Hello All,
I have passed the exam today. Before I start with my experience thanks to Luke and everyone on this awesome group.
My CISSP journey started two and half months back. I am masters students at UMD with cybersecurity as my major. Its summer time and being an international student I am not authorized to work till my third semester, so I decided to take some certification exam and make best out of my vacation time.
I have decided to take CCNA and when I asked some of my friends for feedback one thing which I have heard in common was CCNA cannot keep me busy for three months.
So I started taking a look into different job requirements for security roles and one thing I found was CISSP.
The first thing I noticed on CISSP prerequisites was 5 years experience and later when I saw that there is a possibility of getting an associate certification I decided and registered for the exam on the same day giving myself 2 and half months to prepare.
I have shared this because if someone is planning to take CISSP but worried that you do not have enough experience and feel like you don't have enough knowledge, please remember you can do it if I can.
I started my prep with:
-- CISSP official guide Sybex from cover to cover(This is the only textbook I used)
Videos -Lynda ( Mike ) -Cybrary (Kelly)
-Study Notes and Theory Videos (membership required) -Youtube(Larry Greenbelt)
I have spent first fifteen days watching videos and making notes and next one month for reading SYBEX and the other one month for exams
-AIO test taking -Shon harris -TMH exams -CCCure -Sybex practice tests -Skillset
Study mode in CCCure is a big plus for my prep. Exam day I reached an hour before finished the exam in 2 and half hours. One difference between exam and practice tests which I observed during the exam was "in practice we just look for the better among the best solutions and we tune our minds for that but the exam needs you to figure out the best solution for the given situation but not the best among the solutions".
Long story short "Most productive vacation of my life". All the best to everyone who is taking the exam.
And thanks to everyone, you people were a vital part of my journey. Thanks for helping me to keep up with my preparation.