What is it?

What exactly is the Cisco Certified Support Technician Cybersecurity?

Cisco's entry-level cybersecurity credential that proves foundational security knowledge for students and career starters.

The Cisco Certified Support Technician (CCST) Cybersecurity - exam 100-160 - is Cisco's foundational, entry-level security certification, sitting below the Associate (CCNA/CyberOps) tier. It validates basic but practical cybersecurity concepts: essential security principles, network and endpoint security, vulnerability assessment/risk management, and incident handling. It is designed for students, career changers, and help-desk/IT-support staff with no prior experience, and it is explicitly positioned by Cisco as a first step toward the Cybersecurity Associate (CyberOps) certification. Passing it supports entry-level roles such as cybersecurity technician, Tier-1 help-desk support, and junior security analyst.

The path in brief

1. Confirm no prerequisites and review the 100-160 blueprint
2. Complete Cisco NetAcad 'Introduction to Cybersecurity' or 'Cybersecurity Essentials'
3. Practice with free labs and the Junior Cybersecurity Analyst career path
4. Schedule the 100-160 exam via Pearson VUE/Certiport
5. Pass the exam and claim your digital badge
6. Continue toward CyberOps Associate / CCNA Cybersecurity

Before you book

Who is eligible to sit the Cisco Certified Support Technician Cybersecurity?

Open to all; the exam is intended for students, career changers, and entry-level IT staff. A Certiport candidate profile is required to schedule (separate from a Cisco profile).

Who it is for: High-school and community-college students, career changers with no IT background, help-desk/IT-support technicians transitioning into security, and anyone validating foundational security knowledge.

The test itself

What is the format of the Cisco Certified Support Technician Cybersecurity?

The Cisco Certified Support Technician Cybersecurity is administered by Pearson VUE / Certiport and runs 50 minutes and requires Cisco does not publish a fixed numeric passing score; candidates receive a pass/fail result. Prep providers commonly estimate a ~70% scaled threshold, but this is not an official Cisco figure. to pass.

The fine print

What are the retake and renewal rules for the Cisco Certified Support Technician Cybersecurity?

Proctoring & delivery

Delivered by Pearson VUE: at authorized test centers or online via OnVUE remote proctoring (CCST uses the Certiport/Pearson VUE platform). A government-issued photo ID is required; online tests include a room/environment scan.

Retake policy

If you fail, Cisco requires a waiting period of 5 calendar days before you may retake the same exam. Each attempt requires full payment of the exam fee. Cisco does not cap total attempts, but some exams limit attempts within a 12-month window.

Score reporting

Results are reported as pass/fail and made available online (Cisco Certification Tracking System) typically within 48 hours. A section-level performance breakdown is provided to help target further study; scaled scores use a 300-1000 range (CCNA/CCNP-style exams).

Recertification

All Cisco certifications are valid for 3 years from the date earned. Recertify before expiry by (a) passing a higher-or-equal level qualifying exam, (b) earning Continuing Education (CE) credits through eligible training/activities, or (c) a combination of exam + CE. For associate-level certs 30 CE credits are required; for professional-level 40 CE credits. Certificates can also be extended via the Cisco Continuing Education program.

Refunds & rescheduling

Exam fees are generally non-refundable once scheduled, but Pearson VUE allows rescheduling or cancellation up to 24-48 hours before the appointment without penalty; no-shows forfeit the fee. CCST/Certiport policies may differ by region.

What it pays

How much does this credential pay?

