topic Re: URGENT! Need help ! in Exams

URGENT! Need help !

lechehebsamia — Sun, 16 Jul 2023 09:01:32 GMT

I failed the free exam of certif cc ISC2.

So, i would to retake it .

Can I apply for another free voucher or retake with same old promocode?

Please i help me , i don't understand what i will do ?

Re: URGENT! Need help !

denbesten — Sun, 16 Jul 2023 13:41:19 GMT

Please read the FAQ. https://www.isc2.org/Landing/1MCC

Re: URGENT! Need help !

cloudneuf — Sun, 16 Jul 2023 14:33:50 GMT

From my research, if you didn't purchase the exam protection with 1 year free membership aka $199 at checkout, you risked your FIRST free exam if you were to fail. Sorry it would take some time to accept but you need to pay $199 now to get another chance to take the exam again. I would suggest you explore more studying material than what the ISC provided in my experience.

Re: URGENT! Need help !

JoePete — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 11:55:57 GMT

I believe as indicated on the FAQs, there is not free retake of the exam, unless you have paid for an upgraded "bundle of extras." Your free promo code will not work again.

Especially given that the target audience of the CC program is an inexperienced population, I find some of the marketing a little unsettling. I think the (ISC)2 board should take a good look at how this program is being administered. Especially as a new, unestablished cert., offering one free retake, wouldn't be out of place. If it is out of place for financial reasons, then it only underscores my concern about the marketing.

Re: URGENT! Need help !

dcontesti — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 16:34:43 GMT

@JoePete I almost agree with you except for the fact that each exam that is taken (free or not) has an associated cost to it.

(ISC)2 will need to pay Pearson $$ for their time and facilities. So the 1 Million free exams do have an internal operating cost associated with them.

Do I think it could have been planned better.....probably but then we can say that about almost anything.

I suggest that ANYONE thinking about doing ANYTHING should read all the fine print and in this case, it says, one free exam, after that there is a cost.

Just my nickel

Re: URGENT! Need help !

denbesten — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 01:46:53 GMT

@JoePete wrote:
CC program ... offering one free retake, wouldn't be out of place.

I have long thought that across-the-board retakes should be discounted to nearly the variable-cost for administering the exam - In other words, about what PearsonVue charges.

If it is out of place for financial reasons...

My guess is that "free retake" would double or triple the budget for 1MCC. Per the 2022 annual report, CC was awarded 8,000 times and the exam was taken 25,000 times in its first (partial) year, so a pass-rate of 1 in 3.

the marketing

Most marketing (not just (ISC)²) does fall victim to the "anyone can cook" mentality. One tends to interpret it as "anyone can become a great chef", but the intended meaning (in the movie) is that anyone can achieve a base level of competency.

The big gotcha in my mind with CC is that it is targeted towards recent graduates, who's experience with exams is a "comprehension test" for the training materials. But all (ISC)² exams are general knowledge test with a dose of critical thinking skills thrown in. I have long thought it would be helpful to develop a sample certification exam done in the style of the actual questions and using the PearsonVue test engine.... but using a completely different topic, such as "the 7 wonders of the world" to help candidates better understand this distinction.

Re: URGENT! Need help !

Hopeless_Spirit — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 10:14:05 GMT

That's a real shame but don't give up!

According the C in C Website:

You are only permitted one free attempt at the CC exam through the One Million Certified in Cybersecurity pledge. If you would like to attempt the exam again, we recommend purchasing a training bundle and exam together. You can see the available options at isc2.org/cc-bundles

So you will have to purchase future attempts.

The resources on the ISC2 website are pretty thorough and the practice exam that is available a great resource to judge if you're about ready. I found the CC exam really interesting because a lot of the time there is a Correct answer and the Correct Answer the ISC2 want which quite the eye opener and re-watching the Free Content put me in a great position to pass.

It's a shame that its such a new exam so there aren't any retired exam questions on the Zap App like there are for the CISSP exam.

Take advantage of the C in C Exam Readiness webinar that is run and you can ask ISC2 team questions directly (no guarantee they can get to all the questions in the hour but they do cover many).......

Re: URGENT! Need help !

JoePete — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 12:36:27 GMT

@dcontesti wrote:
@JoePete I almost agree with you except for the fact that each exam that is taken (free or not) has an associated cost to it.

(ISC)2 will need to pay Pearson $$ for their time and facilities. So the 1 Million free exams do have an internal operating cost associated with them.

