I was the first person in the CISSP testing center, arriving about 45 minutes early. The day had come! I was so nervous, and the only thing I could do from throwing up was just studying whatever book or document I brought with me.
I used the below document, which is free to the public by their generous authors, right up until the moment I entered the testing center.
You can’t memorize concepts. You have to understand them. There’s no point in opening up a CISSP book, and trying to memorize everything in it. You’re never going to remember it. Even if you do, you’ve wasted an incredible amount of time. You need to understand the concepts. Here is what I mean by understanding the concepts.
What is the difference between a router and a firewall? Why do we need each one? Routers have ACLs and so do firewalls. Firewalls forward packets, and so do routers. So what’s the concept to learn here?
Routers forward packets. Firewalls INSPECT packets. Routers don’t perform statefull inspection, that is the job of firewalls.
Having said that, there ARE some things you can memorize. And there are also some general terms that help you trigger the concepts when you need it!
Find some of them in the Sunflower CISSP Summary document below. This document didn’t leave my hand in the last few weeks I was scheduled to take the exam, and I appreciate it dearly.