What NOT to study?

kabooter

I have been gnawing like a mouse at the beast the CISSP 8 domains are. I am studying 4/5 hours a day, non stop for a week now and still have 3 domains to cover.
Man o man - It just goes on and on. Part of my problem is - I don't know what to focus on and take chances with which part(s) I just don't want to fail. I have always passed and scored very high the first time but this one is a marathon truly.
Even if I manage to go through 2 books cover 2 cover in two weeks, I can still absorb only so much. And I am beginning to feel beat up. I think I will have to be a bit innovative and take some calculated risks.
So I need some pointers from you guys who have passed the test in last year or recently as to
1 . What parts can be somewhat safely omitted as there will be only few questions from these - OSI model? Definitions of all the protocols that exist since 1970 ? Forget about a whole domain or what?
2. How you managed to focus on some of the key parts and chose to ignore what you thought was way over the top or just good to know material but most likely irrelevant from exam point of view or not that fruitful.
Please help a tired comrade
Thanks in advance
PS I have been doing self study for almost 12-15 months but mostly off and on. Meanwhile cleared several other exams too. Its only this week that I have unleashed myself fully and hope to study FULL day for next week or two.

lucky0977

I get the same questions at work from people who have failed multiple times. They often ask me what "****" did I use, which really irritates the hell out of me as they pass out **** like it's candy in the Federal world. The problem with the CISSP is that there are no shortcuts and the only **** there is is for you to read the study books 2 or 3 or 4 times and try every single practice test available till you feel you are capable of getting a 70% on the actual exam. And then when you take the actual exam, you'll laugh your ass off telling yourself "What kind of question is this"?

Now to answer your question about what parts can be omitted? I often tell my fellow co-workers that they have to go through the same pain and suffering and countless hours wasted instead of spending time with the family and friends as I had to endure. And to give you a little hint....I am sure the exam has a very large bank of test questions that it would be impossible to tell you that what was on my exam will be on your exam.I may have had only 2 questions related to BCP/DRP but your test might have 50.

A couple of things I remember when I went through the official training class from the instructor:
1) This is no a CCNA exam. You are not required to know what goes on under the hood of protocols.
2) This is not a VMware exam. You are not required to know how to set up the different cloud offerings.

There were more but can't remember the rest of them.

dhay13

I passed a few weeks ago so here is what I can add without violating the NDA. I felt confident the few weeks leading up to the test. I was scoring about 75-77% on all of my practice tests but after about 25 questions or so I started losing confidence but still felt ok about it. After I was finished I was pretty worried about how I had done. After I read my printout and after relaxing a few days I feel I could have done just as well if I had taken the test a month or so earlier than I did. Meaning I think I over-stressed myself and the last few weeks I think I was just spinning my wheels. I didn't feel that way at the time but looking back I see it now. That is why I have posted before not to overthink it. I scheduled my test and figured it was do or die. Otherwise I could have studied for a year and still not felt any better about it.

As far as what to study or not study, hard to say. I think it really depends on the questions you happen to get from the pool. I seemed to remember having at least a few questions on every domain. Watch Kelly Handerhan on cybrary.it. She mentions in the first couple of videos which domains she feels are most important and I think even ISC2 lists this on their site.

EDIT: found it.

https://www.isc2.org/cissp-domains/default.aspx

The CISSP examination domains and weights are:


Domains

Weight

1. Security and Risk Management

16%

2. Asset Security

10%

3. Security Engineering

12%

4. Communication and Network Security

12%

5. Identity and Access Management

13%

6. Security Assessment and Testing

11%

7. Security Operations

16%

8. Software Development Security

10%

Total

100%

kabooter

lucky0977 - Thanks for the 2 helpful points. I am looking for more hints like these.
dhay13 - I do understand that two test takers may get different number of questions from same domain but there are some parts of some domains that just keep going in official CBK book. OSI layers, cryptography etc. way too detailed.
I am going to omit some parts completely and focus on what I can do. Basically its a ROI kinda plan. Why waste one week on studying which will make up perhaps not more than 2 % in the exam. That time can be used to cement rest of the material.
Otherwise, as someone mentioned elsewhere on this forum, you will never be confident.
If anyone else can chime in what else has very low probability of showing up or does not need to be studied too hard please let me know. Or you can tell me what is it that you omitted and still passed the test easily.

dhay13

Fair enough, but I'm not sure you can pinpoint what NOT to study. As I'm sure you know, you don't receive a 'score' if you pass and the test is designed so you aren't real sure. I have no idea if I got 100% or 70%. Could have went either way. I went through something similar. I knew my weaker areas based on practice tests so I wasn't sure if I should step up my strong areas to offset my weak ones or focus on my weak areas to be better averaged out. Hard to say. I ended up focusing more on my weaker areas as I figured that would help me more throughout my career at least being more familiar with all 8 domains. If I had nothing else to go off of I would use the guide above to see what areas I should focus on. It seemed I had a pretty well balanced test but if I had to choose which area had the most questions I would say maybe BCP/DR and physical security. But again, mine seemed to be pretty well balanced overall.