Taking CISSP on April 30

cissper

Hi All,
I will be taking my CISSP on April 30.

Study material used:
1. CISSP Study Guide - Eric Conrad
2. 11th hour CISSP - Eric Conrad

Practice Questions:
1. CCCure.org / Freepracticetests.org
2. End of chapter questions from CISSP All-in-One - Shon Harris
3. End of chapter questions from CISSP Study Guide - Eric Conrad
4. CISSP Practice Questions Exam Cram - Michael Gregg
5. CISSP Practice Exams (online) - Shon Harris - McGraw-Hill Education | CISSP Practice Exams
6. CISSP Practice Exams (book) - Shon Harris

Full-length Practice Exams (250 questions):
1. CISSP Study Guide companion practice exams - Eric Conrad - Elsevier: conrad: CISSP Study Guide Certification
Exam 1 - 80% (completed in 120min)
Exam 2 - 73% (completed in 160min)
2. Total Tester (aka Total Seminar) CD that comes along with CISSP All-in-One - Shon Harris. This has only one full length exam. Will finish it on April 23.

Should I be practicing more test questions or any other exams or just go through the 11th hour CISSP - Eric Conrad until April 29?

RomeoJett

When did you start over all, I would guess not today since you have already done exams and seem to have a grasp.Good Luck and keep us posted. I have rescheduled mine a couple times already do to work schedule dumping stuff on me. We are actually doing through a pretty text book data classification so I am trying to align these to study. I am now scheduled for End of May, hopefully I can kick it in to high gear starting this weekend.

cissper

Took me 2 months (Nov and Dec, 2013) to complete CISSP Study Guide - Eric Conrad. I basically, breezed through it highlighting everything that i thought was important. I was pretty sure that I could not remember anything by the time I finished the book.

Did not study Jan and Feb due to work. This was a big mistake.

Then seriously started taking CCCure practice questions in March and completed all questions by the end of March. This brought my confidence down but collected a lot of info and learned a lot from these questions and the detailed explanations that were provided. scoring from 55% to 70%. But kept on training my brain that not to believe in the % gimic of CCCure questions. Just made sure I learned from both correct and wrong answers provided for each question.
Immediately ordered 11th hour CISSP - Eric Conrad and after reading each chapter (takes around 1 hour to complete each chapter), I started going through CISSP Practice Questions Exam Cram - Michael Gregg and completed in 5 days. Averaged around 70% but still this % thing was not convincing.
Then jumped on to CISSP Practice Exams (online and book) - Shon Harris and finished in 10 days. This time I did not read anything before taking the chapter based test questions, and just wanted to see how much I can recollect. I was all over the place with 5 chapters at 70%, 2 chaps at 55%, and 3 at 65%. But still the % thing was not convincing.
Finally this week jumped on the full-length practice exams. Just finished the exam on Total Tester (aka Total Seminar) CD that comes along with CISSP All-in-One - Shon Harris. Got 81%.

I have to say, there is no way I am able to gauge myself based on these percentages. I feel like all sources had questions which where a mix of easy and hard ones. I might be doing great on easy questions and hopeless on hard ones. And ofcourse there are always a lot of questions for which we make the best guess. I am sure that there is no way i can remember all advantages / disadvantages of various processes, so there will be a lot of best guesses in the actual exam

Forgot, I hate the questions on that are based on US laws/standards or DoD.
And I always got the ISO and NIST standard numbers based questions wrong

I think I am done with all practice questions and exams, so will just review the 11th hour CISSP - Eric Conrad for the next one week.

LionelTeo

The reason that your scoring 70% for cccure is probably because you do it so much until you remember the answers to the question. My personal benchmark is that I had score 65% on first try and then push to 80%; but this are still not a convincing factor backthen I am ready. My studiscope was 64% for the first try as well. I think you need to brush up a little more on the exam. My suggestion is to order the GIAC GISP 250 practice question for 129USD, Information Security Professional Certification: GISP if you can get 70% with mimimal book reference, you are good to say you can reach about 80% for the actual test. (GISP is harder). You also get a score report from the end of the exam to show you your weak areas so you can study up on them

cissper

Thanks Lionel. I haven't repeated any tests. Just attempted them once. For the all the questions that I got wrong and the questions which I got right but was doubtful, I scribbled some notes in my 11th hour study book. Right now focusing more on the material.

I doubt if I can shell out $129 at this point for GISP questions. Are these questions close to CISSP format or just a set of tough questions which are tougher than all the test questions I have attempted so far? How do you rate Shon Harris test questions / exam ?

