topic Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam-Third time May 2017 in Exam Preparation

Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

mnold — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 18:35:36 GMT

I’ve been working for (ISC)2 for almost 5 years and over the years I’ve met many CISSPs at (ISC)2 and industry events. In our conversations I'll often ask them about their experience taking and passing the CISSP exam, as it’s a huge accomplishment and everyone I’ve heard from remembers the day they found out that they passed.

One story that has stuck with me is about a member who was taking the exam back when it was paper-based testing and about half way through his exam he realized that two pages were stuck to one another, so all of his answers from then on were off. He luckily was able to erase and adjust all of his answers in time and he later found out that he passed. Talk about a nerve-wrecking experience!

I’d love to hear your story…

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

Badfilemagic — Sun, 11 Feb 2018 16:06:56 GMT

I took it just after the consolidation from 10 to 8 domains in 2015. I'd reached that point in my career where folks were asking me why I didn't have one, so I decided to go sit for it to stop them from asking. It look about 1hr45 minutes with a water and bio break. Unfortunately, you only find out your score if you failed, so I don't know how well I actually did, but I did well enough to pass and that's the important bit with the exam.

I did have the benefit of employer-paid-for test prep via SANS, which I thought was excellent, and helped organize the info in my head rather well. I used their GISP prep exams and the GISP as essentially preps for the CISSP itself. The training is expensive, but I think its worth it if you can get it.

I did the CSSLP on my own in 2016 without any prep and passed that on my first go out as well. (I like that material more than CISSP generally, as it is more directly relevant to my life)

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

tavilucea — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 02:11:49 GMT

Back in 2012 I did one month of self study before I got out of the Air Force. Passing my first time really helped me get the first job after Air Force retirement.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

Cyberfreak — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 05:38:14 GMT

I passed mine a few days ago. I was pretty stressed out and didn't think I was going to pass. I was surprised that it doesn't tell you on the screen if it's pass or fail. I had to summon the proctor, wait for him to log me out, take the survey, and scan my hand 2 more times. Then it was shift change in the lobby and had to wait another 5 grueling minutes for someone to hand me the printout.

Overall it's an intimidating experience.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

Romualds — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 08:22:09 GMT

Passing the CISSP exam is always a great experience that sticks to one's mind, for sure! Nothing particular in my case, but one of the best days in my (professional) life!

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

John — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 19:05:26 GMT

I had done a massive amount of planning regarding studying for my CISSP. After I signed-up for the seminar and exam, I immediately ordered the Shon Harris books and study guide. I decided I had enough time to spend a week per CBK Area before going into the seminar. After a couple weeks of taking copious notes and researching the areas I didn't feel comfortable, my father died. Everything kinda fell apart after that. I had to fly out of state to make arrangements, plus I had my regular work duties. I took my study materials with me, but spent maybe a few hours during the three weeks I lived out of a casino hotel room. Those hours were wasted. I couldn't keep anything in my head, so I just gave it up and figured I'd just roll with the punches. All told, I spent two solid weeks studying before the seminar and exam.

Now, my recommendations are as follows:

With pencil in hand, quickly read through the chapters and take notes. If you're taking more than a page of notes per chapter, that's too much.
- Eliminate notes that are detail. The certification is broad knowledge.
- If you can't get down to a page, finish the rest and come back to it.
- If that fails, read-up on the Area and come back to it.
Remember, "An inch deep and a mile wide".
Take the seminar.
- You're paying for it, so get value out of it. Ask questions to clarify concepts.
- Other people are paying for it, too, so be mindful of their investment.
- If you have to ask what a SDLC program or federated authentication systems are, you aren't ready.
If you don't have good industry experience, the CISSP won't prepare you for a security job.
Schedule your exam to immediately follow the seminar. Don't worry. If you really don't feel prepared, you can reschedule it, but squeezing in on the Saturday exam is really difficult.
Keep a small stack of the flash cards with you at all times. You'd be surprised about how many times a day you have the opportunity to use them.
Use both sides of the flash cards. Really.
If you drink, make sure you Google Map the nearest decent bar to your testing center. Pass or fail, you're going to want one.
Nobody I know thought they passed the test until they got their results. It's that bad.
If you don't pass, it's not the end of the world. The cert wouldn't mean anything if everyone passed the first or even second time.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

John — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 19:13:56 GMT

The exam itself was brutal. I took it before the CAT. I was done in 45 minutes and panicked. I took another 45 minutes to go over all my answers and ended-up changing one, only because I obviously misread the question. When I turned it in, I sat with my head between my knees, just waiting for a sad head shake, while waiting for the results. When the examiner said, "Congratulations," I assumed he was messing with me.

