Exam SC-100: Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect

The SC-100: Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect Expert certification is designed for professionals who specialize in shaping and executing an organization’s cybersecurity vision. As a cybersecurity architect, you are critical in translating high-level security strategies into actionable solutions that safeguard the organization’s assets, operations, and overall business integrity.

Key Responsibilities and Focus Areas

As a Microsoft cybersecurity architect, your role extends across the design, deployment, and maintenance of robust security architectures. You are responsible for ensuring these architectures align with Zero Trust principles and adhere to established industry best practices. Your responsibilities cover a wide array of domains, including:

Identity and Access Management
Endpoint and Device Security
Data Protection and AI Security
Application and Network Security
Infrastructure Security (including hybrid and multicloud)
DevOps and Secure Development Practices
Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC)
Security Operations and Posture Management

You will also be expected to design strategies and frameworks that support continuous monitoring and improvement of an organization’s security posture.

Collaboration and Strategic Planning

Success in this role requires cross-functional collaboration with stakeholders across the organization. You will regularly work alongside professionals in security, privacy, engineering, compliance, and leadership to ensure that cybersecurity strategies align with the organization’s goals and regulatory requirements. This includes conducting risk assessments, defining security policies, and guiding teams on secure technology adoption.

Ideal Candidate Profile

To pursue the SC-100 certification, you should bring considerable hands-on experience in implementing and managing security solutions across various domains. This includes, but is not limited to:

Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Security Operations and Incident Response
Platform and Infrastructure Protection
Data and AI Security
Application Security
Hybrid and Multicloud Environments

Candidates are expected to have expertise in at least one of these areas and demonstrate the ability to design comprehensive, integrated security solutions leveraging Microsoft security technologies such as Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Sentinel, and others.

Exam Details

The Exam SC-100: Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect exam is offered in multiple languages to accommodate a global audience. Supported languages include English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, and Italian. To pass the exam, candidates must achieve a minimum score of 700 on a scale ranging from 1 to 1000. Microsoft is dedicated to ensuring an accessible and inclusive certification process. Candidates who require additional time, use assistive technologies, or need adjustments to any part of the exam experience due to a disability or other qualifying need can request appropriate accommodations in advance.

Course Outline

The Microsoft SC-100 Exam covers the following topics:

1. Designing solutions that align with security best practices and priorities (20–25%)

Design a resiliency strategy for ransomware and other attacks based on Microsoft Security Best Practices

Design a security strategy to support business resiliency goals, including identifying and prioritizing threats to business-critical assets (Microsoft Documentation: Define a security strategy, Business resilience)
Design solutions for business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR), including secure backup and restore for hybrid and multicloud environments (Microsoft Documentation: Security features to help protect hybrid backups that use Azure Backup)
Design solutions for mitigating ransomware attacks, including prioritization of BCDR and privileged access (Microsoft Documentation: Backup cloud and on-premises workloads to cloud, Quickly deploy ransomware preventions)
Evaluate solutions for security updates (Microsoft Documentation: Security design principles)

Design solutions that align with the Microsoft Cybersecurity Reference Architectures (MCRA) and Microsoft cloud security benchmark (MCSB)

Design solutions that align with best practices for cybersecurity capabilities and controls (Microsoft Documentation: Design solutions that align with security best practices)
Design solutions that align with best practices for protecting against insider, external, and supply chain attacks
Design solutions that align with best practices for Zero Trust security, including the Zero Trust Rapid Modernization Plan (RaMP) (Microsoft Documentation: Zero Trust security)

Design solutions that align with the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure and the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework

Design a new or evaluate an existing strategy for security and governance based on the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) and the Microsoft Well-Architected Framework (Microsoft Documentation: Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework, Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure)
Recommend solutions for security and governance based on the the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure and the Microsoft Well-Architected Framework (Microsoft Documentation: Security in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure)
Design solutions for implementing and governing security by using an Azure landing zone
Design a DevSecOps process that aligns with best practices in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)

