Stop. Before you book anything, read this first sentence twice: Microsoft retired the AZ-500 exam on August 31, 2026, at 11:59 PM Central Standard Time. You can no longer sit it, you can no longer earn the Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate certification, and if you already hold that certification, you can no longer renew it. The study guide on Microsoft Learn carries the warning in plain text at the very top of the page, and every guide written since has had to start the same way this one does — with the date.

That is why this article is not a "how to pass AZ-500" guide. Plenty of those still exist online, some written before the retirement date and never updated, and following one now means preparing for an exam that no longer exists. What follows is the honest version: what retired, what happens if you already hold the certification, what replaced it, and how the study you may already have done can still pay off. The exam is gone.…