If you can get down to 3 answers, you're probably doing okay.

Always keep in mind, it's the "most right", not just the first "well, that's right".

I had questions with three somewhat right answers.

I had questions where none of the answers was 100% right (or so I think).

Some questions aren't in the book.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

Jesse_Mundis — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 19:38:38 GMT

Got mine in 2016.

The strongest lingering memory from actually taking the test was a sort of "road hypnosis" of multiple chocie "a...b..c... next" for hours. I had a plan to take breaks, drink water, eat some snacks, every X time or Y questions, and just fell into the rhythm of answering...and powered straight through the whole thing.

As others have said, I really didn't have a good sense of if I had passed or not. I knew I got most of it right, but the questions have enough uncertainty in the "best answer" area, to leave one in doubt.

I passed, so that was cool.

I tell other folks studying for it, to make sure you know specific definitions for terms, like the differences between Authorization and Authentication. Don't skip past things like that while studying thinking "Yeah, that's the 'auth' thing." The other advice was to think like a Manager, not a technologist. You are solving a *business* problem, and the technologies are your tools. The tech isn't the answer, it's the means to a solution.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

rslade — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 01:13:03 GMT

I actually took the exam way late. I probably could have been grandfathered in. I was doing malware research when I noticed that, in security related communities (this was early days, in terms of the Internet, so there weren't many), there were these messages asking for questions for a new exam this group was building to try and find out whether people who claimed to be security experts actually knew what they were talking about.

I thought about sending in some of my material. But the thing was, most security people, at that time, didn't think computer viruses had anything to do with security. (I had already been turned away from presenting at a security conference because "computer viruses only infected micros." I gave the person a half-dozen examples of viral programs spreading on mainframes and minis, and there was this long pause and finally, "Oh. I didn't know that." But they still didn't let me speak.) So I didn't get in touch.

Over the years I was doing more and more security consulting, and I was starting to think I should take the exam and find out if I knew what I was talking about, in terms of security. I had only really researched in the malware field. I was, however, reviewing all the security literature I could get my hands on (there wasn't an awful lot in those days) and posting the reviews online.

By the time I actually did go for the exam, I had reviewed around 300 books. I also took the ISC2 seminar, which, in those days, was eight days long. The seminar group all knew each other, since we were all members of the Vancouver Security Special Interest Group (SIG), which had been going for 18 years at the time. (These days the ISC2 Vancouver Chapter meets with the Van SecSIG.) We all had at least ten years worth of experience. (After about the third day, my wife asked if I was learning anything. I thought it over and replied that, no, I wasn't learning anything new, but we were all having a lot of fun swapping war stories.)

When I wrote the exam (paper based, in those days), I found I got bored easily, and started zoning out. I took almost the whole six hours. After I got out, I just sat for about half an hour, decompressing.

I passed.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

Early_Adopter — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 12:42:23 GMT

0-15I liked it so much I passed twice.

The first time was in 2010, and the second just last year when I figured I might need it again.

I did it straight after the review seminar at company campus - we had an in-house course though people from outside showed up for the exam. I was probably done in a couple of hours, reviewed and felt ok about it, passed, certified and then didn't bother till 2017.

The second time around was actually longer slightly over two hours, mostly due to the machine not refreshing quickly enough, anyway by that time I was pretty much feeling OK about things so was quite chillax about it all.

I saw a 45-minute time frame in the thread from John for a completion, which is very impressive - do-able I think, assuming you were getting question that you could nail in 10-15 seconds, but even so Kudos, I'm pretty sure if I had tried to speed run it in that time and stuck with answers I'd have been going for a resit.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

Bruce — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 13:14:10 GMT

I remember that feeling! Seemed like forever until I saw "pass" on the screen!

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

Wakerr2 — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 16:55:25 GMT

I wound up being sick in bed the two weeks leading up to the scheduled exam so my study time went out the window. However I have been teaching security concepts for the past twelve years which apparently helped me to pass the exam. In fact, some of my past students encouraged me to take the exam based on the information I passed out in class.

I had the new CAT exam which is a methodology that has been used and discarded in the past by both Microsoft and CompTIA as an unsuitable testing format so I expect ISC will discover the same in the coming future.

The hardest part of the exam for me was trying to figure out the questions. I think my high school English teacher would have shot herself to read the disjointed grammar in use.