$61,550 median for computer support specialists (BLS, May 2024)

CCST Cybersecurity is an entry credential, and the honest salary framing is that it does not have its own wage series — no US government body tracks pay by Cisco entry certification, and no credible employer survey isolates CCST holders in a large enough sample to publish an average. What it does map to is a job family. The roles that actually list 100-160 in the "preferred" line are help desk, desktop support, junior NOC, and IT technician posts, plus the security-adjacent tier-zero work where someone triages phishing reports and runs endpoint scans before an analyst sees the ticket. The Bureau of Labor Statistics groups those under Computer Support Specialists, and that occupation is where a newly certified CCST holder realistically lands. Two things matter about that group. First, it splits sharply: computer network support specialists earn a median of $73,340 while computer user support specialists — the classic help desk seat — earn $60,340, a gap of roughly $13,000 for work that starts out looking similar on a job board. Getting to the network side is the pay lever, and that is exactly why CCST is framed by Cisco as a stepping stone rather than a destination. Second, BLS explicitly notes that candidates may qualify for these roles with a high school diploma plus relevant IT certifications, which is the single most useful sentence in the whole occupational profile for a CCST candidate without a degree. The occupation is projected to decline 3 percent from 2024 to 2034, yet about 50,500 openings are still projected each year, all from replacement need — churn, not growth, is what will hire you.

Job growth.-3% projected change 2024-34 (decline), offset by ~50,500 replacement openings a year

Source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook — Computer Support Specialists

Your schedule

How long should I study for it?

55-75 hours of focused study

This is a 50-minute, roughly 40-50 item, concept-recognition exam with no configuration simulations, which changes the shape of the study plan completely. You are not building muscle memory in a CLI; you are building fast, unambiguous recall of vocabulary and the ability to pick the right control for a described situation. That favours short, frequent sessions over long weekend blocks. The plan below assumes you are starting with basic computer literacy and a rough idea of what a router does, but no security background and no prior Cisco study. If you already hold Security+ or ITF+, compress it to three weeks and spend the saved time on the Cisco-flavoured endpoint tooling in Domain 3, which is where vendor-neutral prep leaves the biggest gap. Cisco publishes the five domains for 100-160 without percentage weightings, so you cannot triage by weight the way CCNA candidates do — allocate time evenly and let your practice-question results, not a published percentage, tell you where the hole is.

1. Week 110-12 hrs

   Domain 1 — Essential Security Principles

   • Work through the free Cisco Networking Academy "Introduction to Cybersecurity" course end to end
   • Build a one-page sheet: CIA triad, defence in depth, hardening, threat vs vulnerability vs risk vs exploit
   • Memorise the AAA split and be able to say which of the three RADIUS handles for a given scenario
   • Learn the social-engineering family cold: phishing, spear phishing, vishing, smishing, tailgating, pretexting
2. Week 210-12 hrs

   Domain 1 continued (crypto) + Domain 2 — Basic Network Security

   • Encryption: symmetric vs asymmetric, hashing vs encryption, certificates and PKI, and the three states of data
   • Map each state of data (at rest, in transit, in use) to the control that protects it
   • TCP/IP protocol weaknesses: ARP spoofing, DHCP starvation, DNS poisoning, ICMP abuse
   • Draw a small-office topology by hand and label DMZ, proxy, IDS, IPS, NAT boundary
3. Week 310-12 hrs

   Domain 2 finished — wireless, ACLs, VPN, NAC

   • Order the wireless standards by strength and know why WEP and WPA are dead and WPA3 is the answer
   • Actually configure a home router: change the SSID, set WPA3 or WPA2-AES, enable MAC filtering, then disable it and explain why it is weak
   • Compare ACL, firewall, VPN and NAC by the question "what does this stop, and where does it sit?"
   • CIDR notation and private vs public address ranges — enough to read an address and say which side of the boundary it is on
4. Week 410-12 hrs

   Domain 3 — Endpoint Security

   • Spin up a Windows VM and a Linux VM; find the host firewall, Defender status, and the local audit policy on each
   • Run netstat, nslookup and tcpdump until you can say what each output line means without hesitating
   • Read Windows Event Viewer and Linux syslog for a real login failure you generate yourself
   • Learn file and directory permissions and what privilege escalation looks like in a log
5. Week 510-12 hrs

   Domain 4 — Vulnerability Assessment and Risk Management, plus Domain 5 — Incident Handling

