Practice test recommendations for the SSCP

youchonium

Hey everyone,

I've been a longtime lurker and have finally posted! First, let me say this is an excellent site! I attribute this site to my passing of Security+ the first go around.

Currently I've been studying to sit for the SSCP exam and am wondering if anyone has tried any of the various practice tests out there for this exam. For Security+, I used the Boson tests and they worked well, but I was curious to see if anyone else has had success using any other practice materials.

Thanks

Ten9t6

youchonium,

Welcome to the forum..

All your security+ material will be good in preparing for the SSCP. I used my security+ material, SSCP study guide by Orielly (red and white book), and SRV prep questions (do a search on srv books). I also used cccure.org. It is a CISSP site, but a lot of it carries over to the SSCP. Good luck..

youchonium

Thanks for the encouragement! I plan on finishing out my MCSE next. I'm already an MCSA so I'm at least halfway there.

b_rad

Should I read the CISSP all in one and skip the syngress book, match up the topics from the syngress and just study those in the all in one, or read the syngress SSCP book and supplement with the CISSP book? I keep hearing bad things about the syngress but I am worried that the all in one may not cover everything i need to know. Please let me know what you did to study or what you recommend

keatron

I know this sounds like a lot, but read both. And add the ISC2 official guide in there for good measure. I have to tell you that the ISC2 guide is not an easy/good read, but it's the best match as far a material goes.

Ten9t6

I agree with Keatron......While didn't not read the ISC2 book for this one (it wasn't out), I did review a lot of books and material. The main book was the Shon Harris book. The more books you see and the more angles in which they write those books will only help you in the end.

Kenny

keatron

Yes I know exactly what Kenny means. Maybe because I'm weird (and in part because I'm supposed to teach CISSP review seminars), I still read CISSP and SSCP study material all the time. And it never fails; everytime I pick up a new one that I haven't read and read it, I see something that I didn't see in any of the others and end up saying "man if I would've read this book, I would've known those questions on the exam"
So read as much as possible. Don't do like many and spend most of your time sifting through practice exam questions. The CISSP exam is different than most in the fact that most of the questions were submitted by CISSP's in good standing. This is one reason why no one book can prepare you for it. I spent about 90% of my time reading and gaining understanding and only about 10% doing practice exams. People complain about the SSCP and the CISSP having "weird" questions, but really the questions really test your understanding of the concepts and methodologies. There's not many black and white questions on the exam at all. For example, instead of a bunch of questions like "An application level firewall does A B C or D, you might see; A company needs to implement a firewall solution that will filter traffic in ways such as dis-allowing certain commands and file types, while also having proxy funtionality. Which type of firewall would BEST serve their needs?

Hope we've helped

youchonium

b_rad,

The All-in-One book by Shon Harris is EXCELLENT. Definitely read this to prepare you for the exam. I only read the chapters that pertained to the SSCP CBK, but it's an excellent text. Currently, I am using it to prepare for the CISSP this April.

When I prepared for the SSCP, I read the Syngress book and the All-in-One and Shon Harris' text was superior to Syngress one. However, I still feel it is good to read from multiple sources to cover material that the other may have missed. Also, the SRV texts were helpful in preparing for the exam as well, because they ask questions in that "eccentric" way SSCP questions are given.

I hope that helps, if I can provide anything else, let me know.

Youch

daviduga

b_rad

When are you taking the SSCP?