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CompTIA's Security Exams in Late 2026: Live Versions, Retirements and New Objectives

Where CompTIA's five security-path exams stand in October 2026: which versions are live, what retires when, and the AI objectives that now run through four outlines.

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Rachel Brown
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CompTIA's Security Exams in Late 2026: Live Versions, Retirements and New Objectives

There was no single 2025 rewrite of CompTIA's security exams. Each one is replaced on its own cycle of about three years, so in October 2026 the five on CompTIA's security path sit at different points: Security+ is approaching a changeover, CySA+ is mid-changeover, and three carry 2027 retirement estimates. Across the current outlines, the clearest common change is artificial intelligence (AI), which has a dedicated objective in three current exams and in the announced Security+ V8 outline.

Where each exam stands

Dates are from each exam's CompTIA page as of October 14, 2026.

CertificationLive exam(s)LaunchedNext change
Network+N10-009June 20, 2024Retirement estimated 2027; no date or successor announced
Security+SY0-701; SY0-801 announcedNovember 7, 2023; SY0-801 expected on or around November 17, 2026SY0-701 retires in English on June 11, 2027
CySA+CS0-003 and CS0-004June 6, 2023; June 23, 2026CS0-003 retires in English on December 22, 2026
PenTest+PT0-003December 17, 2024Retirement estimated 2027; no date or successor announced
SecurityXCAS-005December 17, 2024Retirement estimated 2027; no date or successor announced

What 2025 actually brought

No exam on this path launched in 2025. The year's changes were retirements of versions replaced in December 2024: PenTest+ PT0-002 retired on June 17, 2025, and the CASP+ CAS-004 exam in June 2025, after CASP+ had been renamed SecurityX. Work on this year's exams was under way, though: the objectives documents for SY0-801 and CS0-004 both carry a 2025 copyright, before CS0-004 launched and before SY0-801's expected launch.

AI in four of five outlines

Each exam handles AI at its own level:

  • Security+ SY0-801, objective 2.6: summarize the threats and vulnerabilities of AI use, from prompt injection and poisoning to hallucinations and jailbreaking.
  • CySA+ CS0-004, objective 1.6: summarize AI's use in security operations, with its risks, governance and use cases such as log analysis and event correlation.
  • PenTest+ PT0-003, objective 4.9: explain attacks on AI systems, namely prompt injection and model manipulation. Objective 1.4 also lists AI as a reporting consideration.
  • SecurityX CAS-005, objective 1.5: summarize the security challenges of AI adoption.

Network+ N10-009 has no AI objective, and neither did the versions SY0-801 and CS0-004 replace. These four objectives use "summarize" or "explain" rather than directing a model attack or defense in a scenario. That describes their published scope, not a guarantee about individual question formats. For background reading, the 2023–24 OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications overlaps SecurityX objective 1.5, including prompt injection, training data poisoning and excessive agency.

Scenarios: no consistent direction

Newer outlines aren't uniformly more hands-on. Security+ went from seven scenario objectives out of 28 in SY0-701 to nine out of 27 in SY0-801. PenTest+ went from 13 of 21 in PT0-002 to 18 of 26 in PT0-003. CySA+ moved the other way, from seven of 15 to six of 15, as its incident response objectives were reorganized. SecurityX has 17 of 23, plus three "Given a set of requirements". The per-exam detail is in SY0-701 vs SY0-801, what CS0-004 changed and PenTest+ PT0-003.

The 2027 cluster

Network+, PenTest+ and SecurityX all carry a 2027 estimate, and none has an announced successor. In the most recent changeovers, CompTIA kept the old exam on sale for about six months after launch for PenTest+, CySA+ and CAS-004. The expected Security+ launch and announced retirement imply nearly seven months, if those dates hold. That's our count from CompTIA's dates; CompTIA hasn't committed to repeating it.

Two things follow if you hold several of these. Passing the latest release of an exam renews that certification without the $150 continuing education fee, according to CompTIA's fee page. And because CompTIA's hierarchy lets a higher certification renew the ones below it, renewing CySA+, PenTest+ or SecurityX also renews Security+ and Network+. If a 2027 version of one of them is on your list anyway, time it to fall inside your renewal window. For SecurityX specifically, see the exam as it stands.

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