The Microsoft SC-100 exam is designed for those with extensive experience securing Microsoft PaaS, IaaS, and hybrid environments. By passing this exam (along with one pre-requisite exam), you will earn the title Microsoft Certified: Expert Cybersecurity Architect. Let us now look at New SC-100: Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect Exam Launched!
About the exam
The Microsoft SC-100: Cybersecurity Architect exam is designed for candidates who have advanced expertise and knowledge in a variety of security engineering domains, including identity and access, platform protection, security operations, data security, and application security. They should also have prior experience with hybrid and cloud deployment.
Exam Prerequisites – To obtain the Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect certification, candidates must also pass one of the following tests: SC-200, SC-300, AZ-500, or MS-500. This is something we strongly recommend you do before taking the Exam Architect for Cybersecurity at Microsoft (SC-100).
Knowledge Areas
- Candidates for the Microsoft cybersecurity architect role should have prior experience developing and refining cybersecurity strategies; to protect an organization’s mission and business operations across all areas of the enterprise architecture.
- Second, the cybersecurity architect develops a Zero Trust strategy and architecture; which includes techniques for data, application, access management, identity, and infrastructure security.
- They should be able to assess Governance Risk Compliance (GRC) technological strategies as well as security operations strategies.
- Finally, the cybersecurity architect collaborates with executives and practitioners in IT security, privacy; and other positions to develop and implement a cybersecurity strategy that meets the business needs of the organization.
Exam Course Outline
These are the domains on which the exam will be testing you upon –
Design solutions that align with security best practices and priorities (20–25%)
Design a resiliency strategy for ransomware and other attacks based on Microsoft Security Best Practices
- Design a security strategy to support business resiliency goals, including identifying and prioritizing threats to business-critical assets (Microsoft Documentation: Define a security strategy, Business resilience)
- Design solutions for business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR), including secure backup and restore for hybrid and multicloud environments (Microsoft Documentation: Security features to help protect hybrid backups that use Azure Backup)
- Design solutions for mitigating ransomware attacks, including prioritization of BCDR and privileged access (Microsoft Documentation: Backup cloud and on-premises workloads to cloud, Quickly deploy ransomware preventions)
- Evaluate solutions for security updates (Microsoft Documentation: Security design principles)
Design solutions that align with the Microsoft Cybersecurity Reference Architectures (MCRA) and Microsoft cloud security benchmark (MCSB)
- Design solutions that align with best practices for cybersecurity capabilities and controls (Microsoft Documentation: Design solutions that align with security best practices)
- Design solutions that align with best practices for protecting against insider, external, and supply chain attacks
- Design solutions that align with best practices for Zero Trust security, including the Zero Trust Rapid Modernization Plan (RaMP) (Microsoft Documentation: Zero Trust security)
Design solutions that align with the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure and the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework
- Design a new or evaluate an existing strategy for security and governance based on the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) and the Microsoft Well-Architected Framework (Microsoft Documentation: Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework, Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure)
- Recommend solutions for security and governance based on the the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure and the Microsoft Well-Architected Framework (Microsoft Documentation: Security in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure)
- Design solutions for implementing and governing security by using an Azure landing zone
- Design a DevSecOps process that aligns with best practices in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)
Design security operations, identity, and compliance capabilities (25–30%)
Design solutions for security operations
- Design a solution for detection and response that includes extended detection and response (XDR) and security information and event management (SIEM) (Microsoft Documentation: extended detection and response (XDR))
- Design a solution for centralized logging and auditing, including Microsoft Purview Audit
- Design monitoring to support hybrid and multicloud environments (Microsoft Documentation: Introduction to hybrid and multicloud)
- Design a solution for security orchestration automated response (SOAR), including Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender XDR (Microsoft Documentation: What is Microsoft Sentinel?, Microsoft Sentinel SOAR content catalog, Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) in Microsoft Sentinel)
- Design and evaluate security workflows, including incident response, threat hunting, and incident management (Microsoft Documentation: Understand threat intelligence in Microsoft Sentinel)
