Are Cloud Security Certs Still even worth it? 📜
Are you wasting your time in 2026?
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Super Quick one this week and a question I get a ton…
“Are Cloud Security Certs Still even worth it? 📜”
People in my position don’t actually have a definitive answer to this.
I’ve been in this space for 7+ years. I really don’t know how hard it is to break in right now. The market shifts every six months, the requirements drift and what worked when I was getting started might be useless advice today.
So I’m not going to pretend I do.
However, here’s what I do know about certs.
They give you accountability. Dropping £300+ on an exam voucher with a date attached forces you to start the study. It stops “I’ll get to it next weekend.” You either show up prepared or loose your money.
They give you a structured learning path. This is underrated. The hardest part of self teaching Cloud or Security isn’t the material, it’s figuring out what to learn and in what order. A good cert has done that work for you. You’re paying for the curriculum as much as the credential.
Vendor certs often reflect the tools real engineers actually use. AWS, Azure, vendor specific security certs, the labs and concepts map directly onto what people are touching in production. That’s not always true of the more academic certs, but for Cloud and Security? Almost 100%
They’re an HR tick box. I don’t love it either, but it’s reality. Recruiters filter resumes on keywords and “AWS Solutions Architect” works well.
So yes, I’d still do certs.
Don’t just pass the exam.
Take it one step further and actually build the things the cert is teaching you.
AWS is the perfect example. If you’re studying for the Solutions Architect Associate, don’t just memorise when to use S3 vs EBS vs EFS. Spin up the resources. Push files into a bucket. Mount EFS to an EC2 instance. Break IAM permissions and figure out why your Lambda can’t read from DynamoDB.
My honest answer: Yes, certs are still worth it, if you treat them as the floor and not the ceiling.
W J Pearce - Cyber Notes
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Thats really good advice, use the certs as establishing a kind of early framework that you build things with whether you actually take the exam or not. That way you'll have skills and quickly find out what you need next or at least where the gaps are.