I'm still in shocked to be honest. The whole experience was definitely a roller coaster ride. I have a new found respect, both for the exam as well as the folks who sat through it. Here's how I prepared and also about the exam itself:
Preparation:
Eric Conrad's CISSP Study Guide 2nd Editon
Primary reference guide for me. Read through most of the chapters.
Kelly Handerhan's Cybrary's FREE CISSP Training
A very (very) good CBT that helped me to piece together the things I've read about.
Keith Barker's CISSP CBT Nuggets
Wish I would have watched this first before I started reading the book. Keith makes it easy to understand without going into much depth.
CCCure Questions
A good tool that helped me to enforce my understanding but I'll talk a little more about this later.
Personally for me, I need to write down notes as I read, which helps me not only to understand but also memorize the facts, when I review them back.
The Exam
Arrived at the testing center early. There were some problems with the Pearson Vue's registration system and the testing machine itself, which delayed the whole thing about 1 hour.
The exam questions were
very tricky so much so that I had to read it thrice! and even then some of them were still so vague. Some of them had a direct answer you could have picked out immediately, but for most of them, I had to take my time, read them word for word, before selecting the one I thought was the correct answer.
It took me exactly 5 hours and 30 minutes to complete the exam inclusive of reviewing the flagged questions (had about 15 of them). Walked over to the receptionist, she didn't smile which made my heart sank a little until I saw the words "CONGRATULATIONS"
TIPS
- Doing practice questions help to reinforce what you've learned but never depend on it 100%. I would say the number of questions that I saw on the exam which was similar (not the same) to CCCure's questions were probably 3/4 max. Please don't bash me for this if you've taken the exam and had a different experience. Just speaking out of my own.
- Don't opt to memorize the facts, instead opt to understand them and try to find examples on how they work in real life scenarios. Example: Instead of just knowing that is KDC stands for Key Distribution Center that distribute keys, also try to understand how KDC defeat replay attacks.
- There were about 20-30 questions on the new material. Here's a
link from CCCure to give you an idea what are the new topics added.
- In my humble and honest opinion, please do not bother with the new CBK. It is just very poorly written. Lots of fluff between the facts. Wanted to purchase it but thank god I read the
sample chapters on Google Books.
So that's it from me. Now I need to get started on my endorsement process. Please let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.
For those of you who are taking the exam soon, good luck and all the best!