- Design and evaluate threat detection coverage by using MITRE ATT&CK matrices, including Cloud, Enterprise, Mobile, and ICS (Microsoft Documentation: Understand security coverage by the MITRE ATT&CK® framework)
Design solutions for identity and access management
- Design a solution for access to software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), hybrid/on-premises, and multicloud resources, including identity, networking, and application controls (Microsoft Documentation: What is PaaS?, IaaS, SaaS, public, private and hybrid clouds)
- Design a solution for Microsoft Microsoft Entra ID, including hybrid and multi-cloud environments
- Design a solution for external identities, including business-to-business (B2B), business-to-customer (B2C), and Decentralized Identity
- Design a modern authentication and authorization strategy, including Conditional Access, continuous access evaluation, risk scoring, and protected actions (Microsoft Documentation: Continuous access evaluation, Azure Active Directory IDaaS in security operations)
- Validate the alignment of Conditional Access policies with a Zero Trust strategy
- Specify requirements to secure Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) (Microsoft Documentation: Active Directory Domain Services Overview)
- Design a solution to manage secrets, keys, and certificates (Microsoft Documentation: About Azure Key Vault)
Design solutions for securing privileged access
- Design a solution for assigning and delegating privileged roles by using the enterprise access model (Microsoft Documentation: Least privileged roles by task in Azure Active Directory)
- Evaluate the security and governance of Microsoft Entra ID, including Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM), entitlement management, and access reviews
- Evaluate the security and governance of on-premises Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), including resilience to common attacks
- Design a solution for securing the administration of cloud tenants, including SaaS and multicloud infrastructure and platforms (Microsoft Documentation: Hybrid and multicloud solutions)
- Design a solution for cloud infrastructure entitlement management that includes Microsoft Entra Permissions Management (Microsoft Documentation: Permissions Management, What is entitlement management?)
- Evaluate an access review management solution that includes Microsoft Entra Permissions Management
- Design a solution for Privileged Access Workstation (PAW) and bastion services (Microsoft Documentation: Securing devices as part of the privileged access story, Privileged access deployment)
Design solutions for regulatory compliance
- Translate compliance requirements into a security solution
- Design a solution to address compliance requirements by using Microsoft Purview (Microsoft Documentation: Microsoft Purview compliance portal)
- Design a solution to address privacy requirements, including Microsoft Priva (Microsoft Documentation: Learn about Microsoft Priva)
- Design Azure Policy solutions to address security and compliance requirements (Microsoft Documentation: What is Azure Policy?)
- Evaluate and validate alignment with regulatory standards and benchmarks by using Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Design security solutions for infrastructure (25–30%)
Design solutions for security posture management in hybrid and multicloud environments
- Evaluate security posture by using Microsoft Defender for Cloud, including the Microsoft cloud security benchmark (MCSB) (Microsoft Documentation: Evaluate security posture and recommend technical strategies to manage risk, Introduction to the Microsoft cloud security benchmark)
- Evaluate security posture by using Microsoft Secure Score (Microsoft Documentation: Secure score)
- Design integrated security posture management solutions that include Microsoft Defender for Cloud in hybrid and multi-cloud environments
- Select cloud workload protection solutions in Microsoft Defender for Cloud
- Design a solution for integrating hybrid and multicloud environments by using Azure Arc (Microsoft Documentation: Azure Arc overview)
- Design a solution for Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management (Defender EASM) (Microsoft Documentation: Defender EASM Overview)
- Specify requirements and priorities for a posture management process that uses Exposure Management attack paths, attack surface reduction, security insights, and initiatives
Specify requirements for securing server and client endpoints
- Specify security requirements for servers, including multiple platforms and operating systems (Microsoft Documentation: Supported operating systems, platforms and capabilities)
- Specify security requirements for mobile devices and clients, including endpoint protection, hardening, and configuration (Microsoft Documentation: Use security baselines to configure Windows devices in Intune)
- Specify security requirements for IoT devices and embedded systems (Microsoft Documentation: Getting Started with Windows IoT Enterprise)
- Design a solution for securing operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) by using Microsoft Defender for IoT
- Specify security baselines for server and client endpoints
- Evaluate Windows Local Admin Password Solution (LAPS) solutions
Specify requirements for securing SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services
- Specify security baselines for SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services (Microsoft Documentation: Design a strategy for securing PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS services)
