I finished the Sybex book in entirety and...

passed my CISSP exam on 12/21. Honestly, I thought I would never get thru the entire Sybex book and I didn't finish it until about 2 days before my exam.

I studied for about 4 months, with the last 3 weeks being really intense. I used a bunch of different resources, but some were way more helpful than others.

My most helpful resources included:

• Sybex's Official Study Guide
• Cybrary
• CCCure (30 days)
• 11th Hour
• Sunflower Notes
• Copious notes taken from Sybex Study Guide

I took about 5 or 6 250-question exams on CCCure. I never took more than 1 hr 45 min to go through 250 questions. This knowledge was really helpful to know. I went in the test knowing that there was NO WAY that I was going to run out of time. This allowed me to skip over questions completely initially and take breaks. Most of the time, throughout the test, I felt like there was a good chance that I was going to pass the test. I took 4 hours for the test.

This REALLY isn't a memorization test. It also doesn't go that deep. You just need to have a broad understanding of a variety of concepts. If you don't understand something google it until you do.

Overall, I thought it wasn't that difficult. Some of the CCCure questions were more difficult. Also, of note, all of my CCCure test results were generally in the mid-to-upper 70s.