Great insight as well Tyler. Thank you.

I never found any value out of being CCSK certified. If I we're to do it again, I'd save my money. If you have the money because you're working a job that pays a bit of money, then it's a good thing to do. But it's not a cert you should position yourself for if it's going to put you through a hardship. I've never seen the first job hiring for a "CCSK" certified individual. You can study for the material by yourself for free and that is where the value is in this certification, not actually being certified. It's an open book exam that is not proctored and people cheat so it's not valued by employers. CCSK is a good beginner cloud cert but if you can't afford to do it, don't do it. There are foundational concepts that you will need to know that are covered in Cloud Security NOW! but after those foundational concepts, you can move right into a specialty, like the AWS certs.