Passed CISA!

averageguy72

Took the CISA exam on 04/07, received official results today. The exam took about 1.5 hours.

Scaled score results are 617



The Process of Auditing Information Systems
579


Governance and Management of IT
557


Information Systems Acquisition, Development and Implementation
511


Information Systems Operations, Maintenance and Service Management
724


Protection of Information Assets
678



Preparation
I watched Sari Greene's CISA video, which is really good. She just makes great videos.

I bought the manual to use as a reference, it's pretty dry. I primarily just used the Q&A database as my only preparation. From my experience, there were only maybe 5-10 questions on the exam that were very close to Q&A database. Most didn't seem to be very similar to the Q&A database.

Test day
I arrived 30 minutes early to the testing center, the place was like a madhouse. Looked like a bunch of college students were taking tests for something. Much like my CISM testing experience, the initial workstation had an incorrect browser version to execute the test. But unlike the CISM there was a new person at the testing center and it took about 30-40 minutes before they got it working. So I ended up starting my test 30 minutes after I was supposed to start. A little frustrating, but not the end of the world.

Thoughts
I feel like the Q&A database practice questions are all you'd really need to pass to exam. Use the manual for reference where needed.

Submitted the paperwork this morning. Now on CRISC and waiting for CISA certification approval.

roxer

Awesome - congrats!!

pgupta101

Congratulations for passing the exam
You are definitely not an average guy!

I am currently doing Q&A, and it is frustrating any many times, with vague questions and equally imaginary answers. Not sure what kind of people have prepared these questions.

For example: there is a question about most prevalent risk to VPN service?
a) Malicious code
b) logon spoofing
c) traffic sniffing
d) vpn gateway compromise

Answer says: a) is right choice. as if today's company have no protection against code.
whereas is wrong, because secure vpn uses 2FA
c) is obviously wrong.
d) VPN gateway be compromised, but if located in DMZ the risk is reduced..as if malware is sure capable to penetrate upto ERP servers or whatever. and people who are able to compromise VPN gateways are stupid and cannot reach beyond gateway. !!

May be exam questions were written decades ago...

There are lots of questions like this in Q&A.
Is real exam also like this vague?
if yes, i dont see any value in this cert.

thanks.

cisanut

averageguy72,

Congrats on achieving such a great score! My experience from taking the CISA exam back in Dec '17 was that most exam questions were not very similar to the Q&A database also.

czarul

averageguy72

Sari Greene's CISA publish only 2 video !

Do you know that ?

averageguy72

czarul

Yes, I'm aware the number is limited but she has three that I'm aware of; CISSP, CISA and Security+ (2017 objectives - SY0-501).