How I Passed the CISSP Cyber Security Exam in Two Weeks

what's up everybody welcome back to another video in this video we're gonna cover how I pass the CISSP exam and under just two weeks so stick around for the rest of the video so we're going to cover some different things in this video as far as how I prepared and got ready to take the CISSP exam some of those things include the mindset that you should have I'm going to compare the previous exam that I took so in 2015 compared to the exam now in 2019 and we're going to go over some of the different materials that I used as well as the just last minute tips that you should be aware of when you're preparing for the CISSP exam so let's get started so as far as the mindset the CISSP is going to be different from a lot of different exams that you might have taken before especially in technology it's a managerial mindset kind of exam so when you're talking with a lot of people that have taken the exam or are preparing for the exam they're going to say that they're going to say go in with your manager hat and the reason for that is because it's based on management a lot of jobs that are going to require the CISSP are going to be manager type positions they might be even lead positions but they're going to have some kind of responsibility in that manager realm and so you have to really go into it with that mindset it's an inch deep but a mile wide as far as the material that it covers just look at the different domains that it covers it covers all kinds of things that you actually might not even have experience in that's really important that you don't go in just thinking technical technical technical it's not like a Cisco exam where you have to know this switch and that switch and you know all this different kind of stuff the other thing is take your time when you're actually in the exam make sure you don't rush through make sure you really concentrate and pay attention for that period of time remember you don't really want to fail if you can avoid it sometimes it happens it's not uncommon but you really want to put it all on the line when you're in that exam room and then also use your brakes when you need them currently the exam is a little bit shorter so it's not completely out of the question that you might not actually need a break but I know what I was taking an exam I actually had up to six hours and double the questions roughly two you know passed the exam I didn't have the option really to quit early use those brakes if you need them for sure that actually gets us into the exam I took in 2015 versus the exam now in 2019 one of the biggest differences was the time and the amount of questions allotted I had to answer 250 questions that was the number 250 questions and I had up to six hours in order to do that let me tell you that was any extremely exhausting exam you want to go through that exam and have up to six hours there's a lot of content that it was covered on that exam something else I remember was the security at the testing center was extremely secure you had to basically sit in this proctored room where they video you which is like a lot of different rooms but you had to check in and out if you were going to go on breaks and that definitely ups the game but think of the protection of the certification with that that just helps so much let's talk about the current exam in 2019 they've changed the exam so you no longer have to take 250 questions and up to six hours to pass now it's between a hundred and a hundred and fifty questions based on how you answer the questions and you get up to three hours to finish the exam what does that mean it's an adaptive exam if you answer your first let's say ten questions correctly you're going to progressively get harder and harder and harder eight questions and think of it as a bar graph right so you have this line and as you keep answering correct the possibility of you getting a higher score goes higher and higher and higher if you've never taken the adaptive exam that's kind of how it works so with when you start getting questions wrong it starts kind of honing in on that point where you are going to kind of end up those initial questions are extremely important because that sets the pace for the future and once you get to the end those questions really mean a whole lot less than your initial questions obviously if you in the exam and a hundred questions that can potentially be really good it could also be bad because that means you just don't know anything on the exam or at least not enough to pass but it's got to be nice to pass in a hundred questions I just remember back to when I was taking the exam and I just wanted to take a nap after the exam I was so beat it was exhausting and compared to my exam it might actually be pretty reasonable on this exam - just sit through one sitting I've taken similar length exams and not even needed to go to the restroom or anything like that and honestly in three hours that's not that crazy let's talk about the preparation that I did for the exam now a lot of these tips are going to carry over it won't be necessarily the same version that I used for my exam prep but you can use a lot of the same techniques first of all I used the official cbk so that's the common body of knowledge book that's the big thick book that you can buy off the is C squared website and that's kind of the standard preparation book now something that I noticed with that book is it's a great reference book but man that thing is thick and that takes a while to get through but it's definitely a good resource and that is what the entire exam is based off of is that book so if you actually know that book cover-to-cover then you're obviously going to pass something that i noticed they started to do when I really started to prepare is they started making a study guide and this is official study guide from is C squared and I'll preface this too with I originally was gonna take the exam on the previous version book so I actually had bought a version previous to the one I started using and there was no study guide okay and the book had a bunch of spelling errors and you know there's all kinds of issues it was was actually kind of disappointing and then when I actually decided that I was gonna go for it I got the newer version of the cbk and then of course they had this study guide book so then I got that as well the study guide is kind of like one of those all-in-one guides that you see for other exams and it's definitely a lot easier to get through it was significantly less as far as the pages so this let's start with this this is the cbk okay so this is the official version of the book that the exam is based on now at the time of this you're looking at somewhere around fifteen hundred pages okay for the cbk this was the study guide that I used okay and this was about a thousand pages significantly less that's you know a third less pages to get through and especially if you're in a crunch that's you know definitely a better way to go there are also different all-in-one guides that you can get I didn't really use those but that's definitely another option that you can use depending on how much time you have how much background you have all those kind of things matter I also used the 11th hour cissp so this was the 11th hour cissp book that I used and it's by Eric Conrad the benefit of that book is that book is very no-nonsense straight-to-the-point book so this book was let's see here 200 pages so you can see there's a lot of different kind