Passed CISSP on 04July16

agargav · July 2016

Hi Guys,

After a long struggle of 5 months, finally I have passed my CISSP exam on 04th July. Thank you all for your wonderful advices on this forum and keeping me motivated for the exam.:D

Background:
I have around 8 years of experience majorly in Identity & Access Management and Security Operations domain with bits and piece of knowledge in Networking, BCP, DRP...

Preparation:
I started my preparation from 1st Feb with Eric Cornard's 3rd edition (daily ~3hours). That is the book with no-nonsense approach, material is direct to point and explained very well. I started creating notes and completed that by mid of March.
My approach was to write only on one side of my notebook while reading Eric Cornard's book.

Then from March mid, I started with Sybex CISSP 7^th edition and started listening to Shon Harris audios. Sybex is the key for CISSP, things are explained in a very easy format and chapter wise division kept things in proper order. While reading this book, I was continuously referring to my notes as well, and was relating the topics. The goal was to cover what is missed in any of the books.
This time I was writing on the other side of my notebook (the pages that I intentionally left blank while preparing them).
By end of this book, I was having good notes ready for me with summary of both the books next 2 each other.

I completed Sybex by mid of May, and then booked the date for my exam.
Now was the time for questions, I purchased CCCure license for a month, did a plenty of them, did all the practice test provided by Sybex, Eric Cornard and Shon Harris. Frankly speaking, I never received 80% or + in any of my exams, I was always close to 75 - 79%, but I kept learning where I am wrong and why. Instead of judging my study on % I was always focusing on what went wrong with questions and where I missed.

During last 2 weeks of my exam, I stopped doing full tests, I was reading my notes and listening to Cybrary Kelly's videos. Really cannot rate those videos, they are invaluable. I watched them at-least 5 times. As soon as I completed them missing pieces started falling in place, I was able to view everything from high level, and was able to get a better hold of all topics.
During last week, no more tests, I was just reading my notes, and listening to Kelly's videos and viewing Sybex flash cards.

Eric Cornard's : 8/10
Sybex: 9/10
CCCure: 7/10 (too technical, but explanation for answers is very well)
Cyberary: 10000000/10 (I really cannot rate them)
Shon Harris audios: 8/10 (Very powerful audios, If you have time definitely go through them, many concepts are very well explained)
Sunflower documents: 7/10.

Exam:
It is a very very high level exam. Only 15 to 20% questions were technical, rest all were conceptual. Everything that I was remembering since long time, none of them showed up. Major focus was on all units which Kelly mentioned in Her videos. Many times I was in a situation, where I was not able to choose the correct one out of 2, and then I start thinking about what Kelly mentioned, how to think, how to approach and then picked the appropriate one.

I was able to complete the exam in 5 hours, and then in last 1 hour I was just reviewing the questions, My approach was to not end the exam on my own. I planned to take complete 6 hours, and not do anything in hurry (as I was doing that in all my practice tests). I reviewed them for around 50 mins, and then ended the exam after 5 hrs and 55 mins.
Many of the questions were with approach of LEAST/MOST/BEST/MINIMUM/MAXIMUM thing.

Good luck to all the people who are preparing for the exam!! Stay focused, learn the concepts and listen to Kelly.

Now next step for me is the endorsement

Thanks again to everyone who posted/commented on this forum, your inputs are invaluable and encouraging.