Today I passed the SC-900 exam. It’s not something I’ll gloat about too much as I’m well aware it’s foundational, however to not mention and acknowledge the effort spent seems miserly so here it is.

Overview
The SC-900 course (aka Security, Compliance and Identity Fundamentals) is a foundational certification from Microsoft aimed at understanding the security, compliance and identity aspects of Azure. This covers very broadly, Identity types, Entra, Defender in all it’s variations, Priva, Purview and some basic security fundamentals.

My experience
I took this exam in preperation to take the SC-200. It felt like a natural step up for why not do the SC-900 if I’m working in that direction anyway. I covered the content in two weeks and relied on the MS learn platform alongside John Christopher on Udemy and John Saville’s prep on Youtube.

Overall I’m glad I did take this route. I was frankly horrified to learn I didn’t know as much about Azure and the Defender types as I though, particularly about the nitty gritty details of the graphs and functions I saw everyday. In addition my complete non-exposure to the data governance (Purview) and privacy (Priva) proved a hinderance meaning my initial practice test scores were less than impressive

Still, In the end I’d covered the course content so while trying to remember which Defenders had a secure score and which didn’t, I went in to the exam, tried not to anger the Pearson moderator gods and came out with a score of 900/1000. A great result!

Take-aways
To be frank I got a lot more out of this exam than I expected. I’m now more familiar with the Azure and co. suite of products and have learnt some useful facts which I have already been able to apply to my everyday work (I finally know the difference between Entra Registered, Entra Joined and Entra Hybrid-joined!)

While I considered this to be a minor step, I found it to be more of a leap and lays a good strong foundation to improving my work and for future certification.

Final takeaway
I honestly picked the worst time to do this examination. My wife is due our first child in less than a week as of writing and I’ve been frantically flitting between making sure I don’t fail this and trying to make the home fit for a child. I plan to continue when I can but pace may slow down, at least for a few months while I re-orientate to the change in my lifestyle.