Passed the CISSP on my first attempt in mid-July, 2019, and finally getting around to writing about it now.
Summary of exam:
My exam was 100 questions, although it can go up to 150 based on how you are doing on the exam.. its kind of variable so I think if it knows you are going to fail, or if you know you are going to pass for sure, it’ll just cut you off at 100. Otherwise it’ll let you go on to 150. You’ll need roughly 700 points out of 1000 to pass.
You’ll have 3 hours to do the exam.. I did mine in about 2 or so.. but I was setting myself on track for the 150 question one so that’s why I ended early.
Honestly.. this exam was HARD. Even after all the studying I did.. I honestly felt I was going to fail throughout the whole exam. It kept asking me stuff that I never even thought about studying.. like random stuff about laws in Europe.. what? However, they print you a nice sheet of paper right outside the exam room and that’ll let you know if you passed or failed.
Cost of the exam is $699, and you’ll need at least a college degree + 4 years of cyber-related experience or just straight out 5 years of cyber-related experience without a college degree. If you fail the exam, you will need to pay $699 again to retake. There is also a $125 fee to even get the certificate after you pass, and they will charge you $125 a year for as long as you want to maintain it.
How I studied:
I started studying in early April, and took the exam in mid-July, so about 3.5 months of self-study. I decided to google “reddit how to study for CISSP” like I usually do for these things.. and the wonderful users there suggested two things that led me to my success:
This wonderful book by Sybex. Comes with plenty of practice tests.
- What I did was I read through each chapter, and then I took the practice test at the end of each (blind without notes).
- Then I noted down everything I got wrong for future study, and went back and figured out what I missed while reading.
- There is a whole separate book with 4 practice tests, which I did the same for (took them blind, wrote down what I did wrong, went back and re-read or googled what I got wrong).
- By the end, I was passing these tests with scores over 80% and feeling confident.
- But I decided to do one more thing that really knocked me down and made me realize that these scores may be a bit inflated..
About two weeks before the exam, I bought the Boson CISSP simulated quiz from here.
- They try to emulate the CISSP exam engine very closely and I must admit they did pretty well… even the style of the exam is similar feeling, with tricks and all. The cool part is if you fail after using their software, they will give you a full refund.
- The first exam I took here I got about 60%, even after all those Sybex practice exams!
- I took this as a sign that I needed to study more, and fast. Again, I noted everything I got wrong and read their explainations, googled what I didn’t understand, and by the end of the last practice exam (there are 5), I was scoring around that 80% mark again.
Here’s all my notes and chicken scratch that I ended up with to read through right before the exam.. There is definitely a lot to learn 🙂
Hope this helps someone! Let me know if you have any questions or concerns and good luck!