Hooray!!!
What a relief… :) Yes, provisionally passed the CISSP exam on 25th July!!!
My sincere thanks to Luke Ahmed and other group members. And special thanks to Kan Malinda, my colleague who helped me a lot on this journey and he is a CISSP.
Sorry guys took some time to create this post, as wanted to share my experience in detail and was enjoying life a lot after exam :)
My Sources of Study • Eric Conrad's CISSP Study Guide, Third Edition • CISSP® (ISC)2® Official Study Guide, Seventh Edition • Kelly Handerhan's Video Course @ CYBRAY,
https://www.cybrary.it/course/cissp/ • The Sunflower CISSP Study Guide 2017 • Eric Conrad's 11th Hour
Practice question banks • Sybex: CISSP Official (ISC)2 Practice Tests • CISSP Practice Exams by Shon Harris
Eric’s book was the main source of study (it was very easy to absorb) and used Official study guide as companion. Read both the books cover to cover and took my own notes.
Study approach was, reading Eric’s book for a domain then watching Kelly’s relevant domain videos then practicing particular domain questions form Official practice engine. Re validate the understanding and shortcomings with Official study guide and create own notes.
Once this process is completed for all the domains, started doing practice exams. Have gone through 6 timed (believe this is something important to assess the timing) exams and was completing exams within 5 hours and the scores were around 80. This gave the required confidence and scheduled the exam keeping 3 days for final preparation.
Took 3 days off before exam and read Eric Conrad's 11th Hour cover to cover and gone through The Sunflower CISSP Study Guide 2017 few times. Reviewed my own notes few times on the day before exam.
Few thoughts on Exam
As several people indicated in this group and other forums, this exam is not a technical exam. You need to apply your understanding of theories, frameworks and practices to answer most of the questions from a management perspective.
Believe timing is very important for the exam. If you stuck on some questions please choose the most appropriate answer, flag the question and move forward. I ended up flagging around 70 questions, yes most of the questions were having very close answers.
I completed 150 questions in 2 hours and 20 mins and took a 10 mins break. Then went through balance 100 questions in 1 hour and 30 min and took a break of 10 min. Reviewed flagged questions in around 1 hour and completed the exam in around 5 hours.
Final verdict on the exam is, if you understand the concepts correctly rather than memorizing and know how to apply them in scenarios you will ROCK!!!
All the very best mates!!!
Comments