Passed CISSP Today - Here was my plan

griffondg

Hello, I've been a lurker for a couple of months on the site and have learned so much that I decided I needed to give back.

First, about me: 16 years in IT with the past 4+ dedicated to security. Prior to that I was a sys admin for 10 years. I've been fortunate to have been exposed to most of the domains with the exception of Security Architecture and Software Development.

Books Used:
AIO - read about 20% of the first domain and realized there was NO way I could read 1,400 more pages
Conrad Study Guide - Loved
11th Hour - Very Good

Practice Exams:
Total Tester - Decent
McGraw Hill - Good
CCCure - I like the interface and the customization options but many of the questions were way too technical and some seem dated
Transcender - Decent
Conrad Online - Good
Shon Harris Practice Exams Book - Scenario questions were good
ISC2 IPad Questions - Good questions but some had no explanations which was rather annoying
A CISSP app for iPhone that had like 500 questions - mediocre but only cost 10 bucks

Study Guides:
Combined CISSP Notes from this site - Awesome
Sunflower PDF - Decent but dated

My plan:
I decided to go "All-In" on the Conrad Suite and not bother with any other primary sources. But I did a LOT of practice questions; probably answered over 7,500 and over 5,000 of those were unique.

I first started to read the Conrad book and take a lot of notes but honestly this method doesn't work for me. I was busy writing but not absorbing. I know for most people this works for them but I've NEVER been a note taker. I'm better at just reading to comprehend so I decided to just read through the book start to finish, only answering the end of chapter questions. At this time I purchased the CCCure subscription and did a mock test of 100-200 questions. Scored mid 60's or so. This took me a couple of weeks.

Next I went through the Conrad book again and this time after each domain I would take 25-50 question quizzes from each of CCCure, Total Tester and McGraw Hill. Was getting around low-mid 70's at this point. I then did all of the ISC2 iPad questions and was getting mid 70's. I then did full 250 question exams from all test banks and did the first of the Conrad online exams and scored mid 70's here too. This took a few weeks.

I next switched to the 11th hour and the combined notes. I reviewed each domain and then took 100 question quizzes from TT, CCCure and McGraw Hill. Started getting into the 80's which felt nice but still there were a few domains lagging behind. This too a few weeks.

For the last 1-2 weeks I reviewed the 11th hour and combined notes AGAIN but by this time I had run through all of the quizzes I had so I decided to purchase Transcender and go through all of those questions domain by domain. My lowest domain was 74% and my highest was 88% and most were in the 80's. I then took the 2nd 250 question exam from Conrad and scored an 83%.

The key for me was not only reading why I got a question wrong but many times I read why I got it right if I didn't really know the material and just guessed correctly.

Total prep time about 2.5 months

For the Exam itself:
I was going in expecting all types of esoteric questions and was frankly shocked that they were pretty straight forward. I went through each question pretty quickly and marked about 100 for review. This took about 2 hours and I then took my only break of about 10 minutes. It took me about another 2 hours to go through the marked questions (I changed about 10) and I then ended the exam. I would say that I was fairly confident that I had passed but still nervous. Overall I thought the exam was very fair.

I hope this review helps future test takers. I know I learned SO much by going though every pass/fail review on this site going back several years.

Now onto Endorsement and teaching myself python to prepare me for the OSCP!

Eric

cyberguypr

Congrats on the pass!