How I passed the CISSP Exam on my first attempt.

last year I passed the cisp exam to become cisp certified and I want to sh all the different things that I use in terms of books courses and apps and stuff the cisp exam has a 20% pass rate and I passed my exam on my first attempt so hopefully some of the stuff that I'm going to show you here will help you if you're going for your cisp exam in 2024 the biggest thing you need to know about the cisp exam is the exam outline and that's where we're going to start instead of me running through the CIS website you can easily just go and read that I've broken it down and I'm going to tell you just the bits that you need to know and then you can just go to the website after and just read all the rest so the current exam outline will actually expire on April 14th 2024 so if you're doing an exam before then then this information is going to be relevant for you so the exam questions are based on the eight domains again you check the website it's going to give you those details the current exam has between 125 and 175 questions and how it works is that if you don't pass the exam by 125 then that will just continue on to 175 it just gives you that extra 50 questions and hope that you'll pass the exam it's multiple choice in terms of time it's 4 hours long the exam uses the computerized adaptive testing which is known as the cat and that is in the English exam only so what it does is that the first half of your exam it will ask you a whole bunch of different questions from across all the different domains and it will find your gaps it will find the bits that you don't know and then it will continue pushing you on those areas and it's one of the reasons why the exam has to 20% pass rate is that it finds the bits that you don't know and it will keep pushing you on them so this is why you cannot afford to skip any of the domain or skip any any bits of your studying at all the exam also comes with 50 pre-test items so what that is is that is questions that you're going to get in your exam included in the initial 125 that's 50 questions that don't count towards the final points which is tricky as well because you could be sitting spending 3 4 minutes on a question that might not even be counted so you need to be aware of that as it stands you can't take the exam online from home you have to go to an authorized testing center I would say it's not for everyone um this is definitely a leadership cesu level exam so if you're into hacking and things like that then this exam may not interest you too much because it is so high level to get certified after you've passed the exam you need to have 5 years experience across two or more domains if you have done like a 4-year degree or another certification then that can qualify as is one of the years if you don't have enough experience to get to become certified after passing exam you can become an associate of sisp and then you can build that experience and then apply to become fully cisp certified in terms of cost it is a little bit more expensive than the other exams like say Microsoft or CISCO exams the exam cost me £585 so that's $750 or € 665 but you also pay 20% tax on that so the total cost for for the exam was £705 so whenever you pass the exam you have to pay £1 1225 to become certified and that's a yearly membership fee um and then in terms of studying the courses and books and apps that I bought amounted to about £400 all in all the total price for the cisp certification exam cost me about £ 12230 if you doing the exam from April 15th 2024 onwards then there is a different outline for that exam some things have slightly changed the exam questions still going to be based on eight domains the domain weight has changed I will show you that in a second the number of questions has changed so in the new exam you will get between 100 and 150 same process if you don't pass by 100 then the cat exam will push you on to 150 and TimeWise it's reduced from 4 hours to 3 hours and that is that is the worst Point that's the I think time in the exam was the trickiest thing for me for the domain weight changes the security and risk management has went from 15% to 16% and then the only other change is the software and development security so that's dropped from 11% to 10% to show you some of the different things that I used to pass the exam I would say you need to use a range of different material so video courses books apps try to get a good broad amount of material so you can absorb as much information as you can I watched the LinkedIn learning course by mik Chapel that was actually a really good course and it was the first thing that I did in my study U and it gave me a really good idea of all of the domains in terms of books I bought five different books so I bought the assis official study guide so that's the sback study guide that's actually that actually this one this was the one that I used the whole way through the exam I highly recommend it I also bought the official sisp cbk reference guide you don't really need to buy that this book should be enough I also bought the official cisp practice tests again it was okay to buy but I don't think you really need it you can use the learns app or maybe another app as well I also bought the 11 part cisp and how to think like a manager for the cisp exam so those two books I would highly recommend for apps those apps are these are the apps that will give you all of the questions and practice questions and stuff like that and you do practice tests the learns app is the official app that goes along with this book and the good thing about the app is that if you get a question wrong in the app it actually tells you which chapter in this book that you need to go and read up the answer and whenever I was going through the questions that was brilliant I would write down all the different things that I was getting wrong and I would spend time reading on the chapters this book also comes with a question Bank a whole bunch of different practice questions now some of the questions in that bank are similar to what you get in learns up I also watched the whole bunch of different videos on YouTube just