Hell yeah!! Passed on 11th April 2016

Thanks for Hunter85 advice to stop studying. That actually gave me confidence because I thought I hadn't studied enough. I think he meant stop cramming and just understand. Bottom line if you understand the concepts and principles, you should well in the exam

History
IT Auditor with 10 years of experience. Studying for a month and did the exam in december. I didn't find it as hard as it was reputed to be, but was very surprised to see that i failed with a 691. On further review, I discovered I missed some very easy questions. I am not sure what i was thinking at the time of the exam.

Took two months off and started studying slowly studying in mid feb and culminated last week

My take
- Anyone who is a CISA or CISM should definitely take this exam it feels like a CISA exam with a security slant. Anybody in the IT Audit arena will have a good advantage in this exam.
- Check out Kelly's new videos, very instrumental. I will definitely donate to cybrary
- I think the questions are worded straight forward, but the choices are very tricky. Use the elimination technique to arrive to your answer
- Take breaks during the exam. Its an endurance marathon and i found myself geting fatigued and really slowing down. I took breaks at questions 100 and 200.

Good luck to all and thanks to previous posters.

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Comments

Arbitrary

Congrats mmmike999! And thanks for the post. Great to hear from another IT auditor as this gives me a bit more comfort that someone with our background can pass CISSP.

You mention that understanding the principles/concepts is fundamental, apart from the Cybrary videos what did you find most useful to help this understanding? Were the CCCure question banks any use here?

Would you say that the question style is quite similar to CISA (albeit more technical)? If so that's great news, as most of my concern is based on the fact that everyone says that the questions are not like any of the practice exams! I'm guessing then that there's the 'ISC2' answer/slant that has to be taken into account when looking at questions?

Thanks!

JoJoCal19

Congrats on the pass! I agree with the other user who posted to stop studying. I think one of the contributing factors to failing is overstudying or studying too many sources of information, rather than focusing on the just understanding the basics of the concepts that are on the syllabus.

IaHawk

Congrats on the pass!!! I sit for the exam on May 9th and as much as I want to, I can't stop studying now!

I've read Conrad's new book and I plan on getting through Kelly's new videos, taking CCCure practice tests and reading Conrad's 11th hour book the week of the exam. I have been doing ok on the CCCure exams 75-80%, I know everyone says these questions are a lot more technical than the actual exam but it has been a great source of identifying areas I need to address. Anyway...enough about me...CONGRATS AGAIN!!!

Brain-D

Great job!

Mike7

Great job. This sums up the secret to passing

mmmike999 wrote: »

Bottom line if you understand the concepts and principles, you should well in the exam

Congrats!!

Congrats!

Congrats!

@ arbitrary Other than the videos, just doing practice questions from a test bank and researching from books and internet any concepts I did not fully understand. I have the sybex and conrad books but didnt really read them cover to cover, just skimmed through them and used them as a reference point. For the test bank i have transcender, sybex and cccure. I think either of them is good, some have better graphic user interfaces but all their content is relevant.

The style is similar to CISA but with a security management focus. With your background you are in good hands.

@IaHawk, I incidentally have all three test banks Transcender, Sybex and CCCure. When I took the exam in December, I only used Transcender and had a 69% average, ended up with a 691.

My second try, I used a mix of Sybex and CCCure averaged 75% with occasional flashes of brilliance. So I think you are almost ready. The practice questions are important to condition your brain and also you will see the same questions just reworded in ways you may not immediately recognize.

Hunter85

Congrats for the pass and good luck with the endorsement

Danielm7

Congrats on the pass! It's funny you mention the idea of stopping studying, I read somewhere the other day where someone talked about someone with 10+ years in infosec and them studying for 3 years and being afraid of the exam. The best thing I did for myself for the CISSP was just setting an exam date. That gave me a clear timeline not just going until I feel better with no sense of urgency.

sameoj

Congrats.

Ertaz

I think the exam could be made better is it were broken up into smaller pieces. 4 100 question tests on 2 domains each. Would be easier to eat the elephant that way and the tests could go into more detail with the questions. Then you would know that you studied each domain because you had a more exhaustive quiz on each one.

gncsmith

Congrats!

dbailey007

Awesome!