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Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Certification – Overview of Domains

by Howard Poston on January 16, 2019

Introduction to the CEH Exam

The Certified Ethical Hacker Exam is designed to test and certify the readiness of an applicant to perform security assessments. It is designed, maintained and administered by the EC-Council and is designed to be taken by applicants early in their career in information security. Specifically, taking the exam requires either two years of experience in the field or completion of a training program provided by the EC-Council.

The CEH exam can be attempted after completion of the training course or verification of experience by a manager or supervisor. The exam consists of 125 questions broken into seven different domains:

Domain 1: Background (21.79%)
Domain 2: Analysis/Assessment (12.73%)
Domain 3: Security (23.73%)
Domain 4: Tools/Systems/Programs (28.91%)
Domain 5: Procedures/Methodology (8.77%)
Domain 6: Regulation/Policy (1.90%)
Domain 7: Ethics (2.17%)

The determination of whether or not an applicant passes the exam is not based on a set threshold. Instead, the passing score for a particular instance of the exam is determined based on the difficulty of the exam, so a lower score on a more difficult version may be considered passing while a higher score on an easier one may not. The cutoff score for an exam typically lies within the range of 55-85%. Passing the exam certifies the applicant for three years, during which they must earn CPE credits to be re-accredited for the next three-year period.

The 7 CEH Domains

The material covered by the CEH exam is divided into seven different domains. Each domain is tested by a minimum of two and a maximum of thirty-six questions on a specific version of the exam. We will briefly discuss the material covered in each section of the exam.