Scheduled CISSP Jan 3rd

dark3d

I have some free time now that I am finished at B&M college. Tentative start of WGU 2/1. I wanted to get some certs out of the way before I started WGU.

Time to put my $599 where my mouth is.

[Deleted User]

Good luck! I'm scheduled on the 6th.

cyberguypr

Way to go! I was just talking to my buddy about this. Once you commit by paying, you get that "man, I just put $600 here. I MUST pass this thing."

dustervoice

Good luck .. read the passed post here and follow the recommendations and you will do just fine.

kalkan999

Good luck. The fact that so many of you are committing to studying through the holidays is a testament to your dedication. Please keep us informed about your results. When you pass, be sure to pass on the knowledge. Pay it forward and Happy Holidays!!

jvrlopez

Good luck! I personally would wait until after the holidays because of all the distractions and such, but you do get a lot of time off to study.

Paying the $600 definitely wakes you up as to having to get serious about studying!

dark3d

I have successfully navigated through the holidays and am still on track.

I'm finding that there is a huge difference in opinion of what level of detail I should be studying each domain. I have watched the CBT Nuggets series and they left out several items that I ran into while taking the McGraw Hill practice exams. I decided to watch the Nuggets for each domain, and then quickly read through the chapter in Shon's book. I have found that this lets me get through the book much more quickly.

As far as the exam goes - are the questions similar (in difficulty) to these? : McGraw-Hill Education | CISSP Practice Exams

I am comfortable with these type of questions, but if they are going to be more difficult than these then I need to know that now so that I can prepare.

A specific example: CASE. It's an answer for one of the McGraw quiz questions, but it's not even mentioned in the Conrad 11th Hour book.

Itrimble

I plan to take the exam in March. I have the CBT videos and the Haris All In One kit which includes the practice exam and 3 hours of videos from Pluralsight. Let us know how it goes.

chickenlicken09

Itrimble wrote: »

I plan to take the exam in March. I have the CBT videos and the Haris All In One kit which includes the practice exam and 3 hours of videos from Pluralsight. Let us know how it goes.

Are these the only resources you will use itrimble? how do you find the cbt nugget videos? How long have you been studying for it?

dustervoice

Shon Harris (AIO) every page and Eric Conrad (every page) and MH practice questions is more than enough to pass. As others have said, read the "passed" threads. I would also recommend reading and understanding the concepts on a high level. The mistake i made when studying was focusing too much on practice questions only to find out that no question bank comes close to the real test.

dark3d

Ok, finished Shon Harris AIO cover to cover last night. I just went back and took the pre-test from the front of the book and made %71. I haven't read 11th hour yet or reviewed any information. I was feeling like I was behind on ingesting material after I got through crypto, but the last couple of domains were easier and I flew through them.

I think if I review governance, crypto and bcp/drp domains that I will feel a little more confident for Saturday. One read through the material is definitely not enough. I am probably going to reread a couple of domains tomorrow, then cover to cover 11th hour and sunflower review on Friday.

I refuse to reschedule!

Keenlearner

Best of Luck man. I have just start preparing for cissp exam for march 30th. Please suggest me some quick tips. Although i'm reading Shon AIO6th edition, Eric Conrad 11th Hour. I also have sunflower and other notes. But this AIO is hell long. What to do with this book.

H3||scr3am

Best of luck on the exam in the next couple of days Hope to welcome you to the club soon

mjsinhsv

You might want to give yourself a break the day before the test.
Rest, relax, go see a movie or whatever you do to unwind.
Eat a good breakfast and do a quick review of the CONCEPTS the morning of.
Give yourself plenty of time to get to the test center.
Read each question twice !
Don't spend to much time on questions that confuse you.
Make your best guess and mark it for review later. The answer may come to you when you review.
Take breaks if you feel you have time.

God Bless and Good luck.

cyberguypr

Good advice. The night before my test I stayed at a hotel, ordered some Chicago deep dish and a cheesecake, watched some chick flick, and totally relaxed. The next morning I was still so relaxed and in such good spirit that I had no need to take any breaks in the 5.5 hrs it took me to finish the test.

dark3d

Well, I don't feel comfortable enough at this point to take tomorrow off. I finally went through all of the Total Tester exam questions and I am comfortable with them as well as the '5 toughest' questions in the 11th hour book.

I got on cccure.org just now and these questions are quite different than anyone elses. The first quiz put me in panic mode. I think I'll head out to the coffee shop tomorrow morning and take the 2nd set of MH quizzes off of the web site. Might quickly review the two problem domains for me and then look over sunflower again.

Thanks for all of the encouragement and tips!

impelse

Lets us know the news.

dark3d

Background: I've been in the IT industry since 1996. Worked helpdesk and got my MCSE self study while working on helpdesk. I got a Net Admin job directly after and have worked in either consulting, health care, or private telco since 2000. I've had Shon's book for probably 6 months. I started reading a few pages and just wasn't prepared to tackle the beast. Dec 17th I decided I was ready and scheduled my test..then started reading. I covered a domain per day and then reviewed. rain or shine. Christmas. New Years. didn't matter.

