Note: None of these descriptions were made by me. All of the were taken from their respective issuer, OffSec, and Mircrosoft Learn. To learn more about them you can go and visit their official pages.

Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP): An OSCP has demonstrated the ability to use persistence, creativity, and perceptiveness to identify vulnerabilities and execute organized attacks under tight time constraints. They can:

• Use information gathering techniques to identify and enumerate targets running various operating systems and services
• Write scripts and tools to aid in the penetration testing process
• Analyze, correct, modify, cross-compile, and port public exploit code
• Conduct remote, local privilege escalation, and client-side attacks
• Identify and exploit XSS, SQL injection, and file inclusion vulnerabilities in web applications
• Leverage tunneling techniques to pivot between networks

OSCP holders have also shown they can think outside the box while managing both time and resources.

Microsoft Cyber Security Architect Expert (SC-100): As a Microsoft cybersecurity architect, you translate a cybersecurity strategy into capabilities that protect the assets, business, and operations of an organization. You design, guide the implementation of, and maintain security solutions that follow Zero Trust principles and best practices, including security strategies for:

• Identity
• Devices
• Data
• Applications
• Network
• Infrastructure
• DevOps

Plus, you design solutions for:

• Governance and Risk Compliance (GRC)
• Security operations
• Security posture management

As a cybersecurity architect, you continuously collaborate with leaders and practitioners in IT security, privacy, and other roles across an organization to plan and implement a cybersecurity strategy that meets the business needs of an organization.

As a candidate for this exam, you have experience implementing or administering solutions in the following areas:

• Identity and access
• Platform protection
• Security operations
• Data security
• Application security
• Hybrid and multicloud infrastructures

You should have expert skills in at least one of those areas, and you should have experience designing security solutions that include Microsoft security technologies.

Microsoft Certified Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500): As the Azure security engineer, you implement, manage, and monitor security for resources in Azure, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments as part of an end-to-end infrastructure. You recommend security components and configurations to protect the following:

• Identity and access
• Data
• Applications
• Networks

Your responsibilities as an Azure security engineer include:

• Managing the security posture
• Identifying and remediating vulnerabilities
• Performing threat modelling
• Implementing threat protection

You may also participate in responding to security incidents. As an Azure security engineer, you work with architects, administrators, and developers to plan and implement solutions that meet security and compliance requirements.

You should have:

• Practical experience in administration of Microsoft Azure and hybrid environments
• Strong familiarity with compute, network, and storage in Azure and Microsoft Entra ID