SecProve
ProfessionalVendor-neutralEC-Council· issued from US

CSA

EC Council Certified SOC Analyst

EC Council Certified SOC Analyst

Official page at EC-Council↔ Compare with another cert
Exam fee
$450
Ongoing
$80/yr AMF · 40 CPE/yr
Study time
60–120 hrs
Delivery
Hybrid
Validity
3 yrs (renewal cycle)

› Quality score

24.5 / 40

Four-axis SecProve rubric, each 0–10. SecProve editorial assessment — each axis carries a written justification so you can push back on any single call without dismissing the whole score.

Blueprint rigor
How well-defined and rigorous the exam blueprint is.
Certified SOC Analyst — entry SOC credential with broad blueprint.
6.5/10
Practical evidence
Hands-on labs / written reports vs pure MCQ.
Lab-style scenarios but largely MCQ.
5.5/10
Currency & upkeep
How aggressively content is kept current with the field.
Updated alongside the EC-Council SOC track.
6.5/10
Market recognition
How often this signal actually moves a hiring decision.
Recognised in EC-Council-trained SOCs; CySA+ is the more common HR-screen signal.
6.0/10

› Exam format

100 multiple-choice questions, 3 hours, proctored. Passing score: 70%.

Retake policy
Fee: $499 per attempt
Wait: 0d between attempts

First retake immediate; 14 days between attempts 2-3, 1 month between 3-4, 3 months between 4-5. Max 5 attempts/year.

› Recertification

Valid for 3 years. 120 ECE credits over 3 years + annual AMF (80 USD).

› 3-year cost of ownership

Exam (1×)
$450
AMF (3×)
$240@$80/yr
Total
$690

Excludes study materials, training, retake risk, and lost-wage opportunity. Use as a floor estimate.

› NICE Framework work roles

The NIST NICE work-role IDs this cert maps to. NICCS lookup.

PD-WRL-001PD-WRL-003
Recognition
Global
Exam languages
en

› Core domains covered

The 2 domains this cert is centrally about. Passing the exam demonstrates working knowledge of each.

A10Security Operations

SOC operations, SIEM tuning, SOAR playbooks, alert triage, log analysis, runbook development.

A11Detection Engineering & Threat Hunting

SIGMA/YARA/Suricata rule writing, hypothesis-driven hunting, log deep-dives, detection gap analysis.

› Prerequisites

Experience

No formal prerequisites. Recommended: CEH or CND.

› Careers that commonly pursue this cert

Cloud Security Engineer

Secure cloud infrastructure across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Specialize in the shared responsibility model and cloud-native controls.

AppSec / DevSecOps Engineer

Embed security into the software development lifecycle. Shift left to catch vulnerabilities before they reach production.

Cloud Detection / SecOps Engineer

A hybrid role growing out of the realisation that SOCs need engineers who understand cloud-native telemetry, IAM-first threat models, and how to instrument AWS/Azure/GCP for detection.

ML Platform Security Engineer

Secures the platform that trains, stores, and serves ML models — multi-tenant GPU isolation, pipeline integrity, feature-store hygiene, secrets management in ML workflows.

› Common exam traps to study

Cybersecurity cert exams reuse the same 25 distractor patterns over and over — category confusion, RTO vs RPO, IDS vs IPS, MD5 vs SHA-256, and more. Once you can name the trap, you stop falling for it. Each archetype page covers what it is, the specific pairs candidates confuse, and how to avoid it.

Browse all 25 cert-exam trapsStart with: BEST vs correct

See this cert’s domains highlighted on the interactive map, or compare it against the rest of the catalog.

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