I stayed up until about 11 last night. Storms woke me up around 4 and I couldn't go back to sleep. Test was at 8, so I went ahead and got ready and decided to eat a big breakfast and chill out a little.

Got to the test center an hour before they opened. I thought I would review some last minute notes before I went in, but I was completely burned out so I listened to spotify.

I had a weird idea about how to start the test and it seemed to help me get over some of the anxiety. Instead of starting with question 1, I started at 15 and worked my way back to #1. This strategy helped me in several ways. I got through all of the questions and had marked 66. About half of which I thought were confusing/ambiguous. I enjoyed the performance based questions..mostly because I passed!

I have to agree with everyone about Shon's AIO, I wish she was still around so that I could give her better puns for each section.
Once you're through her book, the sunflower pdf should be all review. If you don't see anything new on sunflower, you can hit the practice exams. Total tester was nice because I could see the answer w/ explanation right there rather than having to search through the pdf. I'm glad that I forced my way through the book cover to cover. It's all you need to succeed.


Quizzes used.
Total Tester (on the cd in the book)
McGraw-Hill Education | CISSP Practice Exams
https://www.cccure.org/ (mostly for governance and DRP/BCP)
https://www.skillset.com/quiz/network-security-fundamentals (crypto)

I watched both CBT Nuggets and ITPro.tv CISSP videos as review after reading the domain in Shon's AIO. I really tried paying attention to these all the way through, but they don't deliver content fast enough to keep me going. Also, they don't dive into several of the domains enough.


CBT Nuggets CISSP - pleasant to listen to Keith. Covers about 75% of the material. Didn't go deep enough.

ITPro.tv CISSP - Depending on the presenter, these all are really annoying. I don't want to watch people type in notepad++ while presenting this amount of information. A slide deck would have been ideal and would have shaved a few hours off of the video series (which would be awesome.) Maybe I just got touchy after watching many, many hours of this.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfuKjbmP_JpVtQSl9AL7PPIxrim6K8q0r - These were good.


Now to just finish up the process.. I only know one CISSP and I haven't talked to him since '99. Guess I'll be sending my resume to ISC2. Wish me luck!

dark3d

I posted, but it's caught up on the spam filter.

mjsinhsv

What spam filter?

dark3d

the forum system thinks I am a bot, apparently. I did have several links in the post. It should show up as soon as a mod approves it.

dark3d

tl;dr: I passed. 17 days study time. (1 domain per day, then mostly AIO total tester)

As was recommended, you can just use Shon's AIO and that is enough to pass. Yes, there are bad puns and it's very dry. Yes, it is a lot of information, and you need to know all of it. I would suggest CBT Nuggets videos as a review or to listen while driving. I watched the videos for each domain and then read the domain. Watch out, the videos don't go deep enough. They are simply a good primer.

When I began the test, I skipped about 15 questions in and completed those in reverse order. There were several difficult questions at the beginning and I didn't feel any despair getting stuck on difficult questions. There is another reason I skipped several questions, but someone will have to take the test and do the same to realize why.

H3||scr3am

congratulations on passing, and welcome to the club

dustervoice

Congrats on passing. Shon Harris book is the magic bullet

Expect

that's a quick one. congrats

Cyberscum

GJ, I also can vouch for just the Harris book. I studied about 15 days and took it. The book has everything you will need.

dark3d

Thank you.

Now I am concerned about ISC2 endorsement. I have 4 years, 11 months of self-employment. Have any of you submitted non-W2 employment experience and had an issue? I can prove experience with W2 jobs if I go back 10 years, but I'd rather just use the last two positions I have held.

impelse

Congrats.

I am still working with the person who will endorse me.

kiki162

@dark3d I've don't know about the self-employment route. However when I submitted my paperwork for the SSCP, they asked for proof on letterhead and that seemed to work ok for them. If you have a Twitter account the ISC2 people are good at answering your questions pretty quickly. Overall, I think you'll be ok. Give it about 5-6 weeks.

Personally, w/o having someone to endorse you, that kinda makes me anxious/nervous. However, I think the majority on here that have gotten endorsed via ISC2 have been ok.

dark3d

I got a call the first of last week from the person that was the head of the endorsement dept. She ran through my resume and told me that she couldn't use any employment towards the requirement unless I submitted a manager/hr letter. Fortunately, I had invoices going back to 2/2010 showing where I was actively working in the domains. Also, I had letters and work history that was not on my resume (which also didn't count). I submitted a 1 pager resume and didn't realize that I had left an employer off.

This is just a cautionary tale to any of those using ISC2 for endorsement. Have everything documented or it will slow the process down. If I had mine correct then I would have completed this a week earlier. She was nice and I answered her questions, but I am sure they are weary from contacting candidates and collating/fixing data on your paperwork.

Exam 1/3/15
Submitted 1/15/15.
Credentailed 2/24/15.