CompTIA PenTest+

The CompTIA PenTest+ Certification assesses the most up-to-date penetration testing, and vulnerability assessment and management skills necessary to determine the resiliency of the network against attacks. The CompTIA PenTest+ certification exam will verify successful candidates have the knowledge and skills required to:

• Plan and scope a penetration testing engagement
• Understand legal and compliance requirements
• Perform vulnerability scanning and penetration testing using appropriate tools and
• techniques, and then analyze the results
• Produce a written report containing proposed remediation techniques, effectively
• communicate results to the management team, and provide practical recommendations

Learning Objectives

• Planning and Scoping – Includes updated techniques emphasizing governance, risk, and compliance concepts, scoping and organizational/customer requirements, and demonstrating an ethical hacking mindset.
• Information Gathering and Vulnerability Scanning – Includes updated skills on performing vulnerability scanning and passive/active reconnaissance, vulnerability management, as well as analyzing the results of the reconnaissance exercise.
• Attacks and Exploits – Includes updated approaches to expanded attack surfaces, researching social engineering techniques, performing network attacks, wireless attacks, application-based attacks and attacks on cloud technologies, and performing post-exploitation techniques.
• Reporting and Communication – Expanded to focus on the importance of reporting and communication in an increased regulatory environment during the pen testing process through analyzing findings and recommending appropriate remediation within a report.
• Tools and Code Analysis – Includes updated concepts of identifying scripts in various software deployments, analyzing a script or code sample, and explaining use cases of various tools used during the phases of a penetration test. It is important to note that no scripting and coding is required.

Certification Exam

This training course prepares students for the CompTIA PenTest+ Exam.

Audience

The CompTIA PenTest+ will certify the successful candidate has the knowledge and skills required to plan and scope a penetration testing engagement including vulnerability scanning, understand legal and compliance requirements, analyze results, and produce a written report with remediation techniques.

Prerequisites

Network+, Security+ or equivalent knowledge. Minimum of 3-4 years of hands-on information security or related experience. While there is no required prerequisite, PenTest+ is intended to follow CompTIA Security+ or equivalent experience and has a technical, hands-on focus.

CompTIA PenTest+ Outline

Planning and Scoping

• Define objectives, target audiences, rules of engagement, communications, resources, timelines, and technical constraints.
• Address contracts, confidentiality, written authorization, corporate policy, and applicable legal or regulatory restrictions.
• Select assessment types and targets, determine knowledge level, establish risk tolerance, and control scope creep.
• Plan compliance-based assessments with clearly defined requirements, limitations, and evidence expectations.

Information Gathering and Vulnerability Identification

• Use scanning, enumeration, packet analysis, fingerprinting, debugging, decompilation, and open-source intelligence techniques.
• Perform credentialed and non-credentialed discovery, full, stealth, compliance, application, and container scans.
• Evaluate scan results, verify false positives, categorize assets, identify common themes, and prioritize vulnerabilities.
• Map findings to potential exploits and prepare attack paths using techniques such as exploit chaining, credential attacks, social engineering, and proof-of-concept development.
• Recognize risks in specialized systems, including industrial control, SCADA, mobile, IoT, embedded, biometric, point-of-sale, container, and real-time operating systems.

Attacks and Exploits

• Compare phishing, impersonation, elicitation, physical intrusion, and other social-engineering methods.
• Exploit common network and wireless weaknesses involving name resolution, SMB, DNS, authentication, traffic interception, access controls, and radio-frequency technologies.
• Assess application vulnerabilities such as injection, cross-site scripting, request forgery, session attacks, insecure authorization, file inclusion, and security misconfiguration.
• Evaluate host weaknesses across major operating systems, including insecure services, privilege escalation, credential exposure, sandbox escape, and physical-device attacks.
• Apply post-exploitation techniques for lateral movement, persistence, remote access, and evidence cleanup within authorized boundaries.

Penetration Testing Tools

• Use Nmap for host discovery, port scanning, service identification, operating-system fingerprinting, timing control, and results export.
• Select appropriate tools for reconnaissance, vulnerability scanning, credential testing, wireless assessment, web testing, debugging, software assurance, remote access, and exploitation.
• Interpret tool output related to password attacks, shells, proxying, web shells, and injection attempts.
• Analyze basic Bash, Python, Ruby, and PowerShell scripts, including variables, loops, flow control, input/output, arrays, string operations, encoding, and error handling.

Reporting and Communication

• Normalize evidence and prepare reports with an executive summary, scope, methodology, findings, metrics, risk ratings, remediation guidance, and conclusions.
• Protect reports through appropriate storage, handling, retention, and disposal practices.
• Complete cleanup, client acceptance, lessons learned, retesting, follow-up actions, and attestation activities.
• Recommend practical people, process, and technology controls for common findings, including weak credentials, missing multifactor authentication, injection risks, and unnecessary services.
• Maintain clear communication paths and escalation triggers for critical findings, prior-compromise indicators, changing conditions, and goal reprioritization.