CISSP Passed
Hello everyone,
I just wanted to drop a few lines here to thank everyone who played a part in helping me pass CISSP by sharing their stories and study plans.
I took the CBT at a local Pearson Vue center.
My background :
12 year IT experience
System Administrator
Network Administrator
Penetration tester in blackbox scenario
Financial application Subject Matter Expert / Business Analyst
MCITP/MCTS/MCSE/Security+
Study Material :
-Shon Harris AIO 5th Ed. ( read it once fully then did the end of chapter tests a few times to get a good grasp of the question styles more than anything. )
-1 week CISSP preparation course given at my employers premises by professionals. ( I was all psyched about this one until I realized the prep class was basically to go over the AIO book. Althought it did give me a different insight on the material, this class did not bring that much value add. )
-Paid subscription to CCCure quiz. I believe this is what got me the most for my buck in terms of perparation. ( Special thanks to Clement Dupuis )
-This very site. The insight brought by people's memoirs and study plans really helped me sink how hard this test would be.
How was it:
As per the NDA, I will obviously not comment the question content.
I can however confirm the following. As stated by previous certifiees, be ready for double negations and tricky wordings.
I finished the test relatively fast, ( 170 minutes ) and most importantly, I did not review anything at all.
I am a firm believer that if you know, you know. And if you dont, you dont.
Reviewing would have only added to uncertainty and I did not want to get into that pyschological mindset.
That being said, please do not follow this path unless you have a similar personality. Countless people mark their questions for review either due to uncertainty or because they feel another question later in the test may infer better insight on the ones they weren't sure about.
Feel free to ask any questions. I am not sure what else to put in here considering there are already dozens of similar threads.
I would however close in saying that my biggest asset was cccure. It truly helped me identify my weakest domains which helped targetting focus areas which I needed to spend more time on.
Next up. The wonderful world of GIAC certs.
I just wanted to drop a few lines here to thank everyone who played a part in helping me pass CISSP by sharing their stories and study plans.
I took the CBT at a local Pearson Vue center.
My background :
12 year IT experience
System Administrator
Network Administrator
Penetration tester in blackbox scenario
Financial application Subject Matter Expert / Business Analyst
MCITP/MCTS/MCSE/Security+
Study Material :
-Shon Harris AIO 5th Ed. ( read it once fully then did the end of chapter tests a few times to get a good grasp of the question styles more than anything. )
-1 week CISSP preparation course given at my employers premises by professionals. ( I was all psyched about this one until I realized the prep class was basically to go over the AIO book. Althought it did give me a different insight on the material, this class did not bring that much value add. )
-Paid subscription to CCCure quiz. I believe this is what got me the most for my buck in terms of perparation. ( Special thanks to Clement Dupuis )
-This very site. The insight brought by people's memoirs and study plans really helped me sink how hard this test would be.
How was it:
As per the NDA, I will obviously not comment the question content.
I can however confirm the following. As stated by previous certifiees, be ready for double negations and tricky wordings.
I finished the test relatively fast, ( 170 minutes ) and most importantly, I did not review anything at all.
I am a firm believer that if you know, you know. And if you dont, you dont.
Reviewing would have only added to uncertainty and I did not want to get into that pyschological mindset.
That being said, please do not follow this path unless you have a similar personality. Countless people mark their questions for review either due to uncertainty or because they feel another question later in the test may infer better insight on the ones they weren't sure about.
Feel free to ask any questions. I am not sure what else to put in here considering there are already dozens of similar threads.
I would however close in saying that my biggest asset was cccure. It truly helped me identify my weakest domains which helped targetting focus areas which I needed to spend more time on.
Next up. The wonderful world of GIAC certs.
Comments
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Dakinggamer87
Member Posts: 4,016 ■■■■■■■■□□
Congrats on pass!!
*Associate's of Applied Sciences degree in Information Technology-Network Systems Administration
*Bachelor's of Science: Information Technology - Security, Master's of Science: Information Technology - Management
Matthew 6:33 - "Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need."
Certs/Business Licenses In Progress: AWS Solutions Architect, Series 6, Series 63 -
pennystrader
Member Posts: 155
Congratulations on your pass and thanks for letting us know your background and your experience.
The more knowledge one obtains the more there is too accumulate..... -
universalfrost
Member Posts: 247
congrats !
i am in the same boat as far as not reviewing... my first answer is usually right (well at least I think it is right...) and i rarely ever change an answer...
what was your total time studying?"Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati" (when all else fails play dead) -Red Green -
Maxcz
Member Posts: 6 ■□□□□□□□□□
I was initially supposed to sit the test in July but decided to move it in order to beneficiate from the CBT instead of PBT.
I have been preparing mentally since last year.
I would say I seriously started studying around May of this year.
I put in significantly more time in the last week in order to memorize what I consider the cramming part of these domains.
Short answer, approximately 6 months of grind. -
Paperlantern
Member Posts: 352
Good show! Congrats on the pass!
Im a firm believer in the first answer is probably right philosophy. I think i only changed 4 answers out of 250 when I sat mine. ONLY marked 6 for review. I did go back through EVERY SINGLE question though, not to change answers, but to make sure i understood it correctly and didnt miss a negative or something. That was mostly the reason i changed any.Check out my blog: http://securityslam.tumblr.com
Or my twitter: www.twitter.com/securityslam -
spicy ahi
Member Posts: 413 ■■□□□□□□□□
Congratulations!!!
Spicy :cool: Mentor the future! Be a CyberPatriot! -
Commander Jameson
Member Posts: 8 ■■■□□□□□□□
Congrats on the pass!
I wanted to pick up on two things.
Firstly, I completely agree that if you know it, you know it. If you don't, you don't. This means you need to keep going through the material until you understand it better. And in the test, there's little point in changing answers when you don't know them.
And, secondly, whilst the practice questions I used were loaded with double negatives and tricky workings, my exam experience was that all the questions were fairly worded. But I do recall questions where I didn't know the answer.
My view at the time of my CISSP was that if you can pass a mock test with poorly worded questions, then you are ready to pass the real test.
