Jason Dion Security Practice Exams

How to Actually Use Jason Dion Security+ Practice Exams Without Wasting Your Time

Jason Dion's Security Practice Exams on Udemy are probably the most common prep resource for the CompTIA Security+ exam, and honestly they're good for what they are. The question is how you use them without falling into the same traps most people fall into. The course runs about four practice exams with roughly 170 questions total. Dion does video explanations for every answer, which is where the real value sits. Reading the explanation after getting a question wrong takes you from "I memorized an answer" to actually understanding why that answer is right and the other three are wrong. The questions themselves lean toward the harder side of the actual exam, which is intentional but also means you'll see a lower score than you would on test day if you just run through once without reviewing. I'd recommend going through each exam in two passes. First pass, take it timed, don't pause the explanations, just note what you missed. Second pass, re-do only the questions you got wrong and watch the full explanation video for each one. That cuts a three-hour session down to about ninety minutes while forcing you to actually engage with the material instead of coasting through familiar questions.

The Setup Problem Most People Miss

Here's the thing nobody really talks about. Dion's practice exam interface lets you mark questions for review and go back to them, but the actual Security+ exam on Pearson VUE gives you that "flag for review" feature too, along with a calculator and on-screen notepad. Dion's platform doesn't simulate the Pearson VUE interface at all, and that gap matters more than most people realize because it affects how you manage your time under pressure. My workaround was to pull up a free online timer, set it for two hours and fifteen minutes, and force myself to answer each question in under ninety seconds before moving on. Anything slower than that and you're not finishing the exam. I also printed out a blank sheet of paper to jot down formulas or acronyms during the practice run, which mimics what you'd do with the on-screen notepad. It felt clunky at first but after three timed sessions it stopped being a distraction and just became routine.

Where the Questions Actually Fall Short

The Security+ exam tests a lot of scenario-based questions where you have to pick the best answer among several that are technically correct. Dion's questions do this sometimes, but not consistently enough. I ran into this specifically on the domain covering cryptographic standards and PKI. There was a question about certificate revocation checking methods where both CRL and OCSP were presented as plausible answers depending on the exact wording of the scenario, and the explanation didn't clearly address why one was superior to the other in that particular context. I had to go to the NIST guidelines and read through SP 800-17 to actually understand the tradeoff between real-time OCSP lookup and periodic CRL checks. Another gap is the newer domains around cloud security and zero trust that CompTIA added in the SY0-701 updates. Dion has some coverage here but it's thinner than the traditional network security domains. If you're relying solely on his practice exams and you're weak on things like SaaS vs PaaS security responsibilities or the NIST Zero Trust Architecture model, you'll walk into the exam underprepared for that section. I supplemented with the official CompTIA Security+ study guide from Pearson and spent about twelve extra hours on cloud-specific scenarios.

Score Expectations and What They Actually Mean

Scoring below sixty percent on Dion's exams early in your prep is normal. The questions are written to be slightly more difficult than the actual exam, and Dion himself has said he expects students to see lower practice scores before taking the real thing. Don't treat a fifty-five as a red flag. Treat it as a signal that your review process isn't working yet and you need to slow down on the second pass through each exam. When you start scoring in the seventy to seventy-five range on your second pass with full review, that's usually a good indicator you're ready. The real exam tends to feel a bit easier because the question difficulty is more balanced and there's less trick wording overall. I scored around sixty-eight on Dion's hardest practice exam and passed the real Security+ on my first attempt, which is a pattern I've seen repeated by other people in the same situation.

What to Do Instead If This Isn't Clicking

If Dion's style doesn't match how your brain learns, there are alternatives. Professor Messer's practice exams are free and cover the same objectives but with a different question format. Todd Lammle's practice tests tend to be closer to the actual exam difficulty level. Or skip the practice exams entirely for a while and go straight to flashcards and hands-on labs for the domains where you're weakest. The exam doesn't care what resource you use, only that you can answer the questions correctly when it counts. The biggest mistake I see people make is treating practice exams as a measuring stick instead of a learning tool. You learn from the questions you miss, not the ones you get right. Run through them, miss a lot of them, understand why, run through again, and repeat until the second-pass score stops climbing because you already know everything rather than because you're guessing better.