CISSP PASSED! 7 Nov 2015

WOOT WOOT!

I passed! Just finished the test and signed my submission at 4:44. First I'd like to thank my Wife and Daughters for supporting me, God for giving me the strength to meet this challenge and my Boss at work for allowing me to be away for this week for the class.

Ok what did I study? Well I started studying in April and was sporatic at first. Around August I really started to hit the books harder and bought a couple practice test. On teh 2nd of November I started the Official Training Camp CISSP Course here in Dallas. The class started every day at 8 am and went to 7 PM almost every night. WELL WORTH IT! I don't think I could have passed the test without this class.... The instructor, Buzz, was Amazing and very good at keeping our attention.

I spoke to several other classmates and it appears that 70% or so of our class of 19 passed.

Books and study Material in order of my purchase and reading.
(ISC)2 Official CBK - Hardest book I have ever read, so much fluff..
CISSP Study Guide, 2E by Eric Conrad
CISSP Study Guide 11th Hour by Eric Conrad
**CCCure Practice Exam
CCCure Review Notes
**Transcender Practice Exams
Sunflower Review Notes
**(ISC)2 Official Study Guide 7th Edition - Sybex
**Cybrary CISSP videos and MP3s.
**Combined Notes from here
**Quizlet (ISC)2 Official Flash Cards (These are free and are the exact same flash cards they gave us at the class)
**Official (ISC)2 Traning Guide CISSP CBK - Official Training Guide from the class.

I read them all, cover to cover. The ones with the ** are what I think were most beneficial to my passing the exam. With the class I believe this is what helped me pass.

Well I gotta go find some single malt somewhere...

Peace and good luck to you all!

Mike

Added 9 Nov 2015 - Some of you have PM'd me about my study habits. From April to around August, I studied now and then, when I had time, mostly reading the Official CBK. From August until the Test, I studied for about 4-6 hours a day. If I had a break at work, in line for lunch and then 2-3 hours a night at home. I only took Sundays off.

I also Prayed to the Almighty, SEVERAL Times a day!
Wished on a shooting star
Wished on the first star each night
and
Wished on the First star I saw each morning.

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Comments

clarkincnet

Congrats! Thanks for sharing the tip about the Quizlet (ISC)2 Official Flash Cards

Mike7

Congrats!
Give that man a beer!

DAVIS NGUYEN

Congrats!

dustervoice

Well done. Congratulations!!

clechadores

Congrats havoc64 well done on the pass

now you can relax a bit

bhalldi

Congrats!!!! I passed on 6 November 2015 and the Cybrary videos, techexam.net, cccure, and Eric Conrad helped immensely.

havoc64

clechadores wrote: »

Congrats havoc64 well done on the pass now you can relax a bit

No kidding!

DougDimmadome

Congratulations on passing!! thanks for showing us your study tips and tools as well, very enlightening how much effort needs to be put in. You're awesome friend.

havoc64

DougDimmadome wrote: »

Congratulations on passing!! thanks for showing us your study tips and tools as well, very enlightening how much effort needs to be put in. You're awesome friend.

Thanks Doug!

havoc64

bhalldi wrote: »

Congrats!!!! I passed on 6 November 2015 and the Cybrary videos, techexam.net, cccure, and Eric Conrad helped immensely.

Congrats BHalldi!

g33k3r

Congrats!!

ic3scrap3r

Well done Mike! Keep your CPEs up so you NEVER have to take this again! I agree Buzz did a great job and it was a great class! - Matt

trigoman

Congrads,
How many questions in Transcender Practice Exams ?

havoc64

trigoman wrote: »

Congrads,
How many questions in Transcender Practice Exams ?

Each domain has a different amount. He's a screen shot of the practice exam setup. You can see that one domain, Security Engineering has 224, where another, Security Assessment & Testing only has 21. I will say this, both CCCure and Transcender had great practice exams. Both had some questions that were helpful to me and both had great explanations to each question.

