Definitely lives up to its reputation
Wow, that test was brutal. In my opinion, the practice exams provided by ISC2 in my bootcamp did not come close to the actual exam questions. Personally, I'd say the Shon Harris questions were probably closer. I took the paper based, so I won't know the results for a couple weeks. But only two major thoughts for now:
- I felt like there were way too many questions that had multiple correct answers (I hate that, "pick the best answer" ****). Probably only about 10% of the questions that I was 100% sure on. The rest were educated guesses. On the plus side, there wasn't a single question I wasn't able to confidently narrow down to two answers, so I may have passed.
- Crytography went way deeper than I expected for a "high-level management certification." I actually felt very comfortable with cryptography going in because I understand the theory behind all of the different concepts (i.e. symmetric, asymmetric, PKI, block ciphers, stream ciphers, etc...). But I didn't expect that there would be so many questions in regard to the actual implementations of specific algorithms...but there were. I cannot emphasize enough that details in the cryptography domain should not be overlooked. If I don't pass, I think this is the area I need to work on the most (ironically one of the areas I felt most prepared for going into the exam).
- I felt like there were way too many questions that had multiple correct answers (I hate that, "pick the best answer" ****). Probably only about 10% of the questions that I was 100% sure on. The rest were educated guesses. On the plus side, there wasn't a single question I wasn't able to confidently narrow down to two answers, so I may have passed.
- Crytography went way deeper than I expected for a "high-level management certification." I actually felt very comfortable with cryptography going in because I understand the theory behind all of the different concepts (i.e. symmetric, asymmetric, PKI, block ciphers, stream ciphers, etc...). But I didn't expect that there would be so many questions in regard to the actual implementations of specific algorithms...but there were. I cannot emphasize enough that details in the cryptography domain should not be overlooked. If I don't pass, I think this is the area I need to work on the most (ironically one of the areas I felt most prepared for going into the exam).
Comments
C) Good job & good luck
Thanks. It helps to hear that. I can say that of the people that I took the course with (approximately 20 people), I was doing the best on the practice questions. But I'm not sure how good of an indication that is. I wish I could go to sleep for the next 3 weeks and wake up with my results :-/
Good luck with your result.
I just completed the SSCP on Friday and I have my sites on the CISSP in a couple of years. How long did you spend studying including the bootcamp?
Masters of Information Systems Management with Enterprise Information Security - Walden University
Masters of Science in Information Assurance - Western Governors University
Masters of Science Cyber Security/Digital Forensics - University of South Florida
Even better, take a vacation. I took the test on a Saturday and then flew to Costa Rica the next day. Spent a week in Costa Rica not even thinking about the exam.