And I probably agree with you more than almost ;). There most certainly is a cost with each exam taken. I note that our administrative expenses rose significantly (~$10 million) in 2022, and that would seem to coincide with the CC initiative and handing out all these vouchers (but I doubt this expense increase is exclusively the CC).

But to me, those financial issues are secondary to whether we are exploiting a certain inexperienced population, who may be reading our marketing in a secondary or translated language. Keep in mind this is an adaptive test, marketed at people with no professional security experience. In retrospect, maybe a free retake is not a viable answer, but when I see posts like the original, it puts me in an apologetic mindset.

I note the first line of the marketing of the CC: "See yourself in cybersecurity. You don’t need experience ..." I don't know if that came from the board, management, or Prof. Harold Hill, but the recognition of experience was the driving principle behind the (ISC)2. We seem to be selling a message that I find is untrue in my experience (see, there's that word again). By the same token, though, the industry already had plenty of affordable entry-level certifications, ones better established and benchmarked than the CC. Maybe with time, the CC will find its place alongside those, but until that happens, is our marketing aligning with reality?

Re: URGENT! Need help !

Early_Adopter — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 13:45:40 GMT

@dcontesti, I've seen it written that cost of exam to organization is around thirty bucks, and you might negotiate economies of scale. If that's accurate revenue wise AFMs would cover it and those margins are not so bad.

@JoePete "See yourself wrestling or shooing bears? Small ones, fluffy, not so dangerous (compared to big ones...or Jaguars) no experience needed..." In fact... if you had the experience, you wouldn't do it, but move up to the bear adjacently, and have veterinarian subdue it with tranquilizers.

Right now, for most people I couldn't recommend CC as a very distant third choice behind Security+ and ISC2's SSCP, just because these advertised for in job adds. If you think about breaking into security, you started with some experience of technical, break fix, sysadmin, service desk, scaring bears away from your HF antenna that you'd just spent too long setting up etc -so yeah you'll probably struggle to get a sniff at any genuine good security role without experience.

It feels like priming people to go over the top with an unrealistic expectation, and well, this generation of CCs sacrifice will make it easier for those that follow...

Re: URGENT! Need help !

dcontesti — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 17:29:36 GMT

@Early_Adopter I am in full agreement that the CC is a distant cousin to Security+ and the SSCP and potentially sets those who take it up for failure. I admit, I have never been in favour of the CC.........personally, I would not hire anyone that has zero experience and the CC. They would not fit into my shop. I have several SSCPs and one Security+ and they are all on a VERY steep learning curve and most likely will specialize in Firewalls or third party tools.

Re: URGENT! Need help !

Early_Adopter — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 23:13:14 GMT

@dcontesti agreed, I mean we'd take on folk with zero experience as interns, however those mostly come through programs with university and other institutions. I've only seen one privately arranged in the last five years.

Firewall jockey, IPS wrangler, ID management inputter, Endpoint security agent herder, Professional Proxy Bypasser - all these are good places to start off - but to really grok, unless you are a really, really exceptional candidate (careful prodigy's, humans are nearly completely fungible in nearly all scenarios that hire people) you must have the adjacent experience, and with that comes the security experience needed...

It's not that CC is bad to have, it could be an interesting interview story to compare and contrast it's just that there are more effective things to do when starting out, and unless you're on skid row, you're going Security+ first.

To fix CC for the now I think these three make sense:

It should be a certificate rather than a certification - SSCP is just better and also entry level.
So it doesn't look like ISC2 is running an expensive subscription service, scrap AMF/CPE for it - if you take over a year then you still need to pay the fifty bucks(one million free exams assuming a 100% conversion rate is 50 million dollars - PUPY).
Do a lot of work to market it properly - that should be at Security/IT/HR people to create demand rather than candidates, once it has acceptance and vacancies clamoring for it then go to candidates.

Re: URGENT! Need help !

JoePete — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 13:49:56 GMT

@Early_Adopter wrote:

... in nearly all scenarios that hire people) you must have the adjacent experience ...

I like that "adjacent experience" phrase. The analogy I sometimes use is that there is no such thing as an entry level judge. You have to start as a lawyer, learn the system, find you have an aptitude for judicial work, and then get noticed/be appointed.

