Cisco certifications run Entry, Associate, Professional and Expert. Most careers start at CCNA, which is the credential employers name in job adverts; the CCST exams below it exist for people with no IT background at all. At Professional level the shape changes - there is no single CCNP exam. You take one core exam for your track plus a concentration exam of your choice. Expert level is CCIE, an eight-hour hands-on lab, which is not covered here.
How CertGrid reviews questions
- Mapped to current exam objectives
- Includes an explanation for every answer
- Reviewed for weak or giveaway distractors
- Reviewed when exam objectives change
1
Entry
No experience needed - start here if you are new to IT.- Cisco CCST Networking (100-150)Networking fundamentals: addressing, cabling, protocols and basic troubleshooting. Aimed at students and career changers.View CCST Networking practice exam →
- Cisco CCST Cybersecurity (100-160)Security fundamentals: threats, vulnerabilities, access control and the basics of incident response.View CCST Cybersecurity practice exam →
2
Associate
The professional baseline. Most roles ask for CCNA.- Cisco CCNA 200-301The flagship associate certification: network fundamentals, access, IP connectivity, services, security and automation. Start here if you already work in IT.View CCNA practice exam →
- Cisco CCNA Automation (200-901 CCNAAUTO)Network automation and programmability: APIs, Python and infrastructure as code. Formerly DevNet Associate.View CCNA Automation practice exam →
- Cisco Cybersecurity Associate (200-201 CBROPS)Security operations: monitoring, analysis and incident response for a SOC role. Formerly CyberOps Associate.View CyberOps Associate practice exam →
3
Professional
One core exam plus a concentration, not a single exam.- Cisco CCNP ENCOR 350-401Enterprise core: architecture, virtualisation, infrastructure, assurance, security and automation. The core exam for CCNP Enterprise.View ENCOR practice exam →
- Cisco CCNP ENARSI (300-410)Advanced routing: EIGRP, OSPF, BGP, VPN services and infrastructure security. A concentration exam for CCNP Enterprise.View ENARSI practice exam →
- Cisco CCNP Security SCOR (350-701)Security core: network, cloud and content security, endpoint protection and secure access. The core exam for CCNP Security.View SCOR practice exam →
Additional role tracks
Choose by role or subject; these are alternatives to the progression above.- Cisco CBRCOR 350-201 (Cybersecurity Professional)Performing Cybersecurity Using Cisco Security Technologies (CBRCOR 350-201) - the core exam for the Cisco Cybersecurity Professional certification, covering cybersecurity fundamentals (playbooks and the tools they call for, compliance standards by industry, cyber risk insurance, risk analysis, the incident response workflow and its metrics, cloud environment types and cloud security operations), techniques (hardening machine images and systems, evaluating security posture and controls, patching and service reduction, segmentation and network hardening, DevSecOps, threat intelligence platforms and AI-driven intelligence, data loss concepts and prevention mechanisms, tuning rules and policies, security data management, SIEM analytics, SOAR workflows, user and entity behaviour analytics, network analysis tools, packet capture, detection rule troubleshooting and determining attacker techniques), processes (threat modelling, investigating common case types, the malware analysis process, reconstructing an attack sequence, endpoint intrusion investigation across platform types, indicators of compromise and attack, data loss investigation by vector, and vulnerability mitigation, triage and scoring), and automation (SOAR concepts, interpreting and modifying scripts, common data formats, API constraints and authentication, HTTP responses, shell commands, CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices and infrastructure as code).View practice exam →
- Cisco CCNP Automation (350-901 AUTOCOR)Validates network automation systems development and design - Ansible, Terraform, RESTCONF and Python automation, infrastructure as code with Git and CI/CD, telemetry and secure operations, and AI in automation across Cisco IOS XE, ACI, Meraki, Catalyst Center, SD-WAN, ISE and Webex.View practice exam →
- Cisco CLCOR 350-801 (Collaboration Core)Implementing Cisco Collaboration Core Technologies (CLCOR 350-801) - the core exam for the CCNP Collaboration certification and a qualifying exam for CCIE Collaboration, covering infrastructure and design (the components of a collaboration deployment and how they divide responsibility, on-premises, hosted and hybrid models, network services the endpoints depend on including addressing, time, name resolution and power over ethernet, network readiness and quality expectations, licensing and capacity planning, resilience and redundancy, certificates and the trust that registration depends on, and structured troubleshooting across team boundaries), protocols, codecs and endpoints (call signalling and the messages that establish, modify and end a call, media transport and the reports that describe its quality, codec negotiation and the trade between bandwidth and quality, secure signalling and secure media, endpoint types and their provisioning, registration and the keepalives that maintain it, and reading a capture to separate a signalling fault from a media one), gateway and media resources (dial peers and the order in which they are matched, digit manipulation inbound and outbound, provider trunks and session border control, conference bridges, transcoders, media termination points, announcements and hold audio, resource groups and lists, tone relay and fax treatment, survivability when the platform is unreachable, and call detail records), call control (partitions and calling search spaces, digit analysis and pattern specificity, translation and transformation patterns, route patterns, lists and groups, device pools, regions and locations, call admission control, time-based routing and authorisation codes, line groups, shared lines, forwarding, pickup and park, single number reach and extension mobility, clusters, replication and trunks between clusters, emergency call routing and location accuracy, remote registration and device mobility, call preservation, forwarding loops and media anchoring), quality of service (why voice needs different treatment, classification and marking, trust boundaries, priority queueing and its allocation, policing and shaping, bandwidth reservation and the overhead a call actually consumes, header compression and fragmentation on slow links, jitter buffers, loss concealment, quality scoring and locating an impairment, wireless and internet paths, and operating a marking scheme without eroding it), and collaboration applications (presence and its sources, messaging and persistent conversations, clients and service discovery, meetings scheduled and immediate, room systems and their calendars, recording and retention, external participants and admission, unified messaging, auto attendants and directory handlers, mailboxes, greetings and notification rules, hybrid deployments and identity alignment, interoperability between meeting platforms, integrations and the access they hold, licensing by person, and adoption).View practice exam →
