CISSP - Passed 2018-09-12

itrideritrider Registered Users Posts: 3 ■□□□□□□□□□
in CISSP
I passed the CISSP yesterday. Of course it is provisional. I'll do a short write up on my story since I was able to gather lots of good information from reading others stories here :) My main take away from other stories was a list of resources that work well for passing or at least worked well for the test takers who passed.

Duration of studying: ~13 weeks (did at a minimum 45min-1hr every day with averages of 3-6hrs on Sat/Sun. Only took off something like 3 days total due to scheduling or work travel).

Books:
  • Sybex 7th edition (I already owned this from earlier in the spring 2018, so I opted not to get the 8th edition...note: IMO the 8th was not needed since the concepts go back years and the material is about IoT and Cloud...lots of forum topics reviewing the differences) LINK
  • Eleventh Hour CISSP (very good book for reviewing and reading multiple times) LINK
  • I also reviewed the Shon Harris, but did not use this as main resource though I found it easy to follow LINK
Practice Tests:
  • Sybex online (registered both the practice test book and main book to gain access to the online testing modules) LINK
  • BOSON practice tests (well worth the cost) LINK
Videos:
  • Cybrary videos (very very good) LINK
  • IT Dojo YouTube questions of the day (not bad and puts things in perspective) LINK
Other:
  • Sunflower PDF notes (layout kind of sucks and is hard to follow, but a great supplement to your notes in case you missed something - I found myself splitting my time about 40% here and 60% on my own writings when reviewing notes) LINK
Those are the resources I mainly used. I started by reading the Sybex book cover to cover and taking notes on items that I thought to be relevant and new to me. I didn't start taking practice tests until about week 10. Then I would take 1 practice test and review all the questions, going through item by item. My goal was not to just know the right answer, but more so to know why the other answers were incorrect. I hope that makes sense.

I will say without saying (NDA and all), that it was very very beneficial to understand why items were wrong rather than just knowing the right answer. Not all questions are clear or state as simply "term=definition"...rather, there are lots of words to throw you off. So understanding how to eliminate or narrow down the choices was huge.

When I took the exam there were about 10 questions or so that I could say "yes, the answer is definitely XYZ". Most of the questions I answered were based on elimination of choices, then going forward from there. So understanding the material is more key than regurgitating it (unlike some of my technical certs). This was similar to my experience getting the PMP...more understanding :)

Now I start the endorsement process. At least the tracking thread here is showing that ISC2 is closer to 5-6 weeks now for processing.
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