How I prepared for the new Wiz certification
On 3 February 2025, cloud security start-up Wiz announced their first ever certification — Wiz Certified Cloud Fundamentals.
As I’ve worked with three different organisations during the last few years implementing and managing the Wiz cloud security platform, I decided to go for it.
The documentation provided just after launch of the certification was understandably somewhat limited — in particular there were no example questions, so it was hard to gauge the level of knowledge required.
Nevertheless, I booked the exam for the end of March 2025, choosing a test centre rather than a virtual proctored exam, at a cost of $150.
A slight distraction
After I booked the exam, but before I took it — I was slightly distracted by the announcement of Google’s intention to buy Wiz:
I did wonder if I should revisit my decision to take the exam — but decided that regardless of a change of ownership, it would still be a very worthwhile certification.
Preparation
I prepared by going through the excellent training videos in the recently launched Wiz Cloud Academy — which I highly recommend using if you work with Wiz, whether or not you’re planning on taking the exam. I didn’t try the on-line labs, as I studied while commuting on the train using a mobile device.
On several topics, I then reinforced my knowledge by logging in to the Wiz console of one of my customers, to see the feature or setting in a real-world environment.
The exam
There were 60 questions, to be completed in 150 minutes (2.5 hours).
Each question was multiple choice, usually with one correct answer out of 4. Some questions required a selection of 2 or 3 out of 6. In the latter case, I was forced to select the right number of choices — which I appreciated!
There were questions covering virtually all of the topics listed in the exam blueprint, including:
- Outposts
- Cloud connectors
- Supported cloud service providers
- Mapping Projects to cloud subscriptions
- Cloud and host configuration rules
- Vulnerability management and malware detection
- Rules vs. Controls vs. Issues
- Configuring custom rules and controls
- CSPM vs CIEM
- Boards, e.g. External Exposure Board, Patch Management Board
- Dynamic scanner for external exposure assessment
- Ignore rules
- SSO with role-based access
- Wiz browser extension
Some questions seemed quite basic to me, whereas others required a detailed level of knowledge.
The questions were all well written, providing effective tests of knowledge in Wiz, with clear unambiguous answer choices.
The exam focused only on Wiz Cloud — there weren’t any questions relating to Wiz Code, containers or Kubernetes.
I finished in about an hour, and then took around 20 minutes to review all my answers — changing a few where I realised I hadn’t read the question properly!
The result
After completing the survey, I submitted the exam and was very pleased to see that I passed. A breakdown of results by area was provided; I did best on cloud infrastructure (100%) however I clearly have some work to do on policy management (55%)! Overall I scored 835 / 1000 compared with the pass mark of 700.
Within an hour I received confirmation of the result by email, and a digital badge issued by Accredible.
I’m delighted to be one of the first people to hold the new Wiz certification 🎉🥳🎊 does that mean I’m now officially a Wizard 🧙♂️?
Studying for the exam gave me extra motivation to extend my knowledge of Wiz — even though I had worked with Wiz for around 3 years, I gained a greater understanding of several areas of Wiz with which I was previously less familiar.
Should you become Wiz certified?
If you’re working with Wiz, I’d definitely recommend you consider becoming Wiz certified 🧙♂️. It’s a definitive external recognition of your skills, and you should learn a lot by preparing for the exam.
⚠️ Please bear in mind that my experience, and the question topics listed above, represent a point in time snapshot. Questions are drawn from a bank, and may change as Wiz releases new features and updates.
At present, you can only access Wiz Cloud Academy and Wiz documentation if you’re a Wiz customer or partner. There’s also currently no self-service facility for a trial of Wiz. So effectively you need to be a Wiz customer or partner to have a realistic opportunity of being awarded this certification.
