CISSP Passed April 2nd

levar316

Greetings, I've been a long time lurker since 2004. Took a break for 5 years. Started out with A+, then Network+ and that was it up until recently (1.5 years ago to be exact) I decided I should go ahead and get certified in a few things I had touched on. I want to start off by saying that this forum is invaluable and has helped me my entire IT career - Thank you all. Besides the 2 certs I listed I have also acquired ITIL v3, Security+, C.E.H v8, eJPT and now CISSP. I figured I'd give my 2 cents on the experience. I only used the Sybex 7th Edition guide to study and I read it twice. I watched a bit of Kelly Handerhan video (Old Domain) but never even got close to finishing it. I saw a recent thread by Hunter85 and mmmike999 and I couldn't agree more. Stop studying LOL. I read the Sybex book twice and didn't even take the 4 full exams it came with and to be honest, they wouldn't have helped. My main point I truly want to stress is UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPTS, do NOT memorize else you will fail. This is ISC2 CBK and no matter how you think it's done, you are wrong. The questions are worded in such a way that you couldn't even Google it to have a clue what the answer could be unless you understood the bigger picture. I tried reading the answers first before the questions and that didn't help, I tried reading the last sentence before the question and that didn't help either LOL. All I can say is when you can understand how the bigger picture works then you are truly ready for this exam and not to give anything away but you really need to focus on Cloud, identity and roles. If you are going too deep then you are doing just that and you will feel like you have over-prepared. I took 3 breaks after a few W.T.F (select, next,select,next) moment then I realized I was loosing focus and it would probably not be in the best of my interest to piss $600 away. It was enough time as I got done in a bit over 5 hours and spent the next 25 minutes reviewing flagged questions. I changed 6 and clicked finish. If I had failed I truly would not have known where to even start studying. I'm still mentally exhausted from this experience and haven't gotten off my high yet, now waiting on ISC2 to update me so I can officially be recognized for the hell their exam inflicted on me. Hope this helps those as much as this forum has helped me. Thanks

danny069

Congrats! Thank you for the write up! Basically, you want to come in fresh and have ISC2 mold you and learn their CBK in order to pass the test.