PASSED CISSP exam - Study Plan inside!

I finally received a pass result from (ISC)2 after 6+ weeks of waiting! I know they're busy so no biggie. This was my first attempt...

Materials used

Shon Harris All In One 5th Ed. and questions from the cd in the book
CISSP Books By Shon Harris | Shon Harris Student Workbook and CISSP book |Security Certified Network Professional Books by Shon Harris

Shon Harris CBT series
CISSP Certification Training, Certified Information Systems Security Professionals, Information Security Training, Security Governance

CISSP for Dummies 3rd Ed.
CISSP For Dummies, 3rd Edition:Book Information - For Dummies

CCCure.org Quizzer (paid membership)
About 2000 questions used
https://www.freepracticetests.org/quiz/index.php

studISCope - Official (ISC)²® CBK® self assessments
Paid for the 300 questions (3 exams), took each exam 2x
https://www.expresscertifications.com/isc2/

Carnegie Mellon CERT Video training (dry but free, barley watched it)
https://www.vte.cert.org/vteWeb/

Time Spent

Since I’m in Afghanistan I have a little bit more time than most. I studied at work and at home.

2-3 hours per day, every day for 6 months (had to take exam on vacation)

Studied 1 domain at a time; Watched Shon Harris CBT on Access Control

Read Shon Harris AIO chapter on Access Control

Shon Harris practice questions on Access Control

Read CISSP for Dummies on Access Control

www.freepracticetests.org questions on Access Control (about 200 per domain)

Repeated process for all domains

Took studISCope exams every Friday for 6 weeks prior to exam.

This might seem like over-kill but it worked!!! Thanks to the members of this forum for their great advice and insight.

Date of Exam: 11/6/2010
Place of Exam: Kansas City, MO
Results Received: 12/20/2010
Results of Exam: Passed (1st attempt)
Certified: 01 FEB 2011

Moe.

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Comments

gateway

That's great news! Congrats!!

ibcritn

That's awesome! Congratulations

cyberguypr

Congrats on the pass and thanks for summing up your study plan. I intend to use the same resources next year.

rogue2shadow

hustlin_moe20 wrote: »

I finally received a pass result from (ISC)2 after 6+ weeks of waiting! I know they're busy so no biggie. This was my first attempt...

Materials used

Shon Harris All In One 5th Ed. and questions from the cd in the book
CISSP Books By Shon Harris | Shon Harris Student Workbook and CISSP book |Security Certified Network Professional Books by Shon Harris

Shon Harris CBT series
CISSP Certification Training, Certified Information Systems Security Professionals, Information Security Training, Security Governance

CISSP for Dummies 3rd Ed.
CISSP For Dummies, 3rd Edition:Book Information - For Dummies

CCCure.org Quizzer (paid membership)
About 2000 questions used
https://www.freepracticetests.org/quiz/index.php

studISCope - Official (ISC)²® CBK® self assessments
Paid for the 300 questions (3 exams), took each exam 2x
https://www.expresscertifications.com/isc2/

Time Spent

Since I’m in Afghanistan I have a little bit more time than most. I studied at work and at home.

2-3 hours per day, every day for 6 months (had to take exam on vacation)

Studied 1 domain at a time; Watched Shon Harris CBT on Access Control

Read Shon Harris AIO chapter on Access Control

Shon Harris practice questions on Access Control

Read CISSP for Dummies on Access Control

www.freepracticetests.org questions on Access Control (about 200 per domain)

Repeated process for all domains

Took studISCope exams every Friday for 6 weeks prior to exam.

This might seem like over-kill but it worked!!! Thanks to the members of this forum for their great advice and insight.

Date of Exam: 11/6/2010
Place of Exam: Kansas City, MO
Results Received: 12/20/2010
Results of Exam: Passed (1st attempt)
Certified: pending

Moe.

Congrats again and great strategy. I'm definitely bookmarking this

JDMurray

hustlin_moe20 wrote: »

This might seem like over-kill but it worked!!! Thanks to the members of this forum for their great advice and insight.

A major reason for taking any cert exam is to learn new stuff, so over-studying is a good thing. I mean, when will any of us put that kind of effort into studying anything unless it's to give a presentation, write a paper, or pass an exam?

What did you think of the studISCope materials?

hustlin_moe20

JDMurray wrote: »

A major reason for taking any cert exam is to learn new stuff, so over-studying is a good thing. I mean, when will any of us put that kind of effort into studying anything unless it's to give a presentation, write a paper, or pass an exam?

