How I practise for cloud and security certification exams (timed sets, miss logs, interleaving)

Notes on how I practise for cloud and security certification exams, in case it is useful to anyone else here.

The exams reward pacing and careful reading far more than raw recall, so I stopped doing untimed question review and switched to short timed sets: 25 questions, 30 minutes, no pausing, three or four times a week. I also keep a log of why each question was missed rather than what the right answer was - most of my misses turned out to be misread qualifiers (“BEST”, “FIRST”, “MOST likely”), not gaps in knowledge. Finally I interleave domains instead of finishing one before starting the next; it feels worse day to day and retains much better after a month.

The free question banks I use: www.examcert.app

Sets I run most: www.examcert.app/exams/cissp/ examcert.app/…/aws-solutions-architect-associate/ www.examcert.app/exams/comptia-security-plus/

And an AI explainer that walks through why each distractor is wrong: ai.examcert.app