LionelTeo

I cannot rate Shon harris Exam directly as I had not taken it, I only had taken Conrad Pratice, StudisScope, 2 GISP practice + actual Exam, CISSP and CCCure.

I can only categorize to you that there are 4 types of question in the CISSP, which are

Memory Question - Directly from the book question and answer, this are the question that any candidate should score
Scenario Base Question - Giving you a long word of text, usually asking for BEST, BEST CHRONOLOGICAL, answers
Obscure Answers Question - Answers that probably doesn't had anything to do with the question asked
Hybrid Question - Basically, a combination of either two or everything of the three types mention above.

Of 250 question, 25 question are not graded (which are usually obscure types as they need to collect data), the data are used for future exams, probably introduce as graded question once they got a high percentage of people who got it correct. This makes sense to say to there definitely more than 25 types of hybrid/obscure question right? Now 70% of 225 graded question is about 157 questions, of course CISSP doesn't grade it this way, the obscure and scenario base question weighs more in the exam. Although to say how many types of obsucre/scernario question its an NDA, but from this analogy you could easily guess how many obscure/scenario base question are there? Some simple maths will show you 250 - 157 = 93 (including the 25 ungraded ones)

My question back to you is that, does Shon Harris give you adequte training on Scenario base and Obscure word questions? From my experience with GISP, it relates closely because it is not a exam practice bank but its a real certifications, the questions are not contributed by public but from professional selected specially from GIAC themselve who score more than 90% on the respective subject. It give more scenario base and obscure word question than you can see in the actual CISSP itself.

Perhaps you should take a look at this thread where the TC said he found the questions really different from Shon Harris and CCCure questions.
http://www.techexams.net/forums/isc-sscp-cissp/99416-looking-one-last-practice-exam.html
He passed his exam later asking question relating endorsement
http://www.techexams.net/forums/isc-sscp-cissp/99590-cissp-endorsement.html

cissper

Wohoooooooo.....PASSED!!!!. No matter how well you study, you will have a bad feeling all through the exam. Took me 240 min to complete. I made sure that I was hitting a question per minute. took a break for 6min. Went back in to review the flagged questions which took me around 80min, so i am guessing I flagged around 70-80 questions. and ended the exam with 10min left.

emerald_octane

gratttzzzzz

TalkSec

Congratulations !!

j.petrov

Nice job!

Agreed, you will not have any clue whether you passed or not until you get your print out.

cyberguypr

Congrats!

TheProfezzor

cissper wrote: »

Wohoooooooo.....PASSED!!!!. No matter how well you study, you will have a bad feeling all through the exam. Took me 240 min to complete. I made sure that I was hitting a question per minute. took a break for 6min. Went back in to review the flagged questions which took me around 80min, so i am guessing I flagged around 70-80 questions. and ended the exam with 10min left.

Any info on how the exam was?

LionelHutz32

Congratulations Cissper ...which study material/set of practice tests that you used did you feel helped you out the most in the exam?

NimrodHunter

Congrats @cissper

cissper

Thanks everyone.

@TheProfezzor:
Study material used:
1. CISSP Study Guide - Eric Conrad
2. 11th hour CISSP - Eric Conrad
3. End of the Chapter "Summary" section from Shon Harris and "Key Terms" section from each chapter.

However, I wished I had read my highlighted sections in the CISSP Study Guide rather than 11th hour study guide. BUT, after the exam it felt like it would have made no difference

When studying, you make sure you concentrate on why a certain technology is BEST to implement. The key words the BEST, LEAST IMPORTANT, FIRST Step to do, List the order of steps, Which step involves a certain task in the process. I did not get any question which says " which of the below choice is NOT a ....." or which of the below choice are relevant EXCEPT, rather they used the words LEAST IMPORTANT.

What through me off most of the time is the terminology used in the questions. English is not my first language, so at times I felt like which I knew the meaning of a word used in the question. It felt like if I knew the meaning I could had a better chance at guessing the answer.

There were around 5 question that were Drag and drop and matching the answers. There we some questions which were simple with direct answers and no brainers.

CCCure.org practice questions were an over kill, so I would not really worry about scoring 80% in those practice questions. 60 to 80% on your first attempt should be good, but make sure you read their detailed answers. Would I recommend CCCure.org? Yes, but don't waste time repeating the questions until you get 80%.
I made a BIG mistake wasting my money on CCCure scenario based practice questions set. It was a total waste of my money. I could answer 90% of those question without reading the scenario. This is not true in the real Exam, you will have to read through the scenario though some part of just useless verbiage.