2. Designing security operations, identity, and compliance capabilities (25–30%)

Design solutions for security operations

Design a solution for detection and response that includes extended detection and response (XDR) and security information and event management (SIEM) (Microsoft Documentation: extended detection and response (XDR))
Design a solution for centralized logging and auditing, including Microsoft Purview Audit
Design monitoring to support hybrid and multicloud environments (Microsoft Documentation: Introduction to hybrid and multicloud)
Design a solution for security orchestration automated response (SOAR), including Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender XDR (Microsoft Documentation: What is Microsoft Sentinel?, Microsoft Sentinel SOAR content catalog, Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) in Microsoft Sentinel)
Design and evaluate security workflows, including incident response, threat hunting, and incident management (Microsoft Documentation: Understand threat intelligence in Microsoft Sentinel)
Design and evaluate threat detection coverage by using MITRE ATT&CK matrices, including Cloud, Enterprise, Mobile, and ICS (Microsoft Documentation: Understand security coverage by the MITRE ATT&CK framework)

Design solutions for identity and access management

Design a solution for access to software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), hybrid/on-premises, and multicloud resources, including identity, networking, and application controls (Microsoft Documentation: What is PaaS?, IaaS, SaaS, public, private and hybrid clouds)
Design a solution for Microsoft Microsoft Entra ID, including hybrid and multi-cloud environments
Design a solution for external identities, including business-to-business (B2B), business-to-customer (B2C), and Decentralized Identity
Design a modern authentication and authorization strategy, including Conditional Access, continuous access evaluation, risk scoring, and protected actions (Microsoft Documentation: Continuous access evaluation, Azure Active Directory IDaaS in security operations)
Validate the alignment of Conditional Access policies with a Zero Trust strategy
Specify requirements to secure Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) (Microsoft Documentation: Active Directory Domain Services Overview)
Design a solution to manage secrets, keys, and certificates (Microsoft Documentation: About Azure Key Vault)

Design solutions for securing privileged access

Design a solution for assigning and delegating privileged roles by using the enterprise access model (Microsoft Documentation: Least privileged roles by task in Azure Active Directory)
Evaluate the security and governance of Microsoft Entra ID, including Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM), entitlement management, and access reviews
Evaluate the security and governance of on-premises Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), including resilience to common attacks
Design a solution for securing the administration of cloud tenants, including SaaS and multicloud infrastructure and platforms (Microsoft Documentation: Hybrid and multicloud solutions)
Design a solution for cloud infrastructure entitlement management that includes Microsoft Entra Permissions Management (Microsoft Documentation: Permissions Management, What is entitlement management?)
Evaluate an access review management solution that includes Microsoft Entra Permissions Management
Design a solution for Privileged Access Workstation (PAW) and bastion services (Microsoft Documentation: Securing devices as part of the privileged access story, Privileged access deployment)

Design solutions for regulatory compliance

Translate compliance requirements into a security solution
Design a solution to address compliance requirements by using Microsoft Purview (Microsoft Documentation: Microsoft Purview compliance portal)
Design a solution to address privacy requirements, including Microsoft Priva (Microsoft Documentation: Learn about Microsoft Priva)
Design Azure Policy solutions to address security and compliance requirements (Microsoft Documentation: What is Azure Policy?)
Evaluate and validate alignment with regulatory standards and benchmarks by using Microsoft Defender for Cloud

3. Designing security solutions for infrastructure (25–30%)

Design solutions for security posture management in hybrid and multicloud environments

