I passed! (Now I need an endorsement)
I sat for the CISSP exam in Minneapolis on Dec. 20. A hotel ballroom filled with tables, exam books, pencils, and roughly 50 nervous people all silently watching the clock tick down to the start time.
As described in lots of other threads, the test was a marathon. After filling in the first 40 or so little circles with the number 2 pencil issued me, the dots all started swirling around. Really glad I brought the reading glasses along that day!
Just to break up the routine, I went to the back of the test and started working forward, but after a while, these dots also started moving around. I think I worked backwords from number 250 to number 200 or so.
It's OK to write in the exam book, so then I started writing my answers next to the questions in the exam book. This also gave the advantage of forcing me to look at every question at least twice - once to write the preliminary answer in the booklet, then again to fill in the little circle on the answer sheet. I liked this technique best because it was easy to skip questions I didn't know right away and then come back and fill them in after finishing the first pass.
I probably changed 10 or so answers this way, which was a surprise, but going back through the questions, the changed answers made lots more sense then my original answers.
For what it's worth, even with the 1000+ practice questions I must have gone through, the actual test had lots of new questions I hadn't seen before. Typical questions did not ask to regurgitate facts, but to draw appropriate conclusions based on CBK facts I was supposed to know.
Anyway, my test tactics and prep evidently worked for me because I received a great email one week ago that started out like this:
Dear Greg Scott:
Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have passed the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP®) examination - the first step in becoming certified as a CISSP.
The second step in the certification process requires submission of two additional items:
1. A COMPLETED ENDORSEMENT FORM...
.
.
.
So now I have a challenge - I need help with the endorsement. Would anyone reading this be willing to endorse me, assuming I can prove I have the required background and years of experience? If so, I will owe you a favor and I will be willing to endorse the next candidate after me with a similar need and the required background.
Oh yes - how did I prepare? I've been in the IT field for pretty much my entire adult life and I build customized firewalls based on Linux, so it's not like any of the CBK topics were completely new. Well, physical security was mostly new I guess and now I know more about fire extinguishers than before.
I read the Shon Harris AIO book cover to cover and worked the practice questions at the end of each chapter. I also bought an Exam Cram series with some practice questions and went through some of those. I tried lots and lots and lots of practice quizzes from cccure.org. I took about 5 calendar months to prepare; the last 2 weeks and especially the last week were very long days.
Help with the endorsement would definitely be appreciated.
thanks
- Greg Scott
gregscott@infrasupport.com
As described in lots of other threads, the test was a marathon. After filling in the first 40 or so little circles with the number 2 pencil issued me, the dots all started swirling around. Really glad I brought the reading glasses along that day!
Just to break up the routine, I went to the back of the test and started working forward, but after a while, these dots also started moving around. I think I worked backwords from number 250 to number 200 or so.
It's OK to write in the exam book, so then I started writing my answers next to the questions in the exam book. This also gave the advantage of forcing me to look at every question at least twice - once to write the preliminary answer in the booklet, then again to fill in the little circle on the answer sheet. I liked this technique best because it was easy to skip questions I didn't know right away and then come back and fill them in after finishing the first pass.
I probably changed 10 or so answers this way, which was a surprise, but going back through the questions, the changed answers made lots more sense then my original answers.
For what it's worth, even with the 1000+ practice questions I must have gone through, the actual test had lots of new questions I hadn't seen before. Typical questions did not ask to regurgitate facts, but to draw appropriate conclusions based on CBK facts I was supposed to know.
Anyway, my test tactics and prep evidently worked for me because I received a great email one week ago that started out like this:
Dear Greg Scott:
Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have passed the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP®) examination - the first step in becoming certified as a CISSP.
The second step in the certification process requires submission of two additional items:
1. A COMPLETED ENDORSEMENT FORM...
.
.
.
So now I have a challenge - I need help with the endorsement. Would anyone reading this be willing to endorse me, assuming I can prove I have the required background and years of experience? If so, I will owe you a favor and I will be willing to endorse the next candidate after me with a similar need and the required background.
Oh yes - how did I prepare? I've been in the IT field for pretty much my entire adult life and I build customized firewalls based on Linux, so it's not like any of the CBK topics were completely new. Well, physical security was mostly new I guess and now I know more about fire extinguishers than before.
I read the Shon Harris AIO book cover to cover and worked the practice questions at the end of each chapter. I also bought an Exam Cram series with some practice questions and went through some of those. I tried lots and lots and lots of practice quizzes from cccure.org. I took about 5 calendar months to prepare; the last 2 weeks and especially the last week were very long days.
Help with the endorsement would definitely be appreciated.
thanks
- Greg Scott
gregscott@infrasupport.com