What did you think of the studISCope materials?

You make a good point. I really was trying to learn as much as possible. This is my first IA role so gaining a well-rounded knowledge base to start with was very important. And of course I didn't want to take the exam more than once so I put forth the extra effort. Traveling from Afghanistan and burning a vacation day to sit for the exam is a HUGE bummer.

I had read mixed reviews about the studISCope materials prior to using them but in my opinion, they were spot on. Nothing is like the real exam but they were well written questions with a realistic feel.

The main selling point (to me at least) was the algorithm (ISC)2 uses to grade the studISCope exams. It's said to be very similar to the algorithm used to grade the real exams which gave me a better understanding of what I needed to study.

I purchased all 3, 100 question exams and passed all 3 on the first try so I felt pretty good walking into the examination room.

The cccure quizzer is good too but they grade on a percentage which isn't as good as using an algorithm close to the real thing.

I recommend studISCope to anyone still needing to pass the CISSP exam. It's a bit pricey though.

Moe.

[Deleted User]

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TrainingDaze

Congrats man!

Thanks for posting your study plan and thoughts on the exam and it's interesting that you found studIScope so useful. It sounds like it was a pretty accurate gauge for how prepared you were so maybe I will plunk down the $$$ right before I sit just to make sure I'm ready for it.

I see you're going the 8570 route and taking the C|EH next, good luck!

hustlin_moe20

I figured I might as well collect a whole set of 8570, 1 in every category to be well-rounded!

Moe.

TrainingDaze

Is there a specific area of infosec that you are interested in or are you blindly following the dod's cert requirements like me?

JDMurray

hustlin_moe20 wrote: »

I figured I might as well collect a whole set of 8570, 1 in every category to be well-rounded!

8570.01 only contains vendor-neutral certs. You'll need a smattering of vendor-specific certs (Cisco, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, VMware, etc.) to be truly well-rounded.

hustlin_moe20

@TrainingDaze,

For now I'm taking the blind route but at some point I'm going to have to decide on a path.

@JDMurray,

I'm going to get to that. One step at a time! You have a wealth of knowledge on this subject. I'm going to post about DISA and CYBERCOM in a minute, hope you can shed some light on it.

Moe.

bobbyv

hustlin_moe20 wrote: »

I finally received a pass result from (ISC)2 after 6+ weeks of waiting! I know they're busy so no biggie. This was my first attempt...

Materials used

Shon Harris All In One 5th Ed. and questions from the cd in the book
CISSP Books By Shon Harris | Shon Harris Student Workbook and CISSP book |Security Certified Network Professional Books by Shon Harris

Shon Harris CBT series
CISSP Certification Training, Certified Information Systems Security Professionals, Information Security Training, Security Governance

CISSP for Dummies 3rd Ed.
CISSP For Dummies, 3rd Edition:Book Information - For Dummies

CCCure.org Quizzer (paid membership)
About 2000 questions used
https://www.freepracticetests.org/quiz/index.php

studISCope - Official (ISC)²® CBK® self assessments
Paid for the 300 questions (3 exams), took each exam 2x
https://www.expresscertifications.com/isc2/

Carnegie Mellon CERT Video training (dry but free, barley watched it)
https://www.vte.cert.org/vteWeb/

Time Spent

Since I’m in Afghanistan I have a little bit more time than most. I studied at work and at home.

2-3 hours per day, every day for 6 months (had to take exam on vacation)

Studied 1 domain at a time; Watched Shon Harris CBT on Access Control

Read Shon Harris AIO chapter on Access Control

Shon Harris practice questions on Access Control

Read CISSP for Dummies on Access Control

www.freepracticetests.org questions on Access Control (about 200 per domain)

Repeated process for all domains

Took studISCope exams every Friday for 6 weeks prior to exam.

This might seem like over-kill but it worked!!! Thanks to the members of this forum for their great advice and insight.

Date of Exam: 11/6/2010
Place of Exam: Kansas City, MO
Results Received: 12/20/2010
Results of Exam: Passed (1st attempt)
Certified: pending

Moe.

Thanks for the study plan . . . I also took the exam for the first time on 11/6/10 and unfortunately failed.

Now I have to get back into the study mode and start preparing again.

hustlin_moe20

Better luck next time! Stay at it man, it'll come to you. Did you have the materials that I had? They really did help in every way.

Moe.