typed in syis and watch down literally a lot of the different videos but three videos in three different places I can definitely recommend is PED zerger has an 8 Hour exam cram I watched that like five or six times the whole way through and that was really really good he also has supporting documentation in the description of the video so that was like Powerpoints and all of the slides from his video so even if you don't have time to watch all the videos get those links and get those documents so you can just download them to your phone and stuff the destination certification cisp mind Ms playlist that was also really good and then a video that was really recommended I think on Discord was this Kelly hon and that is why you will pass the sis exam that was quite good because it teaches you just the mindset and that is the biggest thing to Sis exam it's understanding all of the knowledge but it's just a mindset a security mindset and from a very high leadership level two other things I did from the very start was to join a Discord group and that was the certification station really really good and I also joined Reddit so I was very active on the different communities to give you an idea of step by step of the things that I did um so I did my exam on the 4th of April and I started studying on the 1st of January and I'd give myself 3 months solid study time just to be properly prepared for the exam so if I start off in January the first thing that I did is I went through all of the LinkedIn learning course I just watched it start to finish and then I bought all these books um I joined the different Discord groups on Reddit and then I planned my exam date and then I scheduled my S time so I always try to plan my exam date around the very start because otherwise time will drag on and drag on and I will never have an actual finish date so if I plan the exam date and even book the exam right after starting then at least I know I have an end it and I sort of put a bit of pressure on myself to to properly prepare moving into February I watched the sisp mik chel course again the whole way through only this time I would watch each section of the course and I would write down loads of notes exactly what was happening and then at the end of each domain I would read the domain chapter in the book as well so that way I was watching all the information and then anything that I didn't know i' make in my notes or I needed to read open and I would make sure I read everything on that domain in the book I also started to watch the me zerber 8r exam CR I did it over two days I just watch 4 hours one day 4 hours next day made loads of notes as well and I also downloaded the learns app so this is when I officially started doing the practice tests and practice questions moving into March I really had up the atie in my studying I was doing like 4our studying every single day and I started to read more of the books I did the P zerger um it hour exam CR again I was doing hundreds and hundreds of practice questions every single day and following up and making notes all the questions I got wrong I was making notes and reading the chapters in the book as well I also found I'll try and find it again I found this document online it was the sis Memory Palace and it was somebody's study notes from the time they had done their exam it was a little bit out of date but it was actually it was really good because it broke down into the domains and it was very short little notes and it was a very easy way to quickly learn and understand all the different topics if I can find that I'll link it below I'm not sure who owns it but I'll try and find it and link it anyway in the April it was three or four days before my exam I read the 11th far Cy book so that is just to teach you mindset and then I also watched the other videos like Kelly handon and why you will pass the sis exam and then going through some of the mindset videos on destination certification I again was still doing practice tests on the learns app I had finished doing individual question and I was focusing on 125 question exam tests and that was really just to teach me to be able to sit for 3 hours and just go through all of this exam and to try and manage my time per question that was it was a day for the exam and then I just completely rested had a good night's sleep and got up the next day and just went and done the exam I would say definitely the day before exam is just to rest and relax um I've seen a lot of people in Discord were saying that the day before the exam they just had here s relax because if you don't know everything you need to know the day before the exam then realistically there's no pun stressing on the night before cuz you're not going to learn anyway but that's it that's everything I used to pass my exam on my first attempt a few tips for me I would say you need to have a lot of different resources um if you read about a particular topic say you watch the video course on a domain then follow up with the book or follow up with the online notes or even go into Discord or Reddit and ask questions or I think the more questions you ask and then the more you work with different communities then the better you're going to you know get this knowledge inside your head thank you so much for watching I hope it's been good I hope this has been helpful especially if you're going to do your cisp exam in 2024 it is it's probably one of the hardest exams I've actually done and that's because there's not much there's no hands- on technical things it is just pure Theory it's p knowledge and reading and I kind of like to build abs so I definitely thought it was pretty hard but look if you have liked the video then you know consider subscribing if you know other content that will help people pass their syis in 2024 then drop it in the comment box below I will link all of the different books and courses and apps that I have and I've used and put them in the description below and thank you so much for watching

Channel: Gerard O'Brien

Views: 11,485

Keywords: cissp, isc2, cyber security, cissp exam

Id: 76xLC8YL4Z8

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 16 2024