Evaluate security posture by using Microsoft Defender for Cloud, including the Microsoft cloud security benchmark (MCSB) (Microsoft Documentation: Evaluate security posture and recommend technical strategies to manage risk, Introduction to the Microsoft cloud security benchmark)
Evaluate security posture by using Microsoft Secure Score (Microsoft Documentation: Secure score)
Design integrated security posture management solutions that include Microsoft Defender for Cloud in hybrid and multi-cloud environments
Select cloud workload protection solutions in Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Design a solution for integrating hybrid and multicloud environments by using Azure Arc (Microsoft Documentation: Azure Arc overview)
Design a solution for Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management (Defender EASM) (Microsoft Documentation: Defender EASM Overview)
Specify requirements and priorities for a posture management process that uses Exposure Management attack paths, attack surface reduction, security insights, and initiatives

Specify requirements for securing server and client endpoints

Specify security requirements for servers, including multiple platforms and operating systems (Microsoft Documentation: Supported operating systems, platforms and capabilities)
Specify security requirements for mobile devices and clients, including endpoint protection, hardening, and configuration (Microsoft Documentation: Use security baselines to configure Windows devices in Intune)
Specify security requirements for IoT devices and embedded systems (Microsoft Documentation: Getting Started with Windows IoT Enterprise)
Design a solution for securing operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) by using Microsoft Defender for IoT
Specify security baselines for server and client endpoints
Evaluate Windows Local Admin Password Solution (LAPS) solutions

Specify requirements for securing SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services

Specify security baselines for SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services (Microsoft Documentation: Design a strategy for securing PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS services)
Specify security requirements for IoT workloads (Microsoft Documentation: Security in your IoT workload)
Specify security requirements for web workloads
Specify security requirements for containers (Microsoft Documentation: Security considerations for Azure Container Instances)
Specify security requirements for container orchestration
Evaluate solutions that include Azure AI Services Security

Evaluate solutions for network security and Security Service Edge (SSE)

Evaluate network designs to align with security requirements and best practices
Evaluate solutions that use Microsoft Entra Internet Access as a secure web gateway
Evaluate solutions that use Microsoft Entra Internet Access to access Microsoft 365, including cross-tenant configurations
Evaluate solutions that use Microsoft Entra Private Access

4. Designing security solutions for applications and data (20–25%)

Evaluate solutions for securing Microsoft 365

Evaluate security posture for productivity and collaboration workloads by using metrics, including Secure Score and Defender for Cloud secure score
Evaluate solutions that include Microsoft Defender for Office and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
Evaluate device management solutions that include Microsoft Intune
Evaluate solutions for securing data in Microsoft 365 by using Microsoft Purview
Evaluate data security and compliance controls in Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 services

Design solutions for securing applications

Evaluate the security posture of existing application portfolios
Evaluate threats to business-critical applications by using threat modeling (Microsoft Documentation: Integrating threat modeling with DevOps)
Design and implement a full lifecycle strategy for application security
Design and implement standards and practices for securing the application development process (Microsoft Documentation: Secure development best practices on Azure)
Map technologies to application security requirements (Microsoft Documentation: Security in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure)
Design a solution for workload identity to authenticate and access Azure cloud resources (Microsoft Documentation: Workload identity federation)
Design a solution for API management and security
Design solutions that secure applications by using Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Design solutions for securing an organization’s data

Evaluate solutions for data discovery and classification
Specify priorities for mitigating threats to data (Microsoft Documentation: Mitigate threats by using Windows 10 security features)
Evaluate solutions for encryption of data at rest and in transit, including Azure KeyVault and infrastructure encryption
Design a security solution for data in Azure workloads, including Azure SQL, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Cosmos DB (Microsoft Documentation: What is Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB?, Configure and use Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB)
Design a security solution for data in Azure Storage
Design a security solution that includes Microsoft Defender for Storage and Microsoft Defender for Databases

Microsoft SC-100 Exam FAQs

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Microsoft Certification Exam Guidelines

Microsoft enforces a comprehensive set of exam policies to maintain the credibility and global recognition of its certification program. These guidelines are intended to ensure a consistent, fair, and secure testing environment for every candidate, regardless of whether the exam is taken online or at a certified test center. By following these policies, Microsoft upholds the integrity of its certifications and reinforces their value across diverse professional sectors worldwide.

