I could summarize my CISSP journey with one single motto: “never give up”. It has been an intense and difficult experience, but I can confirm that it has been crucial to test my true intention to become a cybersecurity professional and understand the core value of the 3rd and 4th CISSP ethical canons.
Yesterday – November 23rd , 2019 – I have passed my CISSP exam and I cannot still believe it. It has been my 4th time I went to do the test so you can imagine the type of endurance I went through in these last 2 years. I have been studying every single weekend sacrificing a lot of quality time with my family. I had been through a redundancy with my job so keeping concentrated while looking for a new opportunity has not been easy at all.
“Never give up Carlo”, this was the mantra I repeated to myself repeatedly. I praise God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit for the gift of health and intelligence and for the beautiful family that surrounds me: without all these blessings I could not make it.
I want to express my public compliments and gratitude to Luke Ahmed for the empathetic way he dealt with our communications: every single time I sent him an email he would reply almost immediately and offering advice and never patronizing you. Luke you should have a wall in your house full of all the people’s CISSP certificates that you contributed to achieve.
I have prepared on a total of 13,789 questions and for each of the wrong answers I have written the explanation in a big copybook that has now become a huge source of information. Don’t get discouraged if you keep marking 50-60%: make the most of the answers and understand why is wrong and why is correct.
I have studied on 7 books: most of them I read twice, cover to cover. This is my advice for all the people who want to take the CISSP exam: commit to the journey and think to you like Frodo in the saga of the “Lord of the Rings”. Surround yourselves with good people who love you and motivate you. Forget all other types of individuals – I met a couple – that try to convince you that this is all a waste of time. You have to believe in your own dreams and understand that it is not possible to make everybody believe the same way you do to achieve this target.
Following is the list of the questions I have answered:
SYBEX OFFICIAL STUDY GUIDE [40+21*20=460] SYBEX TESTS BOOK [1,300] SYBEX TESTS BANKS ONLINE [1,421] Study Notes & Theory Practice questions [625]
Practice questions for CISSP Domain 1 and 2 [100] Practice questions for CISSP Domain 3 and 4 [120] Practice questions for CISSP Domain 5 and 6 [108] practice questions for CISSP Domain 7 and 8 [100] CISSP certification practice questions #1 [250] CISSP certification practice questions #2 [250] CISSP certification practice questions #3 [250] CISSP certification practice questions #4 [250]
CISSP certifications video boot camp Domain 1 and 2 [60] CISSP certifications video boot camp Domain 3 and 4 [60] CISSP certifications video boot camp Domain 5 and 6 [60] CISSP certifications video boot camp Domain 7 and 8 [60]
Total Seminars Training Hub CISSP AIO 8e tester [1500] MCGRAW HILL TESTS BANKS ONLINE [1,150] Shon Harris AIO [414]
Thor Pedersen CISSP certification Shon Harris Total Tester online [1,600] CISSP practice questions of the day from IT Dojo [103] CISSP 60secondstraining [664] CCCure CISSP 2018 [1183] CISSP CBK 2nd edition [188] CISSP CBK 2015 4th edition (H. F. Tipton) [200] CISSP CBK 2015 2nd edition (A.Gordon) [200]
GRAND TOTAL = 12,676
Following is the list of the books, PDFs and online sources I have read and watched:
CISSP Official (ISC)2 Practice Test [Mike Chapple, David Seidl]
CISSP Sybex Official Guide 7th edition [Mike Chapple, Darril Gibson, James Michael Stewart)
CISSP Sybex Official Guide 8th edition [Mike Chapple, Darril Gibson, James Michael Stewart]
AIO 8th edition [Shon Harris, Fernando Maymi]
11th hour CISSP 3rd edition [Eric Conrad, Seth Misenar, Joshua Feldman]
Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CISSP CBK 2nd Edition [Harold F. Tipton]
Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CISSP CBK 4th Edition [Adam Gordon]
YouTube videos CISSP 2018 [Larry Greenblatt]
CYBRARY Course [Kelly Handerhan]
Study Notes & Theory Videos and PDFs [Luke Ahmed]
The Memory Palace PDF [Prashant Mohan]
Joshua's CISSP PDF Notes (Comes with membership to Study Notes and Theory website)