Telecomm and BCP/DRP are major portion of the questions. Read, read, and read but dont go into technical details of telecomm. Concentrate on advantages / disadvantages of a certain technology and was the MOST or LEAST impost aspect of it.

sameoj

@Cissper: Thanks for the break down, my question is will you recommend the GISP practice question from GIAC? Others who have done the CISSP exam and have used the GISP practise question, kindly comment.

Thanks in advance.

TheProfezzor

You said that English is not your primary language. It's not mine either. But, aren't people allowed to carry a dictionary in the exam. I have read it in the rules that people are allowed to carry dictionary, if English isn't their primary language.

cissper

Not sure about the dictionary. But it would have probably helped me (or may be not) with less than 5 questions. Overall only advice is: do not waste more than 3 months for preparation, with last month focusing on only practice tests and the last week focusing on just reviewing your notes and/or 11th hour study guide. "No matter how well you study, you will have a bad feeling all through the exam". I guess I was just lucky

TheProfezzor

You said you got a lot of questions on Telecom and BCP. How technical were the questions from Telecom?. I mean, I am not a telecom guy and I am having a hard time, getting acquainted with all the terms and models.

smoten

cissper wrote: »

Wohoooooooo.....PASSED!!!!. No matter how well you study, you will have a bad feeling all through the exam. Took me 240 min to complete. I made sure that I was hitting a question per minute. took a break for 6min. Went back in to review the flagged questions which took me around 80min, so i am guessing I flagged around 70-80 questions. and ended the exam with 10min left.

Yahoooooo, Many Congrats on achieving such a great milestone, I am also on the way and targeting by end of this month and need your advice and guidelines about study plan and practice question

My study plan

1. ISC Offical CBK (end to end thru 1 time)
2. 11th hour CISSP - Eric Conrad (end to end thru 2 times)

Practice Questions:
1. CISSP Practice Exams McGraw-Hill Education | CISSP Practice Exams
2. Syngress Eric Conrad Elsevier: conrad: CISSP Study Guide Practice Exams

Keeping view the above study, could you please guide me whether is it enough study or need more to do study also please identify which practice question is more helpful and best for the exam.

a) cccure.org (cost $50)
b) studiScope (cost $129)
c) shon harris exam simulator (cost $350)

impelse

Congrats

cissper

TheProfezzor wrote: »

You said you got a lot of questions on Telecom and BCP. How technical were the questions from Telecom?. I mean, I am not a telecom guy and I am having a hard time, getting acquainted with all the terms and models.

There were no questions on the nitty gritty details of Telecom. I just used Eric Conrad books and felt tech details in this book were sufficient. I and not a Telecom guy either and only interact with them on my projects but never dig into details on how they configure security.

Technical details provided in CISSP Study Guide - Eric Conrad where sufficient for me. Shon Harris book was never an option for me, just looking at the sheer volume of the book put me to sleep

cissper

@Smoten: Please read above reply by LionelTeo

All practice question sources that used only helped me to remember the basic stuff and to develop some analytic skills but nothing matched the Exam questions. As LionelTeo mentioned in one of his replies, GISP questions might be helpful but I did not try them so cannot comment on it.

NimrodHunter

Congrats, its a great feeling to pass this test isn't it? I know I was relieved once I saw the "congrats" on the paper!

cissper

NimrodHunter wrote: »

Congrats, its a great feeling to pass this test isn't it? I know I was relieved once I saw the "congrats" on the paper!

To be frank, I had and still have a mixed feeling. I am sure what is being proved by having this Cert. Certainly does not prove that I am better than other's who do not hold this cert. But, the whole preparation / study process did develop a more holistic approach towards security. It feels like the beginning of a whole new journey.

Yes, I am extremely relieved to have passed it in my first attempt and don't have repeat it.

Every time I pass through a new building construction, I observe the reinforced bars, observe the class III gates at the truck loading docs, stare the sprinklers in my office, thinking about CISSP when using my magnetic strip cards,..........

TheProfezzor

cissper wrote: »

To be frank, I had and still have a mixed feeling. I am sure what is being proved by having this Cert. Certainly does not prove that I am better than other's who do not hold this cert. But, the whole preparation / study process did develop a more holistic approach towards security. It feels like the beginning of a whole new journey.

Yes, I am extremely relieved to have passed it in my first attempt and don't have repeat it.

Every time I pass through a new building construction, I observe the reinforced bars, observe the class III gates at the truck loading docs, stare the sprinklers in my office, thinking about CISSP when using my magnetic strip cards,..........

ROFL. Sounds like, you need a Psychiatrist :P

Kamat2000

Congrats