- Specify security requirements for IoT workloads (Microsoft Documentation: Security in your IoT workload)
- Specify security requirements for web workloads
- Specify security requirements for containers (Microsoft Documentation: Security considerations for Azure Container Instances)
- Specify security requirements for container orchestration
- Evaluate solutions that include Azure AI Services Security
Evaluate solutions for network security and Security Service Edge (SSE)
- Evaluate network designs to align with security requirements and best practices
- Evaluate solutions that use Microsoft Entra Internet Access as a secure web gateway
- Evaluate solutions that use Microsoft Entra Internet Access to access Microsoft 365, including cross-tenant configurations
- Evaluate solutions that use Microsoft Entra Private Access
Design security solutions for applications and data (20–25%)
Design solutions for securing Microsoft 365
- Evaluate security posture for productivity and collaboration workloads by using metrics, including Secure Score and Defender for Cloud secure score
- Evaluate solutions that include Microsoft Defender for Office and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
- Evaluate device management solutions that include Microsoft Intune
- Evaluate solutions for securing data in Microsoft 365 by using Microsoft Purview
- Evaluate data security and compliance controls in Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 services
Design solutions for securing applications
- Evaluate the security posture of existing application portfolios
- Evaluate threats to business-critical applications by using threat modeling (Microsoft Documentation: Integrating threat modeling with DevOps)
- Design and implement a full lifecycle strategy for application security
- Design and implement standards and practices for securing the application development process (Microsoft Documentation: Secure development best practices on Azure)
- Map technologies to application security requirements (Microsoft Documentation: Security in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure)
- Design a solution for workload identity to authenticate and access Azure cloud resources (Microsoft Documentation: Workload identity federation)
- Design a solution for API management and security
- Design solutions that secure applications by using Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Design solutions for securing an organization’s data
- Evaluate solutions for data discovery and classification
- Specify priorities for mitigating threats to data (Microsoft Documentation: Mitigate threats by using Windows 10 security features)
- Evaluate solutions for encryption of data at rest and in transit, including Azure KeyVault and infrastructure encryption
- Design a security solution for data in Azure workloads, including Azure SQL, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Cosmos DB (Microsoft Documentation: What is Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB?, Configure and use Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB)
- Design a security solution for data in Azure Storage
- Design a security solution that includes Microsoft Defender for Storage and Microsoft Defender for Databases
How are Beta Exams Scored?
Because the exam’s scoring model has not yet been finalized; you do not receive a score right away after completing a beta exam.
You typically receive your exam score about two weeks after the exam becomes available worldwide (known as “live”); however, depending on when you took the exam during the beta period, this can take up to 16 weeks. This time frame reflects the comprehensive process used to evaluate the beta exam results; which included statistically analyzing the data to assess the performance of each question and reading; and evaluating all comments provided during the beta exam. The rescore process begins the day the exams go live and ends about 10 business days later.
Participation in the beta exam is completely voluntary, and Microsoft makes no promises or guarantees about the beta exam process, the availability of your scores, or the timing of your results.
Let us now look at some resources that will help you ace the SC-100 exam –
MS Learning Partners
Whether you’re a student looking to advance your career or a manager looking to improve your team’s cloud capabilities; Microsoft Learning Partners has a variety of training options to meet your needs, including blended learning, in-person, and online. Microsoft Learning Partners all over the world have met program requirements to teach Microsoft-developed training content delivered by Microsoft Certified Trainers.
MS Docs
The Microsoft documentation is a knowledge base that contains detailed information about the topics covered in the SC-100 exam. Reading Microsoft documentation can also help you learn about the various sizes of different Azure services. This is made up of modules that will teach you a lot about the various services and concepts covered in the test.
Practice Tests
Exam practice is essential for improving your readiness. By testing yourself with Microsoft SC-100 practice exams, you will learn about your weak and strong points. You will also be able to improve your response skills, which will aid you in saving time on the test. After you’ve finished a full topic, you should take the SC-100 practice exams. This will also aid in the efficiency of revision. Get the best practice exam tests online to help you prepare for the certification exam.