   • Look up three real CVEs in the NVD and read the CVSS vector, not just the score
   • Separate vulnerability scanning from penetration testing in one sentence each, then learn active vs passive reconnaissance
   • Learn the incident response lifecycle as an ordered list and practise being asked "what happens next?"
   • Order of volatility and chain of custody — these produce short, high-certainty exam points
6. Week 68-10 hrs

   Mixed-domain drilling and timing

   • Take timed 50-minute practice sets that shuffle all five domains — never single-domain sets at this stage
   • Rebuild the flashcard deck from every question you miss, phrasing the card as the exam phrased it
   • Do two full dry runs at the same time of day you booked the real exam
   • Re-read your one-page sheets the night before, then stop

What to buy

Which study resources are worth paying for?

CCST is the cheapest credible security certification Cisco sells, and the resource market reflects that. There is far less third-party material than for CCNA, the big video subscription providers cover 100-160 thinly if at all, and a good deal of what is marketed as CCST prep is repackaged Security+ content with the Cisco logo on the thumbnail. That sounds like a problem and mostly is not, because the free Cisco-authored material genuinely covers this blueprint end to end — the Networking Academy courses were built for exactly this audience. What paid resources buy you on this exam is question banks and structure, not coverage. Our recommended shape for a $125 exam is to spend nothing on training, work the free courses, build the two VMs, and put whatever budget you have into practice questions with real explanations plus a reserve for a second voucher. Be sceptical of anything priced like a boot camp: at entry level the gap between a $0 study path and a $2,000 one is almost entirely accountability, and you can buy that with a calendar. One caveat on the table below — verify that any practice-question product actually has a 100-160 title rather than selling you a generic security bank, and check that it explains why each wrong option is wrong, since distractor reasoning is what this exam rewards.

Prices checked 2026-08 and shown as list price in USD before tax; vendors discount and Udemy-style pricing swings constantly, so verify at the source before buying. We do not rank by commission.

What you'll face

What question types will I see?

CCST Cybersecurity is a concept-recognition exam. There are no lab simulations and no CLI configuration items — you will not be asked to write a firewall rule, only to recognise when one belongs and what it would do. Expect multiple choice with a single correct answer, multiple-response items where the stem tells you how many to pick, and drag-and-drop matching where you place terms against definitions or order the steps of a process. Roughly a third of the paper wraps the question in a short scenario: a log line, an odd ping result, a described small-office topology. Cisco exams present questions one at a time and do not allow you to navigate backwards, so there is no "flag it and come back" strategy available — commit and move.

Samples are editor-written illustrations of the published blueprint, not live exam items.

Reference

What are the key facts about the Cisco Certified Support Technician Cybersecurity?

Cisco Certified Support Technician Cybersecurity is a certification credential; awarded by Cisco; the exam fee is US$125 (plus applicable tax; regional pricing may differ).; typical preparation is Approximately 3-5 weeks of part-time study (about 40-60 hours).; holders typically earn $45,000 – $65,000.

In short

Is the Cisco Certified Support Technician Cybersecurity worth it?

• Foundational, no-prerequisite Cisco security cert (exam 100-160), 50 minutes, ~50 questions, US$125.
• Five domains; Essential Security Principles and Vulnerability/Risk are the heaviest at 22% each.
• Designed as the on-ramp to CyberOps Associate / CCNA Cybersecurity.
• Valid 3 years; free aligned Cisco Networking Academy training available.

Worth comparing

How does the Cisco Certified Support Technician Cybersecurity compare with similar credentials?

• CompTIA Security+ CompTIA

Trust

Where does this information come from?

Everything above is taken from the awarding body's own published material. Fees, question counts and domain weights are revised regularly — check the official page before you pay.

• Cisco Awarding body
• Official Cisco Certified Support Technician Cybersecurity exam page Exam page
• Cisco certification programme Programme rules

Research confidence: medium · Last reviewed 2026-08