- Cisco DCCOR 350-601 (Data Center Core)Implementing Cisco Data Center Core Technologies (DCCOR 350-601) - the core exam for the CCNP Data Center certification and a qualifying exam for CCIE Data Center, covering network (data centre routing with OSPF and multiprotocol BGP, layer two connectivity with port channels and virtual port channels, overlay protocols and VXLAN EVPN fabrics, ACI fabric discovery, access policies and the tenant model, packet flow and fabric troubleshooting, multi-pod and multi-site designs, data centre interconnect, and AI-powered fabric monitoring), compute (unified computing hardware and fabric interconnects, chassis discovery, service profiles, templates, pools and policies, UCS-X in Intersight Managed Mode, cloud-operated server profiles, server virtualisation and resource scheduling, hyperconverged infrastructure, accelerated servers for machine learning, and compute troubleshooting), storage network (Fibre Channel fabric services, port types, fabric login and zoning, storage provisioning and masking, thin provisioning, snapshots and replication, unified fabric and converged adapters, slow drain and congestion, and storage protection), automation and artificial intelligence (model-driven programmability, structured data formats, infrastructure as code, orchestration tooling, CI pipelines for the data centre, high-performance networks for AI workloads including lossless ethernet and remote memory access, controller APIs, event-driven operations and closed-loop automation), and security (identity, authentication and administrative access control, role-based access, network segmentation and microsegmentation, device hardening, key management, and incident response).View practice exam →
- Cisco ENWLSI 300-430 (Enterprise Wireless Implementation)Implementing Cisco Enterprise Wireless Networks (ENWLSI 300-430) - a concentration exam for the CCNP Enterprise certification, covering FlexConnect (central and local switching, central and local authentication, connected and standalone operation, what survives a wide area outage, FlexConnect groups, roaming and key distribution, backup authentication servers, coordinated image upgrade, split tunnelling, fault tolerance, VLAN-based central switching, local access lists and OfficeExtend for teleworkers), quality of service on a wireless network (access categories and how the medium is shared, wired to wireless mapping and the tunnel marking, trust boundaries, WLAN profiles and bandwidth contracts, admission control on a cell, application visibility and control, device specific optimisation, switch port trust and testing under contention), multicast (why multicast is expensive and unreliable on a radio medium, controller delivery modes and what the network must replicate, tracking group membership, converting multicast to unicast for reliable delivery, link-local service discovery and the controller as a gateway, service and location filtering, broadcast control and power save delivery), location services (how a position is computed from signal strength, floor plans, access point density and placement, tracking clients and tags, locating interference and unauthorised networks, and the privacy decisions the data brings), advanced location services (presence services for small venues, analytics and dwell, location aware guest portals, cloud relays and what leaves the site, high precision location using an antenna array, platform resilience and failover, and wireless intrusion detection with its tuning, containment risks and correlation), security for wireless client connectivity (the three roles in an authentication exchange, certificate and password based methods, server certificate validation, device and user authentication, authentication servers and failover, accounting and live reauthorisation, client profiling and its limits, guest access with web authentication, self registration and sponsorship, onboarding personal devices and provisioning certificates, and identity based networking with per client placement and filtering), monitoring (management platforms, reports and retention, baselines, alarms and severity, correlation and suppression, managing unauthorised networks and the clients using them, managing radio interference, and troubleshooting one client stage by stage), and device hardening (local and central administrative accounts, per command authorisation, administrative records, control plane restriction on the controller, management separation, configuration backup and restoration, access point identity, software currency and the removal of weak or unused settings).View practice exam →
How CertGrid helps you pass
Every exam in this path has a full CertGrid practice bank: hundreds of exam-style questions, an explanation for every answer (including why each wrong option is wrong), and timed mock exams that score like the real thing. Start free and upgrade to Pro for unlimited practice across the whole path.
Frequently asked questions
Which Cisco certification should I start with?
CCNA for most people - it is the associate-level baseline employers ask for by name. If you have no IT background at all, a CCST (Networking or Cybersecurity) is a gentler entry and needs no prior experience.
Do I need a CCST before CCNA?
No. CCST is not a prerequisite, and CCNA has no formal requirements either. The CCST exams exist as a stepping stone for students and career changers, not as a gate.
Is there a single CCNP exam?
No, and this catches people out. CCNP takes two exams: a core exam for your track plus a concentration exam. For CCNP Enterprise that is ENCOR plus a concentration such as ENARSI; for CCNP Security it is SCOR plus a concentration.
What comes after CCNP?
CCIE, the expert tier. It needs a written qualifying exam followed by an eight-hour hands-on lab. CertGrid does not cover CCIE, because a lab exam cannot be practised meaningfully with multiple-choice questions.