Policy on Exam Retakes

Candidates who do not pass the exam on their first attempt are required to wait a minimum of 24 hours before rebooking. This brief interval allows individuals to assess their performance and prepare more effectively. For subsequent attempts, specifically the second through fifth, Microsoft mandates a 14-day waiting period between each try. To safeguard the validity of the exam, candidates are limited to five attempts within a 12-month timeframe, beginning from the date of the initial attempt.

Rescheduling and Cancellation Terms

Microsoft offers flexible scheduling options to accommodate candidate needs. Modifications made six or more business days prior to the scheduled exam date are free of charge. However, if a candidate reschedules or cancels within five business days of the appointment, a rescheduling fee will apply. Failure to appear for the exam or to cancel with less than 24 hours’ notice will result in forfeiture of the entire exam fee. In exceptional situations, such as emergencies or requests related to accessibility, Microsoft may grant exceptions or waive fees based on individual case reviews.

Microsoft SC-100 Exam Study Guide

1. Explore the Exam Objective

To enhance your preparation for the SC-100: Microsoft Certified Cybersecurity Architect Expert exam, it is essential to thoroughly explore the official exam objectives. Understanding these objectives provides clear insights into the core skills and knowledge areas assessed during the exam. By aligning your study plan with the outlined domains—such as security strategy design, Zero Trust implementation, governance and compliance, and security operations—you can focus on the most relevant topics and identify areas that require deeper attention. Reviewing the exam objectives not only improves your readiness but also boosts your confidence by ensuring your preparation is targeted, structured, and in line with Microsoft’s expectations.

2. Use the Microsoft Official Learning Path

Leveraging Microsoft’s official learning path modules is a strategic way to strengthen your preparation for the SC-100 exam. These modules are curated by Microsoft experts and align directly with the skills measured in the certification. They provide structured, role-based learning through a combination of theoretical concepts, hands-on exercises, and real-world scenarios. By following these guided learning paths, you gain a deeper understanding of key topics such as security architecture, identity and access management, compliance, and risk governance. Utilizing these official resources ensures you are studying accurate, up-to-date content, which significantly enhances your ability to perform confidently and successfully on the exam. The learning paths are:

3. Microsoft Documentation for Reference

Using Microsoft’s official documentation in your exam preparation strategy offers a reliable and comprehensive reference point for mastering the SC-100 exam content. This documentation covers a wide range of Microsoft security technologies and best practices in detail, providing in-depth technical insights that go beyond surface-level understanding. By using these resources, you can deepen your knowledge of core concepts such as Zero Trust architecture, threat protection, compliance frameworks, and secure solution design. Regularly referencing Microsoft Docs ensures you stay aligned with the latest updates, features, and real-world applications—enabling a more informed, confident approach to the certification exam.

4. Become Part of Study Groups

Joining study groups can be a highly effective way to enhance your preparation for the SC-100 certification exam. These collaborative environments offer the opportunity to engage with peers, exchange insights, clarify complex topics, and gain different perspectives on exam content. Interacting with others who are also preparing for the same certification can help reinforce your understanding, uncover knowledge gaps, and keep you motivated throughout your study journey. Whether through online forums, social platforms, or community-led sessions, participating in a study group fosters a sense of accountability and provides access to shared resources and real-world experiences that can significantly enrich your learning process.

5. Take Microsoft SC-100 Exam Practice Tests

Taking SC-100 exam practice tests is a valuable component of a well-rounded preparation strategy. These simulated assessments help you familiarize yourself with the exam format, question styles, and time constraints, allowing you to develop effective test-taking techniques. Practice exams also serve as a diagnostic tool to identify areas where further study is needed, enabling you to focus your efforts more efficiently. By reviewing your results and understanding the rationale behind each answer, you can reinforce key concepts and build greater confidence. Consistently incorporating practice tests into your study plan not only sharpens your readiness but also enhances your ability to perform under real exam conditions.