Long time lurker, first time poster. Been lurking for a while and gleaning information while I went through the studying process. Below is my story.
Started studying in December 2016 after Thanksgiving. Picked up the pace in April and began studying 4-6 nights a week for 1-3 hours a day. First attempt was June 27, 2017 and I failed with a 660. Was pretty crushed mentally after seeing the failing grade but immediately re-scheduled for August 3rd for my second attempt when I got home. Took a week off due to in-laws being in town and staying with me and just for a mental break.
Started studying again at the beginning of July and tried to give more focus to my 3 weak domains and then also information that I may have thought was too tedious to study the first time around. Also some topics that I did not have the best big-picture understanding of, I thoroughly studied it to make it clear to me. Some of those topics were Kerberos, Known CT/PT, Chosen CT/PT, XSS, CSRF, DRP vs BCP vs COOP and some others that I cannot recall at the moment. Took the exam again and passed. Below is my study material.
Study material:
- Sybex 7th edition
- Read all 1000 pages and highlighted stuff I thought I needed to know. Went back through and made 500 flash cards on what I had highlighted. Flash cards is always the way I have studied; high school, college, etc.
- Cybrary -- Kelly Handerhan
- Picked and chose videos for a while and then watched all of them the last couple of weeks before my first attempt. Watched all of them again before my second attempt. Kelly is amazing.
- Sunflower CISSP PDF
- Skimmed through this one night and picked a couple of things out for flash cards. Didn't use it much.
- "CISSP Combined Notes"
- Someone on these forums posted his CISSP notes. It was 68 pages I believe. Same as the Sunflower PDF, I skimmed through these one night and picked a couple of things out for flash cards. Didn't use it much.
As for practice tests, I did maybe 50 questions before my first attempt. While studying for my second attempt, I told myself I was going to do at least 1000 practice questions so I began doing practice tests I found online but all the questions were nothing like what was actually on the real exam so I stopped after maybe 200 because I thought it was a waste of time.
All in all, my studying was pretty basic. Basically just the Sybex book and Kelly Handerhan and I ended up making 500+ flash cards from those two resources.
Even though she won't ever see this, I want to give a special thank you to my wife for pushing me, taking care of our 3 year old and allowing me to study all those hours. Could not have done it without you. My second child is due in 8 days. Time to switch my focus over to that.
