Passed today
Took it this morning in the snowstorm, but got it done first try! Wasn't as bad as I feared, finished in less than an hour, stopped at 100 questions. </humblebrag>
I wanted to share what worked for me, to pay back the group, since I found a lot of information very helpful from this board.
Here's what worked for me:
- Took a boot camp from Learning Tree, and took the test less than two weeks later. The course and instructor were good, very focused on the right insights and mnemonics to master the material.
- After the boot camp, I went back and just did another hand-written outline of the study guide. I also complemented the study guide by reading Conrad / 11th hour at the same time, and filling in material that I missed. So between the boot camp, a second reading of the official CBK study guide you get from ISC with the boot camp, and 11th hour, I outlined the material three times, getting better each time.
- Then I pivoted to practice exams, particularly the official ISC iOS app, which was really great. Just did lots and lots of questions to get in the groove for how ISC thinks, and made sure to drill down and revisit / update my outline when something new came up.
- Other than a lot of wikipedia and google searches, didn't buy or read any other books, and never read the complete CBK (just the study guide).
A few other thoughts:
- Looked at the Sunflower 2.0 PDF as well as the Laurie Hocking CISSP Practice Questions app. Both were so-so for me - I just can't get by the typos in both. I didn't do a broader survey, but of those materials, the ISC app was really the best way to practice questions.
- I had planned on getting to the test center early and doing some last-minute review for confidence, but once I walked in the door Pearson told me I couldn't study or look at my phone. It definitely threw me off rhythm a bit so thought I would share in case others had similar plans.
- You really have to focus on drilling exam questions rather than drilling books because the test is as much about the question as it is about the underlying material. So many of the questions were more easily answered through classic test techniques and there were a lot of sneaky-wrong answers (misspelled terms, fake terms, etc.).
- Only got 1 drag and drop. I did have one question about light levels and one about a fire extinguisher. Like they say in the course, don't skip those topics, they are easy points. Oh, and didn't get a single NIST question (e.g., what is NIST 800-53?).
- I am looking forward to the April 2018 re-write. I really hope they clean up some of the material, because frankly there are still some sections where I don't understand anything the ISC wrote. In particular, domain 7 incident response makes no sense - are there 3 steps, 5 steps, where does analysis and learning fit - seriously, the book makes no sense, it is basically indecipherable. Maybe I should have read the underlying NIST document?
Happy to answer questions if anyone has them. Good luck!
I wanted to share what worked for me, to pay back the group, since I found a lot of information very helpful from this board.
Here's what worked for me:
- Took a boot camp from Learning Tree, and took the test less than two weeks later. The course and instructor were good, very focused on the right insights and mnemonics to master the material.
- After the boot camp, I went back and just did another hand-written outline of the study guide. I also complemented the study guide by reading Conrad / 11th hour at the same time, and filling in material that I missed. So between the boot camp, a second reading of the official CBK study guide you get from ISC with the boot camp, and 11th hour, I outlined the material three times, getting better each time.
- Then I pivoted to practice exams, particularly the official ISC iOS app, which was really great. Just did lots and lots of questions to get in the groove for how ISC thinks, and made sure to drill down and revisit / update my outline when something new came up.
- Other than a lot of wikipedia and google searches, didn't buy or read any other books, and never read the complete CBK (just the study guide).
A few other thoughts:
- Looked at the Sunflower 2.0 PDF as well as the Laurie Hocking CISSP Practice Questions app. Both were so-so for me - I just can't get by the typos in both. I didn't do a broader survey, but of those materials, the ISC app was really the best way to practice questions.
- I had planned on getting to the test center early and doing some last-minute review for confidence, but once I walked in the door Pearson told me I couldn't study or look at my phone. It definitely threw me off rhythm a bit so thought I would share in case others had similar plans.
- You really have to focus on drilling exam questions rather than drilling books because the test is as much about the question as it is about the underlying material. So many of the questions were more easily answered through classic test techniques and there were a lot of sneaky-wrong answers (misspelled terms, fake terms, etc.).
- Only got 1 drag and drop. I did have one question about light levels and one about a fire extinguisher. Like they say in the course, don't skip those topics, they are easy points. Oh, and didn't get a single NIST question (e.g., what is NIST 800-53?).
- I am looking forward to the April 2018 re-write. I really hope they clean up some of the material, because frankly there are still some sections where I don't understand anything the ISC wrote. In particular, domain 7 incident response makes no sense - are there 3 steps, 5 steps, where does analysis and learning fit - seriously, the book makes no sense, it is basically indecipherable. Maybe I should have read the underlying NIST document?
Happy to answer questions if anyone has them. Good luck!
Comments
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Info_Sec_Wannabe
Member Posts: 428 ■■■■□□□□□□
Congrats on the pass!
Just wondering how much time it took you to prepare for the exam? And what prompted you that you are ready for it?X year plan: (20XX) OSCP [ ], CCSP [ ] -
tkreagan
Member Posts: 10 ■□□□□□□□□□
Hi - I studied for three weeks including boot camp.
Our instructor told us to take the exam within 2 weeks of the class, so I did. I knew I was ready when I consistently scored 80%+ on the 50-question and 1 full 250 practice exams found in the ISC app.Info_Sec_Wannabe wrote: »Congrats on the pass!
Just wondering how much time it took you to prepare for the exam? And what prompted you that you are ready for it?