The questions Yoda I think better could ask.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

Matthew — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 23:08:45 GMT

The Army said "Hey you, you look smart, come take this test." I sat down in the chair and the Army said "Number 1 is C, they are always C. Remember, when in doubt, C your way out." So I answered C for all of them and passed.

At the time I was in an information security unit with the Army Reserves. They had slots open for a 2 week boot camp, I asked if I could go since I have a security background, they approved it and I went. After two weeks of death by PowerPoint, I took the test and passed.

I was happy that I passed this time around since it was my second attempt. I attended trainingcamp.com CISSP week long boot camp a few months prior. It was too much information, too fast for me to process in time for the exam.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

gregkuiper — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 00:20:11 GMT

Luckily the new CAT version of the test lets you know immediately if you have provisionally passed or not. The test can max out at 150 questions for three hours I believe. I completed mine in 70 minutes with 100 questions. Very difficult test and the CAT format was really good at addressing my strengths and weaknesses. I was surprised at question 100 when the test just stopped and told me I was done. Didn't find out I passed until I was escorted by the proctor back to the front desk where they then gave me the provisional pass paperwork.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

CISOScott — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 18:54:39 GMT

So I guess I am one of the old fogeys around here. I took and passed mine back in 2009. Paper-based. 6 hours 250 questions. Then you had to wait for the email telling you of a pass or fail. I think that was back when ISC2 really liked torturing people, LOL.

I took Security+ and Network+ and passed both in preparation. then I took a whole year of studying and then went to a boot camp. I was scoring around 40% when I first started preparing, made it to about 60% before the bootcamp and the last day of bootcamp I was scoring in the 70-80% range on the practice tests.

I took my exam a little differently. I started from the back of the book, at question 250 and went backwards on it. My reasoning was this: I would be able to tell at a quick glance how many questions I had left when they announced how much time was remaining. We got an hourly countdown in our exam session (1 hour has passed, you have 5 hours remaining, etc). I wanted to be able to know exactly how many questions I had left when they made their announcement, without having to do any math. When I got to a multiple question problem (i.e. The following applies to questions 61-65) I wrote those question numbers in my exam book so I could go back and do them later. I was glad I did it this way because when I got to questions 1-7 (or 7 through 1 in my case) I swear that the questions were from outerspace. Something like "If there is dust on the planet Mars, what color would the inner lining of the spaceman's spacesuit be?" (not an actual exam question by the way. But that is how they felt!) I don't know if I was just tired or what, but those first 7 questions were like another language to me. But at that point I only had 7 questions left plus a few scenario based ones so I didn't panic.

I finished the test in 3 hours. I am a fast reader. Waiting for the email was like looking for a ship returning in the 1600's. I waited and waited. Constantly refreshing the email client. Then one day it came. At 10:30 in the morning. I had a new dilemma to face. Do I open it now and if I failed have to live with the feeling of failure the rest of the work day? Do I wait until the end of the day and then I would be able to go home either way?

Aww, who am I kidding? I went ahead and opened the email. No clues were immediately available. The standard ISC2 stuff. Slowly I scrolled the email down, using the arrow keys instead of doing it quickly with the mouse scroller. Looking for that glorious sign of my fate.....

Line....

by...

excruciating...

line...

And then I saw it.

Congratulations! I leapt out of my chair. I accidentally kicked the trash can over in my jumping for joy. Luckily I was in a very small office all by myself so no one could see my silly dance I did. A couple of fist pumps in the air and then I went back and read the rest of the email. Since they didn't provide the score when you pass, I can only, logically, assume I got a perfect score of 1000. First person to ever ace the test. Who can prove me wrong, right? I fell somewhere in the range of just barely passing to completely acing it so why not just assume I aced it?

Ahh the good ole days.....

Well that was almost a decade ago. Now the new people know right away their fate. I don't know who has it better....

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

j_M007 — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 16:29:09 GMT

Thanks for the excellent advice and suggestions, John.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

TimG — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 11:04:43 GMT

Took mine in Summer 2015 - in my time and at my expense. I've been working in operational IT for long enough to know how to change the ribbon in a lineprinter without getting my fingers black and how many reels of 9-track tape I can stack on my forearms and still be able to open a door, and I've been doing security-related stuff since the working life of a password really was predicated on how long it would take to brute-force the hash. I just never bothered with formal qualifications except when they were mandated by the job.

Times change, though, and I found myself considering a job change in a world in which long experience and a fund of anecdotes just doesn't cut it. My research led me to (ISC)2 and CISSP in particular - it's more broadly based than many of the other security qualifications (I didn't want to confine myself to auditing, hacking, technical security or ISMS implementation, for instance) and it had a reputation for being hard. Hard for me means worthwhile.

