My Study Guide / Boson Exam Environment

Flukez

Hi guys,

First post here.

Starting off I wanted to say a quick thank you for all the great sources of information on the forum already, it has certainly helped me out.

A couple of things that I'd like to clarify
1. My study guide
2. Boson Exam Environment

Background:
Exam: CISSP
From reading the forums I set myself 3 months to pass this exam. My experience is 4 years in IT Security with a degree in Computer Networks. Previously working in a SOC doing device management gave me a TON of tech skills on firewalls, switches, routers, IDS/IPS, etc. I've worked for 2 1/2 years as an associate consultant in a large financial bank in the UK. Basically, I've had a fair bit of exposure to every domain apart from physical.

I sit my exam on the 31st of July (this month)

== My study guide ==
-Shon Harris - All in One
My study plan was to read the AIO book and make flash cards from it. The flash cards turned into more like cut down versions of the chapters, about 14-15 pages of notes relevant to me - pretty happy with this to be honest. It works out that I need to read 11.6 pages per day in order to allow myself a 2 week grace period at the end for going over the flash cards prior to the exam. Good news is I'm on track

-Audio-
I listen to outdated Shon Harris mp3s when I can, concepts still apply and I actually thought these are decent compared to the book. She's a better presenter than author.

-Boson Exam Environment-
Bought this 2 days ago to see how matched up against the exam. It's got 750 questions with an excellent feedback mechanism if you fail to answer correctly. It gives you a breakdown as to WHY that answer is correct.

Question1
Does this seem like a solid plan? I feel like I've been through the war reading this book and I'm looking forward to reading the flash cards/hitting the practice tests/more audios.

Question2
So, it's a while since I read the first chapter, and I've yet to go over my notes/flash cards. Every time I finish a chapter and I do the questions in the AIO book I get 90%+. They seem easy.

I started doing the Boson questions (covering ALL domains) and I'm getting 50%. But I haven't gone over my flash cards. I guess my concern is that the Boson questions seem ALOT harder than the ones in the AIO book.

What's your thoughts? Did you guys have the same problem with testing software? I'm literally thinking I'm going to fail with the results I'm getting here. Did you find the exam questions easier than the practice test ones?

Thanks,
Flukez

badrottie

I did not use the Boson test questions as part of my preparation. I used cccure.org's CISSP question bank to test against.

Were the exam questions easier? Harder. No doubts whatsoever.

Lob

I used Boson, primarily, and found them to be excellent preparation. Given I work day-to-day as a CSO, I did not have too many gaps in my knowledge but I did need to condition myself to read and answer questions properly.The Boson pack was something I repeatedly did for the month before the test. I did a 5-day course about 18 months before my test so there was a gap between the course and the exam prep.What the exams did for me was allow me to have a collection of PDFs for topics where I was constantly wrong. This group of PDFs got smaller and smaller as the exam date approached. I eradicated reading errors and filled gaps in understanding for encryption and some parts of other domains.My final preparation the night before was to go through the whole of the course slides just to get the key words into the grey matter. Certain key info like high level ISC2 definitions are covered there too.I did the course relatively quickly but that's how I operate. I did all questions in 2 hours 50 minutes and then took another 2 hours to check every single question by re-answering it and seeing if I had a different point of view. Some questions elsewhere in the test will give clues to answer other questions.....