I recently passed my online renewal exam for the Microsoft Certified: Identity and Access Administrator Associate certification, or SC-300 exam. If you are close to taking your sc-300 renewal exam, continue reading to see my feedback. I will be covering how you can take your renewal exam for the SC-300 and what your experience may be like during the process.
How to take the SC-300 renewal exam
In order to take the renewal exam you need to be eligible for it. After you first take the full SC-300 exam, you will become eligible to take the renewal exam in 6 months and you must renew the certification within 12 months after completing it for the first time.
Click on the following link to view if you are eligible to take the SC-300 renewal exam: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/identity-and-access-administrator/renew/
When you click the link above you may see a page like the following:
Interestingly, as you can see from my page, I have 364 days until I can retake the renewal exam. This is because I took my exam 6 months before expiry, which extends the certification for an additional 1 year, on top of what ever time was left. Being able to take the assessment 6 months before expiry, leaves me 1 year before I can renew again.
How long is the SC-300 renewal exam?
The SC-300 exam took me roughly 30 minutes to complete all 22 questions. Although there is no time limit, so you can take as long as you like.
My feedback for the SC-300 renewal exam
In general, I found the renewal exam quite simple. The questions do not go in-depth technically and are all multiple-choice, unlike the full exam which includes multiple-choice, drag and drop, fill-in-the-black, yes/no and case study style questions.
As you could expect, the exam focused heavily on user authentication, managing user risk through identity protection and managing conditional access. These areas cover a large amount of the skills outline (which can be found here), so it was to be expected that it would cover a large portion of the exam.
Reading through the skills outline I can remember the following topics being covered:
Implement initial configuration of Azure Active Directory
- configure and manage Azure Active Directory roles
- configure delegation by using administrative units
Manage user authentication
- administer authentication methods
- configure and deploy self-service password reset
- implement conditional access policy controls and assignments
- testing and troubleshooting conditional access policies
- implement application controls
- implement and manage a user risk policy
- implement and manage sign-in risk policy
- implement and manage MFA registration policy
- monitor, investigate and remediate elevated risky users
Plan, implement, and monitor the integration of Enterprise Apps for SSO
- Design and implement access management for apps
- Monitor and audit access / Sign-ins to Azure Active Directory-integrated enterprise
applications - Integrate on-premises apps by using Azure AD application proxy
- configure application permissions
- define access packages
- define a privileged access strategy for administrative users (resources, roles, approvals,
thresholds) - configure Privileged Identity Management for Azure AD roles
- configure Privileged Identity Management for Azure resources
- analyse PIM audit history and reports
- enable and integrate Azure AD diagnostic logs with Log Analytics / Microsoft Sentinel
- review Azure AD activity by using Log Analytics / Microsoft Sentinel, excluding KQL use
- analyse Azure Active Directory workbooks/reporting
- configure notifications
As we cannot go into details on the questions, you should take the time before the exam to review the skills outline and read up on the Microsoft documentation. The questions will not be the same for everyone, as your questions will be randomly selected from a larger pool, so your experience may not be similar.
How to prepare for the SC-300 renewal exam
For those who can say they are using the technologies listed in the skills outline everyday, a short refresher may just be needed. Otherwise here are some great resources for you to prepare to take the SC-300 renewal exam.
