Passed CISSP - Very Difficult exam

Passed

Past experience is 12 years systems admin, windows, vmware, san

Wow. What a exam. I thought I failed. I went through every question and I felt somethings were not in any book, practice test, or study material I looked over. After I went through all 250 questions I went back and only completed my incomplete items. I was so discouraged I just hit the end exam button after I finished the incomplete items. I did not go back and review.

Instead of just asking the freaking question they play this grammatical war of words with you that stumps you with 2 answers which are so similar you just pick 1 and hope its right.

Studying Over kill

Conrad CISSP Study Guide (read 1 time and then read through 2nd time taking meticulous notes)

Transcender Practice Questions (I dont necessariy recommend them but I personally preferred the questions over cccure. I went through each domain 1 by 1 and until i correctly answered everything)

CCCure Paid Scenario Questions (confirmed what I already knew)

Conrad 11^th Hour Study Guide (only did end of chapter questers......since this is a rehash of his book there is really no value to it other than the 5 toughest questions at the end of eash chapter )

Shon Harris AIO (only end of chap Questions...very diffcult.....got most of them wrong...moved on with my life)

Shon Harris 250 Practice Question Book (did not use...ran out of time)

CCCure Paid Online Practice Questions (too technical and this is coming from a technical person; quality of questions and lack of consistent grammatical style made it very difficult for me; I only attempted 400+ questions)

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Comments

CoolAsAFan

Congratulations Meat! Thanks for your review as well!

zxbane

Congrats OP,

Sounds like you put in the quality study time needed and have the experience to go along with it. I felt like I failed when I took it as well, and I am just glad to have it over with, as I can bet you are too!

Jonnyg

Congrats on the pass! It is definitely an intense exam, but I honestly have to disagree regarding the wording. I felt it was a fair exam that really required you to know your material and, as they claim, always has only one right answer. The key is to know what ISC2 deems is the right answer. Knowing this will make it easier for anyone looking to attempt this exam.

I felt the CCCure practice questions were technical in nature, however, knowing the technical stuff is very important to having a more complete and better understanding of the exam objectives. These questions helped me a lot in preparation for the exam and I would not have done nearly as well had I not used them to study. I would recommend them.

impelse

Congrats

BGraves

Congrats!!

f0rgiv3n

Congrats! I did the same as you, I only went back over the incomplete ones and just submitted. After going through 250 questions once, I couldn't guarantee that my brain was as fresh going through them a second time.

I think that there is definitely a certain percentage of the exam that is just learning how to read and understand the questions. This is why I always recommend Eric Conrad's book because he goes through and helps you understand what to look for and how to read those tricky questions. IMHO everyone who takes this should go through, understand the material and once that's complete, learn how to take the test.

Breadfan

Congrats....

aftereffector

Congratulations! I hope to be in the same place soon.

hylaab

Congratulations on the pass.

hylaab

I have heard this term a lot on this form and others. Can you elaborate more on what ISC2 considers to be the right answer?

Jonnyg wrote: »

The key is to know what ISC2 deems is the right answer. Knowing this will make it easier for anyone looking to attempt this exam.

zxbane

I think what he means, from my experience, is that you have to learn to ditch whatever preconceived opinions you might have based on your experience and learn to answer the questions in the manner that the practice quizzes from AIO, CCCure etc teach you to

donw35

Congrats, Just getting started with my studying. I would like to have this done in the next 3 months

colemic

zxbane wrote: »

I think what he means, from my experience, is that you have to learn to ditch whatever preconceived opinions you might have based on your experience and learn to answer the questions in the manner that the practice quizzes from AIO, CCCure etc teach you to

Agree with this - they are looking for the best answer strictly from a security perspective, not business perspective or even common-sense perspective.

Meat

Just FYI - I started studying january 18th.....so it took me 8 weeks (I did not study for 9 days due work related disaster recovery event...)..so really 7 weeks

Meat

colemic wrote: »

Agree with this - they are looking for the best answer strictly from a security perspective, not business perspective or even common-sense perspective.

I agree. The problem is I felt like I was sitting in the wrong exam. So I felt I was guessing on some items because they were not in Transcender, AIO , Conrad book. The questions were so obscure and outside of the CBK that I just tried relate it to the closest domain and put the best answer related to all the CISSP concepts I learned. There is no way you can know everything.

TheProfezzor

Meat wrote: »

Just FYI - I started studying january 18th.....so it took me 8 weeks (I did not study for 9 days due work related disaster recovery event...)..so really 7 weeks

With over 10 years of experience, do you think Eric's book gave you a lot of new information. Do you think going with Eric's book alone, will be enough for the CISSP examination? Also, would you mind telling if the "Orange Book" is still relevant for the examination?

cgrimaldo

congrats!

Meat

Honestly I will just say that memorizing the orange stuff was difficult for me and I made a concious decision not to study or memorize anything related to the Orange Book. Personally for me I felt it was not worth the time dedicated to understand it. I chose other things to memorize which I felt were more important. I did choose to know the different books (red, green, etc) and what they are used for.

Honestly its a concept test....you need to know the details and little random technical details
that will help you answer concept questions

Like for example:

What color book covers networks?

1) red book

2) green book

3) yellow book

4) blue book

Honestly I took 40 pages of Hand typed notes and also stole diagrams and charts from google for visual aids. However at the end I did not go back over those notes. However I did remember when making the notes that the Conrad book referred to the red book for networks. The reason my note method taking helped is because I ensured that I atleast glanced over every single topic in the Conrad book atleast once. which imprinted a visual image in my head. I am a visual learner.

The kicker is....when I started the transcender practice questions it was too tedious to look at my notes. Especially when your going through 1000 practice questions. So I just had to conjure up memories from my note taking and I realized that that you just need the concept to be able to answer most questions.

So with that being said I ditched my 40 pages of notes (when looking back was eerily silmilar to the 11th hour book) and I created a condenced study notes (2 page document) of only cryptography and the security models. This consisted of:

Assymetric Algorithms

Symmetric Algorithms

Hashes

and all the little minute details and intricacies of each...the random tidbits you might be questioned on

Biba

Clark Wilson

Bell-lapadula

take-grant

chinese wall

Not to mention by taking many practice questions you will be exposed to many more types of questions which are not covered in Shon Harris AIO or Conrad........espcially on Wireless and Virtual Machine concepts...

Hope this was helpful

Alamjan

Congrats !

Meat

Endorsement was submitted 17 days ago...received ongratulations email today from ISC2 awarding me with my CISSP designation.

superg

Meat wrote: »

Endorsement was submitted 17 days ago...received ongratulations email today from ISC2 awarding me with my CISSP designation.

Congrats!