ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity

Pass rate

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ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity Pass Rate

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The score you need to pass the ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity certification exam, what the cut score actually means, and how to read your mock results against it.

70% to pass
120 questions
2.1/10 difficulty

The number you need to hit

Published cut score for this certification.

Passing score
70%
700 out of 1,000 points
Margin
30%
room for wrong answers, on a flat mock
Wrong answers allowed
36
out of 120 questions

Pass score vs pass rate

Two different numbers that get mixed up constantly.

Pass score (cut score)

The scaled score the vendor publishes. For the ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity it is 70%. This is the number you can actually prepare against, and it is the one that decides your result on exam day.

Pass rate (percentage of candidates)

The share of candidates who pass. ISC2 generally does not publish this for individual exams, and the numbers you find online usually come from candidate self-reported surveys. We would rather tell you nothing than tell you a figure we cannot source.

Where you lose points

The exam is not scored flat. Each domain carries its own weight, so a domain where you lose everything can sink a score that looks fine on paper.

Network Security21%

Losing this domain entirely costs you 21% of the exam, and it has 25 practice questions here.

Security Principles25%

Losing this domain entirely costs you 25% of the exam, and it has 30 practice questions here.

Security Operations17%

Losing this domain entirely costs you 17% of the exam, and it has 20 practice questions here.

Access Control Concepts20%

Losing this domain entirely costs you 20% of the exam, and it has 24 practice questions here.

Business Continuity (BC), Disaster Recovery (DR) & Incident Response (IR)17%

Losing this domain entirely costs you 17% of the exam, and it has 21 practice questions here.

The practical version: the ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity is not passed by knowing most of the content. It is passed by being strong in the domains that carry weight, and by not leaving one of them empty.

More about the ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity exam

Explore the rest of this page series: format, cost, difficulty, requirements and how to prepare.

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Frequently asked questions

Everything you need to know about the ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity exam.