I took a week's leave, parted with some money and headed off to boot camp. No work calls, no emails and no conversation other than with family in the evening or with other course delegates. It was slightly intimidating to see quite a number of (much) younger, brighter and tech-savvy folk in the same room, and the instructor knew the material and things around it like the back of his hand. Six days' hard work followed, with a long exam on the Sunday and the knowledge that I needed 700 marks or better to pass.

Yes - the exam's hard, and if I hadn't spent a week learning about the mindset that's needed for it and how to approach the questions, as well as attacking the gaps in my knowledge, I wouldn't have had a prayer. I did like the idea of seeking the best answer rather than one that seems right, though. Don't get me wrong - a lot of the time the choice felt subjective rather than objective and that was uncomfortable in the extreme. It's also a lot like what we often face in our jobs, though. Information security is seldom cut-and-dried, so we have to be able to demonstrate an ability to deal with risk appetites, business drivers and realpolitik. Those questions test that part of us, exhausting though it is. I made full use of the opportunities to take on fuel and caffeine.

Like most others, I have no idea whether I scraped 700 marks or did rather better, or whether I passed because of my "best" choices or despite them. I remember the wait between signing out and getting the mark back from Pearson, while the exam admin staff wore the kindest, most supportive poker faces I have ever seen, bless them.

One of the most satisfying results I've ever had, pleased for others on the course who also passed, and deeply sorry for those who didn't on that occasion. I'm proud to have earned my place in this organisation.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

j_M007 — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 14:22:18 GMT

A great and inspiring testimonial. Thank you kindly for sharing it!

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

rslade — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 19:09:04 GMT

"I've been working in operational IT for long enough to know how to change the ribbon in a lineprinter without getting my fingers black"

And I assume you know the WD-40 trick?

"how many reels of 9-track tape I can stack on my forearms and still be able to open a door"

For those of us with short arms it was harder ...

"It was slightly intimidating to see quite a number of (much) younger, brighter and tech-savvy folk in the same room"

As the guy standing up at the front (many times), I can tell you it was much easier and more fun to have people like you than people like them. They know every port number ever registered: you know how things actually work, and that's what the exam is based on.

"and the instructor knew the material and things around it like the back of his hand"

And, again, as the guy in that position, let me say that it looks more impressive from your side than from mine. Sure, I had a ready patter to go with the slides (and a lot more, besides), but , when faced with a seminar attended by half a dozen guys with fifteen years (or more) of experience in specialized areas of security, it could be a little daunting, too

"It's also a lot like what we often face in our jobs, though. Information security is seldom
cut-and-dried, so we have to be able to demonstrate an ability to deal with risk appetites, business drivers and realpolitik. Those questions test that part of us, exhausting though it is."

Yup.

Re: Share Your Story: When You Passed Your CISSP Exam

Baechle — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 19:59:05 GMT

I know I’m going to catch some flak for this story but, here goes:

In 2002 I registered for and eventually sat for the exam. It was a little intimidating checking in, turning in personal belongings, and going into a somewhat crowded conference room in a hotel that was eerily quiet. The mood was close to that of attending a funeral service. Nobody dared make eye contact. Eventually the test began, and we were warned about the rules for taking breaks and about the length of the exam in number of questions and in time. I dove in, expecting to not complete the test in time and racing through as many questions as I could.

I finished. I reached the end. I checked the clock, and I had spent about 100 minutes of my time. I looked around the room and everyone was still buried in their test. Nobody had even taken a break yet. I must have missed something. I went back to the beginning and double checked every answer. I re-erased corrections just to be sure. I was now just over two hours in, and nobody had gotten out of their chair. I sat there quietly. I looked around, and still everyone was buried in their test. I checked my answers a third time. I dutifully made sure that the entire circle was filled all the way up to the line. I swapped pencils and refilled the dots in case the machine didn’t “pick up the lead.” Finally, at two and a half hours someone stood up with their exam and walked to the administrators’ table.

I did the same. When I got to the desk, the proctor told me that only one person could go to the restroom at a time because there weren’t enough escorts. I leaned in, embarrassed, and whispered, “I’m done.” I thought to myself, “I failed this exam. There is no way I passed this thing. I must have screwed something up.” I bought a study guide book. I couldn’t tell you which one, it was almost 20 years ago – Maybe a Sybex guide? I started going through it, getting ready for my retake. Everything I read made perfect sense and I started thinking that maybe I did better than I thought. A few weeks later I was notified I passed.