Passed CISSP - 10/8/2015
Background
16 years in IT consulting, management and security (SARBOX, user security, remote access, firewalls, VPN).
The Exam
It took me 2.5 hours with no breaks to complete exam. A break in between would have been good, but, I wanted to just get it over with. By the end of it, I was fairly certain I had passed. The information in this forum was extremely helpful in achieving my goal. I didn't find it extremely hard or super technical, but, by no means an easy exam. It is definitely the hardest certification exam I have taken.
As many have mentioned, there were a ton of BEST and MOST questions. I could narrow down most questions to 2 answers. There were a handful of scenario-based questions that weren't too bad. No drag-and-drop questions. It was a fairly even mix of all the domains. There were also some questions on the newer material, such as cloud and mobile. Those questions were the quirkiest, so, I have a suspicion those may have been some of the "throw away" questions. Finally, I found a few questions to be pretty bizarre, so, again, maybe those were "throw aways" as well. Just a theory, nothing more.
Study Methods and Materials
I studied for 2 months pretty much every evening after the family went to bed. I used two resources:
Eric Conrad CISSP Study Guide - Straight and to the point. Not too little, not too much material. You can bang out most chapters in an hour or two.
Transcender CISSP 2015 - $200, but worth every penny. It is a book in of itself. Excellent explanations to answers. They key is to the read and understand the explanations for the wrong AND right answers. People keep saying that there are no tests out there that are exactly like the exam, but, that is an unrealistic expectation. The Transcender has VERY similar questions to the actual exam. I completed about 600 of the 900 questions. Use Offercode TRAGOOGLE15 to save $30.
Pocketprep was garbage (you get what you pay for).
Recommendations
You don't need to use a million resources, it will just overwhelm you. If you have at least 7+ years of experience in IT administration / management, you can pass using the resources above, the process of elimination (2 answers are usually obviously wrong), some common sense, and a little bit of luck.
One last thing: I found it irritating that at the end of the exam, it tells you "Congratulations, you've COMPLETED the exam!" Then, you realize you have to go pick up your printout for your score.
Good luck!
