Passed.

Beachmat

Background: 16 years in IT / Network ops and management. With significant nonformal software development (I'm not sure this helped). I was reading way to much into things.

What helped me the most? Common sense. Eliminating the wrong answers probably helped me with 20/30 questions.

Read the question with each answer and some times just one will be grammatically correct. ( I'm not 100% sure how the questions a written. Our teacher said they are by other CISSPs, I believe this. These questions don't seem to have much technical editing. If you have taken Microsoft test don't expect that type of grammer and editing. I'm technical my questions would be worse, I get it.)


Study Material:
1. Official 6 day class. This didn't help me as much as it should have. It really didn't help with test prep from a point of specific areas, it helped with concepts. How ever at the end of the first day they give you a example ISC test by ISC. At first I was upset because of the poor grammar and lack of reasoning for the "correct" answers. Our class spent a hour trying to figure out why the answers were correct. Not because we didn't understand but more because they had poor grammar and mistakes. This example test was by far the most realistic. I would say 10/20 questions on that test were very very very similar to real test. Not to mention the same poor grammar.

2. Cccure cbk and cccure testing. Both were very helpful. If your looking for test questions go no further. They covered all the same stuff the others did and had real descriptions. Some of the other testing engines are a direct copy from this site. Ccurre CBKs were easier to listen to then my class. Wish I would had gone over these first. He also ha a good study sheet.

3. Cybrary Cybrary Cybrary Cybrary Cybrary. These by far was the best. I remembered things from this in the test. Very helpful. My recommendation is to start with these and end with these.

4. Transcender and quizlet. I'm sure helped but not worth it.

5. Official cybex test prep book. It was helpful for reference. I know someone that really liked the questions. I personally didn't. The testing engine wasn't very good so I didn't spend much time.

Recommendations:
1. Listen to all the speakers, trainers and everyone else. Don't dig into the details. I spent hours on key lengths and eal levels and others and it just wasn't worth it for my sanity.
2. Cybrary. Cybrary. Cybrary.
3. Spend the time on cccure testing engine.
4. Focus on the added sections to the recent test. I got more questions on those and some of the materials don't focus on that much.
5. If you do take the class do the cybrary before at a minimum. If you can do the cccure cbk also before.
6. By the time I got to the sunflower sheet I didn't find it all that helpful. (Maybe the wireless security area but just as a refresher)

Test experience:
1. Similar to another post recently, 20 questions in and I was like "oh no" this is not going to end well. After taking thousands of sample questions over 3-4 testing engines, I didn't recognize any of if the questions. I was marking questions for review that I saw two possible answers and moved on.
2. I tried to take a break every 50/75 questions to just recharge. (I think the testing proctor got annoyed)
3. Once done, I went over the marked questions. This was the first time during the test I realized I had a shot. I only had about 30 marked.
4. Reviewed them took another break.
5. Was going to go over them all again but by this time I had a raging headache and just said screw it and ended the exam. ( I have heard some places let you bring food and drink but this place did not. I wish I would have been able to eat. Probably would have helped me with the headaches)

My total test time was a bit over two hours.

Good luck.

ccnpninja

Congrats!