of approaches we have the cbk which was 1500 pages we have the study guide which was a thousand pages and then we have the 11th hour susp 200 pages lots of different amounts of pages that you can read I found that the 11th hour sip was very good for towards the end of your preparation it was like I said just a lot of no nonsense information so it had it didn't have the filler that some of these other books sometimes have now videos I also use videos to prepare you should always use multiple resources so I used videos as another resource CBT Nuggets was awesome Keith Barker is a great trainer and I believe he's still the one that is training the system and it was interesting because they had the previous version videos and he was making a new set of videos I like generally longer form for videos because then you can just keep going and watching it the short videos if they're like two minutes or something like that I find it just is a little bit distracting because you have to keep going through the different videos and so that was the newer version that he was making were shorter videos and so I ended up just watching the old videos and it's interesting too because a lot of the material that I was using was based on a older version format so I actually had 10 domains that I was preparing for but the exam was eight domains if you work in the military defense or government space you can also get access to fed BTE and that has a lot of training on there it's video based training I thought those videos were generally pretty good cyber airing if you're not familiar with cyber re it's a free website and they have a lot of different video training that training was pretty good as well the downside was cyber re is it's usually pretty low budget you know take it for what it is but it's still good as far as the information and watching videos can help break up the monotony of studying which is nice as far as practice tests you're highly encouraged to use some practice tests I'm telling you if you go into these exams into the CISSP exam and you have not looked at practice questions for the exam it's going to throw you off the difference between questions on the CISSP versus like a Cisco exam is very different you might get a paragraph of information and you have to decipher through that paragraph what they're trying to ask and like a Cisco exam or some kind of other technical certification exam you're probably not going to get a paragraph question you might get maybe a sentence two sentences and it's just a very different beast so make sure you take practice questions going into it I would actually take around five practice questions when I was starting my studying session so if I got home from work and I was going to study I would take five questions before I even cracked a book or started watching a video and go through those then I would start studying and then I would usually wrap it up with five more questions you only get so many questions in these practice exams you don't want to burn through them and then have to repeat what you've already gone through it's going to affect your judgment and the questions and answers that you use with that being said I used a couple of different practice exams the official practice test app by is c-squared you can get it on your phone and mobile devices that was kind of in the infancy when I started taking it but obviously they're gonna have some good information and good questions in there and it'll be very similar bosun practice tests are generally considered one of the best test exam practice questions that you can get that was huge and they're generally pretty hard if you can answer those and be very successful then you should have a pretty good shot at passing the exam something else that I did as well was I had mp3 files on my phone and I would listen to them when I was driving to and from work I've actually used this on a lot of different exams and I'm telling you this is a great great tactic it kind of stinks when you're going into work and all you're thinking about is the exam and getting this information just bashed into your head and then when you're coming home and you're exhausted from the work day I get it I totally get it but I'm telling you getting your brain thinking about this stuff as much as possible is so important now I'm going to be clear I know I said at the beginning that I passed the exam in under two weeks and that's true I was solely focused on the CISSP exam for about two weeks now I want to kind of clarify that I was studying for other certifications throughout the year so I had actually studied for the ceh the certified ethical hacker immediately before the exam and I had also studied for the CCNA security the Cisco Certified Network Associate and security earlier on in the year timeline was I passed that I think in March and then I passed the ceh in October and sat for the CISSP in November one thing to keep in mind with certifications is that studying for other certifications helps you study for more so if they all line up that is very useful obviously some of the things that ceh were tested on is not necessarily going to be on the CISSP exam just because it's an ethical hacker exam versus you know a management exam but I will tell you that the Cisco information is very relevant to the CISSP exam you're going to learn about things like VPNs and Ike tunnels and all this kind of different stuff that you're going to want to know for both try to think about that in your career when you're stacking up certifications that can help you a lot especially if you don't want to burn a bunch of time rehashing information tips for the exam is going to be the last section make sure that you take breaks if you need them remember on this current exam it's a lot quicker the current exam it's three hours that you get to and between a hundred and 150 questions so you might not need a break and if you do take one make it quick you don't want to go crazy because you only have a certain amount of time the day before the exam try to avoid studying looking at the books all that kind of stuff it doesn't help at that point just relax and focus and then during the exam relax some people do unfortunately fail the exam and it's not that big of a deal you can obviously wait the waiting period and then come back and take it again it happens I failed the exams before but when you're in the exam take your time relax take deep breaths it will be okay I promise I hope this has been helpful and I hope you can use some of these tips when you're preparing for the CISSP exam and really these tips can be translated onto different certification exams as well don't just limit yourself to the CISSP for these types of tips if you enjoyed this video go ahead and subscribe and hit the thumbs up to show that you like the video and until next time I will see you later [Music]

Channel: Jon Good

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Keywords: cybersecurity, CISSP, ISC2, information security, infosec, cyber security, it security, isc2, cyber security tutorial, cybersecurity careers, cybersecurity jobs, cissp training videos 2019, cissp training videos 2020, cissp certification, cissp exam, cissp training, it certification, how to get cissp certified, cissp 2020, cissp 2021, cyber security certifications, how to pass cissp, what is cissp certification, cissp training videos 2021, cissp training videos 2022, cissp 2022

Id: -HG1PTcDd60

Length: 19min 26sec (1166 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 08 2019