CISSP - passed!

LionelHutz32

I passed my CISSP yesterday, it took me 4 hours ...3 hours first pass, 5 minute break then roughly an hour to go back over my flagged questions. I was mentally exhausted after the first pass and was very tempted just to finish it there and then ...but glad I didn't as I changed a few answers on my second pass.

This forum has been a wealth of information for me and can't praise it enough, I have really appreciated it when people have posted their exam experiences, so thought I would just offer my own opinions/tips for those thinking of doing the CISSP exam ...


- I have browsed through this forum on an almost daily basis for the last few months and I would advise you to keep checking in on it, you will learn from people's successes and failures, the regular contributors know their stuff and it really helps you focus in on what is important for passing the exam.

- Two posts that I found particularly helpful over the last few weeks were bigdummy's "CISSP - passed on first attempt – July 2, 2014" and eazypeezy's "So you want to be a CISSP…???" ...read these as they are spot on, very helpful tips.

- I didn't sleep too well before the exam and I must of flagged nearly all of my first 25 questions just through nerves ...I was second-guessing myself too much and then worrying about the time. Try to keep your head together for the first 30mins and you will start to relax and get into the swing of things. Be prepared for how high-level and abstract some of the questions will be ...I can't remember a pure technical question in my first batch of 25.

- You need multiple sources of study material so I used the Shon Harris AIO book, Eric Conrad's 11th hour and a book that is rarely mentioned on these forums ...CISSP Training Kit by David R.Miller. There is way too much info in the AIO, yet I would still advise you to try and go through it once, highlight the important parts and just revise the highlighted sections.
The CISSP training kit was only published in Dec 2013 which might explain why you won't see too much mentioned about it on here yet, but I found it an excellent book. It gives you a bit more than Eric Conrad's main book but is much shorter than Shon's AIO, a perfect happy medium. It includes a 60 minute review pdf that you can use in the days before the exam that highlights everything in bullet points.

- In terms of practice exams, I used the questions in the AIO books, questions from the CISSP training kit, the McGraw-Hill online questions and the end of chapter questions in the Official ISC2 book.

Finally, the exam is tough, no doubt about it but if you put in the study time and try to learn the style of how to take this exam (very important), then you will have a good chance of succeeding.

jonwinterburn

Congrats! Thanks for mentioning the book by Davis Harris, I'm going to take a look at that now. I really like Eric Conrad's style, but it is a little thin at times, whereas the OG and the AIO are overly verbose. Finding that middle ground isn't easy, so it'll be interesting to see what this book is like.