On July 23rd, I took the CISSP paper exam in San Diego. It is a six hour test with 250 questions. I am usually very good at taking tests, but this one was a little more difficult for me. I took three passes through the questions. First, I answered the ones I knew for sure. There were a little over 100 in this category. Then, I answered the next set that I was pretty sure about. That added another 50 or so. I needed 70% to pass, so about 175 questions correct (there are new questions for evaluation that don't count, and I've heard that the questions are weighted). I answered almost all of the remaining questions in the third pass. That took a little under four hours.
After I had answers for all of the questions, I started marking the answer sheet. As I went through, I did a final sanity check. This part was boring. Even though you should stick with your original answer, I did change a few of my answers.
Four weeks and one day later, I got an email from (ISC)2 saying that I passed! I just need to submit my endorsement form and resume. I should hear back from them a few weeks after that.
Adding to this list would be the list of relevant articles at 100Questions Exam Portal (http://www.100qns.com), which has a good set of reference articles on CISSP domains, CISSP Tips on security architecture and design, physical and environment security, cryptography and many more. The only thing is that it is not a pure CISSP site but also contains other exams, but it's neat interface makes it easy to find the CISSP resources.
ReplyDeleteThe other good thing is that you can test your CISSP knowledge and prepare for the exam via the exam library, which contains free-to-try exam questions. The CISSP section could be accessed from the drop-down menu, and because the portal covers several topics, it could be confusing initially due to the enormous amount of data, but if you spend some time navigating the contents you might be well-rewarded!
PS: Another alternative reference CISSP portal is http://www.examfight.com - that leverages gamification to make learning fun. You might want to try this too!