Passed CISSP May 07

Highlander313

I am so excited that I actually passed yesterday! It was incredible. Here was my process:


Sept. 2015 - my work had me take a week long online class...complete waste of time, but I got a voucher out of it

Jan. 2016 - decided to start studying and scheduled the exam for beginning of April

February - read the entire Shon Harris book. I loved it. It goes very in depth and explained concepts in a way I was able to understand.

March - ran through the CCCure questions, started lurking on this site, went on vacation, stopped studying....essentially set myself up for failure.

April - failed the test with a 647. A few days after the test my new office was hosting a week long course and I was able to squeeze in. The course was taught by Dennis Lee and I can't say enough good things about him! He had charts, graphs, and stories for almost everything. Hit the major topics and really made things easy to understand and grasp the concepts.

I scheduled my exam for two weeks after the class ended and studied every day. I wrote notes during the class, listened, and asked questions. Then I transcribed my notes, then reread and highlighted them. I did flash cards provided by the course and reviewed CCCure again, as well as reading stories here. I also "taught" some stuff to my husband to help it better stick in my brain.

Going into the test I was well rested and very confident. I finished in about 3.5 hours and was speechless to see the "congrats" on the paper.

Actually taking the test:
I wrote out every question (ie. 5. A B C D), read the question, read the answers, crossed out the answers that were obviously wrong, reread the question, reread the answers, selected my choice and moved on. It forced me to slow down and really read the question and understand what they were looking for. I flagged about 40 and changed 2. Also on the top of the dry erase thing they give you I wrote 25--50--75--..... and X'd out each milestone as I hit it. I took breaks roughly every 75 questions or when my mind started to wander. Three 5-10 minute breaks total I think?

I have 3 years experience in informaton security/policy/crypto plus Security+. I'm an Associate of (ISC)2 until next June when I'll have the requisite experience.

mkohi

Congrats!
How was the exam experience compared to what you studied and CCCure?