1.1 SC-200 Exam Facts

About the SC-200 Exam

Quick Answer: SC-200 is a Microsoft exam of roughly 40-60 questions delivered in 100 minutes. You need a scaled score of 700 out of 1000 (about 70%) to pass. It costs $165 USD through Pearson VUE. Passing earns the Microsoft Certified: Security Operations Analyst Associate certification, which renews free every year on Microsoft Learn.

The SC-200 exam, formally Exam SC-200: Microsoft Security Operations Analyst, is the single exam required to earn the Microsoft Certified: Security Operations Analyst Associate certification. It validates the ability to operate as a Security Operations Center (SOC) analyst inside the Microsoft security stack.

Exam Logistics

Microsoft does not publish the exact question count in advance — it varies by exam form. The scaled score of 700/1000 is not a raw percentage: questions carry different weights, so you cannot simply divide correct answers by total questions. Treat roughly 70% as a working target.

What the Certification Covers

The Security Operations Analyst Associate certification proves you can detect, investigate, respond to, and hunt threats across three core Microsoft platforms:

• Microsoft Defender XDR (Extended Detection and Response) — the unified portal at security.microsoft.com that correlates signals from Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, Defender for Identity, and Defender for Cloud Apps.
• Microsoft Sentinel — Microsoft's cloud-native Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platform.
• Microsoft Defender for Cloud — cloud workload protection for servers, containers, storage, databases, and other Azure and multicloud resources.

Question Formats

SC-200 mixes several interaction styles. Expect multiple choice, multiple select ("select all that apply"), drag-and-drop ordering, active-screen interactive scenarios, and short case studies that present one environment description followed by several linked questions.

Certification Validity and Renewal

Unlike legacy certifications that expired after a fixed multi-year window, the Security Operations Analyst Associate certification is valid for one year. Microsoft sends a renewal window starting six months before expiration. Renewal is a free, unproctored online assessment taken on Microsoft Learn — there is no fee and no need to retake the full SC-200 exam.