While there are junior level jobs in security, they all have certain requisite skills. Do you know directories, networking, system administration etc.? While these tasks may not have "security" in their title, they most certainly are (or should be) security related. You're following procedures intended to perform those tasks securely, and what happens when you transition to a security role is you move from the person following those procedures to the one confirming them or writing them.

In that regard, I am not sure the CC is a gateway to the industry. I think what it is really about is that it was designed to be a gateway to the (ISC)2, a way of growing the membership. Admittedly marketing "cybersecurity" has become a highly competitive industry. Everyone is offering some sort of cert or training these days.

Re: URGENT! Need help !

brainybits — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 01:25:55 GMT

Sorry but you only get one free try.

If you took the Post-Course Assessment, it should have given you a very clear idea of how you would do on the actual test. After all these courses are designed by the very same folks that designed the test.

Re: URGENT! Need help !

denbesten — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 03:17:41 GMT

@brainybits wrote:
After all these courses are designed by the very same folks that designed the test.

This is not true. The education department has no involvement with exam development, nor do they have access to exam questions. (ISC)² staff do not even write the exam questions. See this post and this post and this blog.

Re: URGENT! Need help !

JoePete — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 13:41:41 GMT

@denbesten wrote:
The education department has no involvement with exam development, nor do they have access to exam questions. (ISC)² staff do not even write the exam questions. See this post and this post and this blog.

This is one of the challenges I have. It would be nice to have more detail about what's on the exam or input into its nature. It should have been a no-brainer: Likely, the people a CC would be applying to for a job are CISSPs or otherwise (ISC)2 members. There was this great (missed) opportunity to educate security hiring managers about this cert.

Re: URGENT! Need help !

Early_Adopter — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 14:08:34 GMT

I don't think any of that separation can/will change, and that's a good thing.

I think the main problem with CC isn't so much around content/questions just that the industry really hasn't been primed with any demand for it before offering it out to candidates as a perceived freebie, it's more like a succulent fifty-dollar meal that you pay for at the end. Well at least you don't need to tip!

Re: URGENT! Need help !

brainybits — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 16:25:56 GMT

Well while that may be true that’s not very reassuring to know the prep materials provided by isc2 are not enough to ensure exam passag as the second poster referenced in your comment suggests. 😕

I speak of course with a tone of sarcasm because I would have never guessed that. I took the CISSP 14 years immediately taken after boot camp administered onsite at my company (Symantec, a leading cybersecurity company at the time) and and many of the questions were virtually straight out of the ISC2 CBK book we had all gone through.

But I’ll take your word for it. It’s quite interesting to see elements of separation of duties between authors and administrators. Because everything I assume falls under the ISC2 umbrella, cbk and exam, that it is unavoidable (and expected) that exam material, no matter if it is not directly based on the CBK, uses information directly referenced in the CBK. Like I said it was quite evident having taken the CISSP years ago and more recently taking the CC exam had questions that were eerily similar to questions from the post-course assessment test, which was basis of my assumptions. But am genuinely glad to see this separation for the reasons explained.

Re: URGENT! Need help !

Early_Adopter — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 23:08:36 GMT

@brainybits

I think you can be confident that the materials/references are consistent, as well as that the exam questions are constructed in the same way as the test questions are constructed, even to the point of looking similar but they won't be the same ones.

However, to pass you're going to need to comprehend and interpret information in the exam scenarios and questions and try to work out what the most good/least bad option is so it's not enough to just memorize the CBK and exam references, you need to be in the habit of applying reason to them.

Of course if you certify as CISSP you might go behind the curtain as an exam writer on a voluntary basis, but then you'd be NDA's up so in that sense it's a bit like crossing a black hole's event horizon in that you couldn't tell anyone left of the other side...

Re: URGENT! Need help !

tldutton — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 12:23:54 GMT

Spot on!

As the person responsible for the Exam Content Development Team, I can assure everyone on this board that there is a "wall" between my team and the education/publication teams.

My team facilitates workshops where members, not us, create/update exam content (questions) as well as create updated exam outlines every three years.

I like to say our exams are by peers for peers.

Additionally, my entire team are members; we all had to have at least the CISSP to even apply for one of our positions and we have to maintain our certs through CPEs just like every other member does.

Re: URGENT! Need help !

tldutton — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 12:28:58 GMT

Over the past few years, we have moved away from allowing our volunteer SMEs to use any of the CBKs as references when creating new content. We're trying to stay away from a self-feeding loop between exam content development and publication.