Mike

transcender.JPG

cledford3

I have the 2015 Transcender - and unless they know something no else does, many the questions seem off to me. Frankly I've been starting to lose confidence in its value and am considering looking at CCsure. I also am concerned about the ratio of questions related to the various domains, specially too few questions. (more on this below)

I've attended Training Camp, listened to the Shon Harris MP3s, and watched about 50% of the Cybray vids. I've been reading the domains in parallel across the AIO, the Cole book, and the new Sybex. (occasionally cross referencing with the CBK workbook from the bootcamp) I then have been doing the Transcenders for each domain. I've found a fair amount of questions in Trancender that just seem to me to be out of left field. Technically speaking they are not inaccurate and mostly contained somewhere in the AIO (the book Transcender uses for its main reference) - its just that they seem so insignificant, so obscure, so off the beaten path I can't see them being valid. The base knowledge or information for many of them can often only be found in the 6th ed of the AIO. The concern is that often I can't find these things mentioned anywhere else.

Even considering that they would not want to commit test compromise and the questions are NOT supposed to be reflective of those actually on the exam, I'm wondering how many are targeting useful knowledge, and how many others are simple filler. Even considering that sometimes knowing why the wrong answers are wrong as important as why the right one is correct, I am still not seeing correlations. Ie. the wrong answers don't seem to point to any more important knowledge to have than the correct answer.

I've also found that for the new material (which isn't contained in the AIO) the web links they provide to some of the supporting documentation have been really, really poor - as if they just picked the first link that came up when they googled.

Regarding the ratio of questions to each domain - there are real head scratchers. There are 12 questions for Asset Security - just 12. While I can't say how relevant that domain is on the exam, Asset Security is a DOMAIN - I just can't believe they could muster only 12 questions. Software Development Security is another big one - only 53 question. Between posts on the forums and conversations I've overheard, there sounds to be a lot of SDS on the exam recently. The material that is covered in the 53 Transcender questions on SDS falls way short of that I've reviews in the CBK, the AIO, and Sybex.

All in all , if it was out of my pocket, I would lean to CCsure. Their reviews are many and solid. There also seems to be a wealth of other content provided for the monthly subscription.

kiam

Congratulations!

g33k3r

cledford3 wrote: »

I have the 2015 Transcender - and unless they know something no else does, many the questions seem off to me. Frankly I've been starting to lose confidence in its value and am considering looking at CCsure. I also am concerned about the ratio of questions related to the various domains, specially too few questions. (more on this below)

I've attended Training Camp, listened to the Shon Harris MP3s, and watched about 50% of the Cybray vids. I've been reading the domains in parallel across the AIO, the Cole book, and the new Sybex. (occasionally cross referencing with the CBK workbook from the bootcamp) I then have been doing the Transcenders for each domain. I've found a fair amount of questions in Trancender that just seem to me to be out of left field. Technically speaking they are not inaccurate and mostly contained somewhere in the AIO (the book Transcender uses for its main reference) - its just that they seem so insignificant, so obscure, so off the beaten path I can't see them being valid. The base knowledge or information for many of them can often only be found in the 6th ed of the AIO. The concern is that often I can't find these things mentioned anywhere else.

Even considering that they would not want to commit test compromise and the questions are NOT supposed to be reflective of those actually on the exam, I'm wondering how many are targeting useful knowledge, and how many others are simple filler. Even considering that sometimes knowing why the wrong answers are wrong as important as why the right one is correct, I am still not seeing correlations. Ie. the wrong answers don't seem to point to any more important knowledge to have than the correct answer.

I've also found that for the new material (which isn't contained in the AIO) the web links they provide to some of the supporting documentation have been really, really poor - as if they just picked the first link that came up when they googled.

Regarding the ratio of questions to each domain - there are real head scratchers. There are 12 questions for Asset Security - just 12. While I can't say how relevant that domain is on the exam, Asset Security is a DOMAIN - I just can't believe they could muster only 12 questions. Software Development Security is another big one - only 53 question. Between posts on the forums and conversations I've overheard, there sounds to be a lot of SDS on the exam recently. The material that is covered in the 53 Transcender questions on SDS falls way short of that I've reviews in the CBK, the AIO, and Sybex.

All in all , if it was out of my pocket, I would lean to CCsure. Their reviews are many and solid. There also seems to be a wealth of other content provided for the monthly subscription.

I am a subscriber and to me some of the flash cards are head scratchers and obscure like you mentioned. The value I see is that it makes me dig deep and research the answer where I learn additional information along the way. When I took the CEH, I did hundreds of practice questions. The process seemed to prepare me for critically reviewing the questions and learning related material. I'd create another thread to discuss this in more detail. I've seen a number of people highly recommend them though.

My 2 cents.