Good morning. Will someone at ISC2 please dogfood the UX for looking into the ISSMP study materials?
First, the email I received which should have delivered the "ultimate guide to the ISSMP" delivered the "ultimate guide to the ISSEP".
Next, the "thank you" page for registering for the ultimate guide (found here) includes the November 2022 exam guide. The guide as presented on the link still labels the exam as the CISSP-ISSMP.
I had forgotten that I'd downloaded the ultimate guide back in June, but the "ultimate guide" link I received at that time had a November 2023 date. I saved that download to a specific folder on my PC, so it's a stare-and-compare of side-by-side documents.
This is just a courtesy note. Y'all know my email address if you'd like to ask questions directly!
Thanks for your feedback! Which NIST documents are you describing, by the way?
And I had not heard of Ahmed's book before now. I appreciate the suggestion. It seems that ISSMP doesn't have nearly as much study literature available as CISSP does.
I used ISC2's reference list: https://www.isc2.org/certifications/references I was already very familiar with about half of them. I only became familiar with SP 800-160 (very redundant, so can probably be fine after reading only so much of it) because it was a reference for the ISSEP that I earned last year. I think that Luke's book was a good reinforcement for the mindset on answering questions correctly. The former concentrations have very little current out there and just have to use the exam objectives to focus on what need to. Yes, it was more focused. Having a CISSP and a CISM besides experience were probably helpful as well for me. You might want to watch the BrightTalk webinar on it. If you give them your member id, they automatically apply those to your account for CPEs. I don't really usually recommend YouTube videos, but Prabh Nair is one of the few to even address the certification: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbWNrEurZfE. Neither of these may help you pass the exam but is good to have the information to better know what to expect. Also ISC2 has no cost resources such as flashcards and study groups if those help you. They do not help me, but we definitely all learn differently, and they help others. I did read the last CBK at the beginning of my study just to get a perspective, knowing that was not the current testable exam objectives (they call it an exam outline). Feel free to ask questions; I will answer them if I can. Best wishes.
I included it in my last reply and got the NIST documents from here: https://www.isc2.org/certifications/references I did read the last CBK just to kind of start framing the certification mentally before studying what I knew was on the current exam objectives. I read PMI's Agile Practice Guide but not sure that it really helped me much. I did not read any of the other references and was already very familiar with a few of the NIST documents.
Thank you @nkeaton and @PatrickG78108 for both responding to my question! I'm now adding the list to my library.