free · 70 cards in the app Architecture, Cryptography & Operations Domains 1, 3, 4 and 5 of SY0-701 as scenario questions: cryptography and PKI, network architecture and secure protocols, firewalls and appliances, 802.1X and wireless, identity and access control, resilience, incident response, monitoring, risk arithmetic and governance roles. 10 free · 60 cards in the app

Drills · 2 decks · 160 cards

Short answers and cloze blanks for the facts you simply have to know cold.

Cloze: Acronyms Cloze drills on 40 high-frequency Security+ acronyms in both directions: recall the acronym from its expansion, and the expansion from the acronym plus a one-line clue to what it does. 8 free · 80 cards in the app Quick Drills: Ports & Protocols One-line drills on the well-known ports Security+ expects you to know cold, in both directions, plus the secure replacement for each cleartext protocol and where TCP versus UDP matters. 10 free · 80 cards in the app

Practice · 1 deck · 75 questions

Multiple-choice practice questions, one best answer each, with the reasoning.

Practice Questions Multiple-choice practice questions, one best answer each, on controls, zero trust, cryptography and PKI, attacks and indicators, secure architecture, identity, incident response and risk. 6 free · 75 questions in the app

Cloze decks have one or more blanks per sentence; the app makes one card per blank.

Study guide

Topics covered

The decks follow the order of the course outline. Numbers are cards per topic.

  • Security Concepts 30
    • Controls 14
    • Zero Trust 5
  • Application Attacks 13
  • Cryptographic Attacks 3
  • Indicators of Compromise 8
  • Malware 12
  • Network Attacks 11
  • Password Attacks 7
  • Social Engineering 9
  • Threat Actors 8
  • Threat Vectors 6
  • Vulnerabilities 13
  • Cryptography 36
    • PKI 13
  • Network Access & Wireless 8
  • Network Architecture 15
  • Resilience & Backups 12
  • Secure Protocols 16
  • Security Appliances 17
  • Identity & Access 17
  • Incident Response & Forensics 7
  • Monitoring & Testing 10
  • Governance & Data 6
  • Risk Management 13
  • Email Security 6
  • Endpoint & Data Protection 10
  • Ports & Protocols 72
    • Directory & Authentication 10
    • Email 14
    • File Transfer 8
    • Management & Logging 7
    • Network Services 7
    • Remote Access 6
    • TCP vs UDP 4
    • Web & Voice 7
    • Windows & Database 9

A study plan

  • 14 new cards a day covers everything in a month, leaving the last weeks for review.
  • 7 new cards a day covers everything in two months, leaving the last weeks for review.
  • 5 new cards a day covers everything in three months, leaving the last weeks for review.

Willys schedules reviews for you (FSRS spaced repetition), so the daily number above is only for new cards; reviews of what you have learned come back on their own. Study a topic's cards right after you meet it in class, suspend topics you have not reached yet, and use the app's quiz mode in the final two weeks.

How to get these decks

  1. Install Willys on your iPhone, iPad or Mac — App Store. 14-day free trial, then $14.99 a year.
  2. In Willys, tap Exam Library at the top of your Decks (or Browse Exam Library… under the + button), find the exam on its shelf or by search, tick it and tap Add.
  3. Study. The exam comes in as its own collapsible folder, every card scheduled by FSRS spaced repetition. Nothing you already have is changed.

Every deck is built into Willys

All 5 CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) decks (365 cards), with FSRS spaced repetition, quizzes and mock tests, on iPhone, iPad and Mac. 14-day free trial, then $14.99 a year.

Get the app

In Willys, tap Exam Library at the top of your Decks (or Browse Exam Library… under the + button), find the exam on its shelf or by search, tick it and tap Add.

About these cards

Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.

Checked against:

  • Written for SY0-701, which can still be sat in English until 11 June 2027; its successor, SY0-801, launches on 17 November 2026 (CompTIA's Security+ V7 and V8 pages, as of October 2026).
  • Checked against the CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 exam objectives, version 6.0 (topic list only; no text copied).
  • Checked against NIST SP 800-207 Zero Trust Architecture (public domain) for control plane and data plane roles.
  • Checked against the OWASP Top 10:2025 and the OWASP Cheat Sheet Series (CC BY-SA 4.0; reference only) for application attacks and fixes.
  • Checked against MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise techniques, IETF RFC 4033 (DNSSEC), RFC 8446 and RFC 8996 (TLS), and NIST SP 800-131A Rev. 2 and SP 800-63B-4 (public domain) for attack definitions, cryptographic status and password defences (reference only).
  • Checked against the CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 exam objectives (topic list only; no text copied); the incident response phases follow objective 4.8.
  • Checked against NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3 (April 2025, which superseded Rev. 2) and NIST SP 800-86 (public domain), and against RFC 3227, for incident handling and order of volatility.
  • Checked against the RFCs for TLS 1.3 (RFC 8446), OCSP (RFC 6960), the IPsec architecture (RFC 4301) and IPsec ESP (RFC 4303) for protocol behaviour (reference only).
  • Checked against the CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 exam objectives and acronym list (expansions only; no text copied).
  • Checked against NIST SP 800-207 Zero Trust Architecture and NIST SP 800-34 Rev. 1 (public domain) for zero trust and recovery terms, and RFC 7208 (SPF), RFC 6376 (DKIM) and RFC 9989 (DMARC, May 2026, which replaced RFC 7489) for the email authentication names.
  • Checked against the CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 exam objectives (topic list only; no text copied).
  • Checked against the IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry (public) for port assignments.
  • Checked against the defining RFCs for each port and transport (reference only): FTP (RFC 959) and FTP over TLS (RFC 4217), TFTP (RFC 1350), SSH (RFC 4253), Telnet (RFC 854), SMTP submission (RFC 6409) and STARTTLS (RFC 3207), POP3 (RFC 1939), IMAP (RFC 9051), implicit TLS for email (RFC 8314), DNS (RFC 1035, RFC 7766), DHCP (RFC 2131), NTP (RFC 5905), Kerberos (RFC 4120), LDAP (RFC 4511), RADIUS (RFC 2865, RFC 2866), TACACS+ (RFC 8907), NetBIOS (RFC 1002), SNMP (RFC 1157, RFC 1901, RFC 3411–3418), syslog over UDP (RFC 5426) and over TLS (RFC 5425), HTTP (RFC 9110) and HTTP/3 (RFC 9114), SIP (RFC 3261), SRTP (RFC 3711) and TCP (RFC 9293).
  • Checked against Microsoft Learn documentation for the default ports of Remote Desktop, SQL Server, RPC and SMB (reference only).
  • Checked against the CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 exam objectives, version 6.0 (topic list only; no text copied); the incident response phases follow objective 4.8.
  • Checked against NIST SP 800-207 Zero Trust Architecture, NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3 (April 2025, which superseded Rev. 2) and NIST SP 800-86 (public domain) for zero trust roles, incident handling and evidence handling, and against the OWASP Cheat Sheet Series (CC BY-SA 4.0; reference only) for application attack fixes.
  • Checked against RFC 3227 (order of volatility), RFC 6960 (OCSP), RFC 4033 (DNSSEC), RFC 3410 (SNMPv3), RFC 8907 (TACACS+) and RFC 7664 (Dragonfly, the basis of WPA3 SAE), NIST SP 800-34 Rev. 1 and SP 800-162 (public domain), and GDPR Article 4 for controller and processor (reference only).

These are independent study notes written for Willys. They are not official exam material, may contain mistakes, and are no substitute for your course, your teacher or the exam owner's own publications. Found an error? Tell us — corrections ship as a new version of the deck.

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