Hi,
Here is my perspective on educating myself for the CISSP. I have taken out the 90 day training for the CISSP and the content is very good. There is a huge horizontal spectrum of things to learn. Everything from business process, legal frameworks, encryption technologies, application security and risk management.
Having worked in the technology space for over 20 years, there are many things I have been exposed to across many different sectors. This includes, Manufacturing, Aerospace, Cloud, Utilities, Finance, and Events. This has given me a great background for learning security. Just a few things as an example: Online Events for PCI-DSS, Aerospace for GDPR, confidentiality and integrity, Manufacturing for ICS, PKI infrastructure and Multi Layer switching + firewalls, and not forgetting the old on prem Exchange Server and AD Forest builds and migrations.
Having been involved in many projects, risk assessments and ITIL processes I can see why there needs to be a 5 year minimum of experience. I have been through all of the content and also refereed to a number of books and publications about the exam and its content and the focus areas of learning. I have found the ISC2 training to be very inclusive of all subjects and very good at covering the subjects.
Knowledge of many areas is essential. If you are a new (less than 5 years) in technology and you have never touched a firewall or switch, never looked at Prince2 or Sigma project management, or not been involved in any type of security I would definitely see if you can get involved.
I am happy that I am in the position of being able to contract around to different businesses to see different states of play where security is a consideration and there are so many different levels which companies are at. I think this has really defined the importance of security for me and how businesses need help. #
Anyway, I have my exam in a few weeks and I think I am quite confident about it. I have another book to read and some more exam questions to examine and onto bigger and better things!
