Failed 668 - Advice needed

Hi Everyone,

I took the exam on monday and failed with a 668.

My weakest to strongest areas were:

Asset security
Access control
security risk mangement
Security operations
software development security
Security engineering
Security testing
Telecom and network security

Not surprisingly my 7 years of experience is mainly in Security testing and Comm/NW security.

Reading:

Shon harris 6th edition (cover to cover) - Covered this slowly over a 6 month time period
Sybex CISSP official study guide (cover to cover) - however this was more of a fast read covered in 1.5 months
Eric conrad Study 3rd edition studyguide /eleventh hour - Only for weak areas.

Practice tests:
In my opinion , None of them resemble the actual exam

Total tester - 81%
CCCure - 79 %, 82 %
Sybex - 71 % ,75 %
CISSP Official practice tests(the last 2 250 domain practice tests) - 73%, 80%

In CCCUre - Asset security and access control were always my strongest domains. However they turned out to be the most weakest in the actual exam.

However I did the Official CBK chapter wise questions - which I believe were the most realistic.
I scored only 65 - 70 % on the chapter wise practice tests

Videos:

Cybrary - watched this fully once - 2 or 3 months before the actual exam.

Some thoughts on my failed score:

1.The last month is absolutely crucial:I thought I did not prepare well in the final run up to the exam - i.e the last one month.I had prepared for 8 months and was suffering a burnout.So do not take a long prep time. Keep it short 4-6 months
2.Prepare using latest material :I relied heavily on out dated material.(Shon harris 6th ed) It built a solid foundation on most topics but unfortunately Sybex and shon harris 6th edition were not sufficient for the Asset security part. I remember getting lot of questions on this topic.
3.Lot of questions on access control which were related to cloud/SAML which are not explained in detail in any book.
4.None of the practice tests truly resemble the actual exam.
5.Infosec Experience is crucial.I was able to relate to some questions using my experience only.

Plan:

I plan on retaking this exam again before end of this year.

I am planning to read the eric conrad 3rd edition fully.(in order from weakest to strongest)

Some questions:

1.Do you think I should read the CISSP official CBK once? That was the thought I got when I encountered questions which I had no clue about.I saw a lot of questions which I thought were not covered in any book

2.Any thoughts on Transcender ? I thought CCCure was a total waste of money and gave me a false sense of confidence

I Appreciate your inputs.

Thank you

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Comments

gespenstern

2. IMO Transcender is worse than CCCure. I used them both in 2014-2015. CCCure sucks, but IMO is the least bad.

The scores you got from CCCure are somewhat low I'd say. I remember myself getting 85-95% closer to the end of my training. Also it's very important to read and reread the explanations no matter did you hit the right answer or not and supplement CCCure explanations with following links for further reading they provide, wiki, RFCs, etc.

Jinuyr

I would recommend reading the CISSP Official CBK at least once. It didn't help me out a lot but it gave me enough of an understanding of all the different concepts not covered to at least make an informed guess on the actual test.

Practice test, practice test, practice test. I spend more time doing these to prepare for the exam than actually reading the book. I read every answer key related to the questions so I could understand why it was the best or most important answer.

Good luck!

lowresolution

shreenag wrote: »

Hi Everyone,

I took the exam on monday and failed with a 668.

My weakest to strongest areas were:

Asset security
Access control
security risk mangement
Security operations
software development security
Security engineering
Security testing
Telecom and network security

Not surprisingly my 7 years of experience is mainly in Security testing and Comm/NW security.

Reading:

Shon harris 6th edition (cover to cover) - Covered this slowly over a 6 month time period
Sybex CISSP official study guide (cover to cover) - however this was more of a fast read covered in 1.5 months
Eric conrad Study 3rd edition studyguide /eleventh hour - Only for weak areas.

Practice tests:
In my opinion , None of them resemble the actual exam

Total tester - 81%
CCCure - 79 %, 82 %
Sybex - 71 % ,75 %
CISSP Official practice tests(the last 2 250 domain practice tests) - 73%, 80%

In CCCUre - Asset security and access control were always my strongest domains. However they turned out to be the most weakest in the actual exam.

However I did the Official CBK chapter wise questions - which I believe were the most realistic.
I scored only 65 - 70 % on the chapter wise practice tests

Videos:

Cybrary - watched this fully once - 2 or 3 months before the actual exam.

Some thoughts on my failed score:

1.The last month is absolutely crucial:I thought I did not prepare well in the final run up to the exam - i.e the last one month.I had prepared for 8 months and was suffering a burnout.So do not take a long prep time. Keep it short 4-6 months
2.Prepare using latest material :I relied heavily on out dated material.(Shon harris 6th ed) It built a solid foundation on most topics but unfortunately Sybex and shon harris 6th edition were not sufficient for the Asset security part. I remember getting lot of questions on this topic.
3.Lot of questions on access control which were related to cloud/SAML which are not explained in detail in any book.
4.None of the practice tests truly resemble the actual exam.
5.Infosec Experience is crucial.I was able to relate to some questions using my experience only.

Plan:

I plan on retaking this exam again before end of this year.

I am planning to read the eric conrad 3rd edition fully.(in order from weakest to strongest)

Some questions:

1.Do you think I should read the CISSP official CBK once? That was the thought I got when I encountered questions which I had no clue about.I saw a lot of questions which I thought were not covered in any book

2.Any thoughts on Transcender ? I thought CCCure was a total waste of money and gave me a false sense of confidence

I Appreciate your inputs.

Thank you

I will tell you that I did NOT use the CISSP CBK for study. I have it, and I read a bit of it, but it was not a significant contribution to my study. The main source of study was the Sybex 7th edition. Secondary sources were Cybrary and CCCure. I went through every. single. question. that cccure had to offer for the 2015 CISSP. I also used the Sybex official question book.

I made flashcards on concepts I was struggling. When I would review my practice tests, I would make a flashcard for the concept of each missed question.

My goal was to hit 90%+ on cccure before taking the exam. 2 nights before the exam date, I did that.

Don't pick up a book and just start reading, you're beyond that point. You need to start to focus on your weak areas, and bolster your understanding of the concepts.

Good luck, keep us posted!

EDIT: I just noticed your comment about CCCure being a waste of money, and that is something I would strongly disagree with you on. I saw the value in CCCure directly after my first practice during the review of the questions. Don't look at CCCure as just a test bank, look at it as another study tool. There is a LOT of info in many of the explanations of the questions. This is a very valuable resource.

trueshrewkmc

Bought CCCure access, but didn't really use it much. The stuff I downloaded was for the 2013 domains (10 vs. 8 in the 2015).

Someone at work suggested that if I didn't read the CBK, I'd regret it. I didn't actually read the whole thing. What I did find useful were the end of chapter review questions in Appendix A. If you're finding content in the review questions that seems completely new (I did), brush up on what was new or less familiar. There's definitely stuff in the CBK that neither Sybex nor Eric Conrad cover.

ohmaigawd

I bought CCCure access and find it helpful mostly in preparing myself for the long exam (e.g. gauge on how to manage my time etc.). Sybex and Cybrary videos are the ones that helped me the most. I find the CBK abit too comprehensive and dry for my liking and skipped it altogether.
Try to understand the concepts that you are weak on in the book rather than just trying to finish the book (if that makes sense). I took down plenty of notes to help prepare for the exam as well.

Good luck!