How to PASS the CISSP in 6 Weeks | My Journey

hey everybody welcome back to my channel in this video we're going to be talking about my journey pursuing the cissp and hopefully you'll get a few nuggets that you can take away in your cissp journey let's go ahead and get into this so if you're just starting out in your career or maybe you've been doing it for any number of years i.t cyber security something like that you may have taken the time to do a google search and figure out what type of cyber security certifications are out there and should you pursue any of them now during that search you may have stumbled across like top 10 cyber security certifications and in there you more than likely have seen the cissp sit in that pool the cissp is the certified information system security professional certification it's a mouthful to say so people usually say cisp or cisp kind of depends on where you're from and how you like to pronounce it i prefer cissp but others say cisp regardless it is the certified information systems security professional and it is the cyber security management certification to get if you are looking to be that manager of cyber security for an organization for the government what have you there's even people that take this certification they get it and then they become consultants and and like virtual cisos or something like that right so they can offer benefits to other organizations they can offer their services because they have the credentials that says that they understand how to manage cyber security and design security controls and policies and all that fun stuff for organizations so regardless to say the cisp is a pretty big deal once you've got it now the reason why is because it's not an easy certification to get it i've got to say is probably one of the more most if not the most typical certification i have ever obtained or the exam is the most difficult one that i have ever taken i should say the reason why is because they use something called computerized adaptive testing the cat testing method and i don't know if anybody else uses the cat testing method i know for all the certifications and cyber security that i've you know taken all the ones that i i've obtained and even in in like uh just general it certifications i've never taken one that's quite like this and this is how it goes it's very very dumbed down the way i'm about to explain it but this is it it's very simplified when you sit for the cissp first of all you are going to have a computer in front of you that you're going to be taking your exam on and while you're testing they're going to you know get you through the process you're going to have to you know sign your name and read the rules and make sure you acknowledge the ethics the code of ethics for isc square the governing organization that wrote the cissp but once you've done that you're going to be given your first question once you answer that question you move on to the next question just like any other exam the difference here is that you cannot go back you cannot go back to the first question now you might be thinking oh that's not that surprising some exams do do that you can't go back fine here's the thing with the cissp you have your first question which is generally going to be a very easy question as you get the questions right the exam progressively gets more difficult and it's going to analyze the way that you're answering the questions and how many you got rights versus how many got wrong and apparently there's an algorithm behind the scenes that nobody really knows a lot about except for the people the people at iic square the people who wrote the exam so it's very secret when you get the answers correct it's going to throw more questions at you and then it may switch it up so with the cissp there's eight different domains these are domains of knowledge things that you're going to be tested on these are high level subjects right you're going to receive a set of questions from a domain and once you've answered all the questions from said domain they may give you another pool of questions from another domain and so you go through this process and and the minimum amount of questions that you'll be given uh that's if you're in a passing range is between 100 to 150 questions you're given three hours to take this exam and if you're absolutely bombing the exam if you're going to fail and the computerized adapted testing algorithm will detect that what they're going to do is they're going to fail you before you even hit 100 questions that's not to say that they won't fail you after but you know that you failed if you get a screen during your exam at you know question 75 or something that says ah sorry we're gonna go ahead and you know thank you for taking your exam your exam is now complete go to the front desk and receive your your score and you'll receive a permanent piece of paper that likely will say sorry you failed better luck next time or something like that so you know that that's a good threshold but if you're hitting that threshold of 100 questions you know that you're doing well and if you continue on you may have a chance of actually passing the exam now some people that hits question 100 they actually pass a certification exam the exam says you have completed your your exam please go to the front desk and receive your report and there have been lots of people that have been on reddit and facebook and all these groups online that have actually reported that they completed their exam at question 100 and they were good to go now i want to share with you my story and the process that i went through to prepare for the cissp and what i was like actually taking it without of course breaking any of the rules and you know all the um the privacy rules that i had to sign in order to become a cisp member so um here's the deal the certified information system security professional certification is a big certification there's a lot that goes into it i actually have the study guide right here it is a fat book and i have two of them that's because that's what it required that's what i had to go through in order for me to feel confident and understanding the eight different domains that were on the cissp exam now you have a lot of things to learn about you have risk management you have policies and governance and compliance you're going to have security fundamentals that you're going to have to know about you're going to know you have to know about cryptography and system security and application security and cloud security it's very very vast the scope of questions that you could be asked in your exam and there's no telling exactly what the waiting is going to be in your exam which one it's going to be more focused on i feel like personally with my exam the one exam that i took it was a little bit more geared towards the system security engineering and application security and architecture so i was a little bit more favored or i should say favorable to my exam i felt like i was very fortunate to get that batch of questions versus another batch of questions that may have been based on risk management or governance risk and compliance which is an area that i'm not so familiar with i've worked in those environments but it's not my forte so in that sense i'm very grateful if that's not your forte and maybe you do something else leave a comment down in the section below let me know what it is there's a good chance that you may actually receive that batch if you are looking to pursue the certification exam hopefully you'll get a you know set of questions in your exam that may be a little bit more focused on your specialty but anyways i digress the point is that i'm trying to make is that the ciasp takes a lot of effort to go through like i said i have two of those books that i had to study and learn and just really sink myself into you may have to do the same thing and i'm going to talk a little bit about my study routine so when i was preparing for the cisp i had a couple life changes going on right i had just started a new job my wife was pregnant with her third child lots of personal reasons why the cissp probably wasn't the best thing to go for at the time but i'm kind of crazy in that sense and i wanted to go for it anyways and i knew that it was going to be life-changing for me and my family the cisp salaries i mean they just they go up right you know that if you're if you're a cisp member you should be making a six-figure salary and fortunately i think i already had broken that just barely i think i was making close to like 100 120 or something like that so i was already breaking that threshold but i knew that with the cissp it just locked it down for me and sure enough it did when i had it i was receiving offers way above what i was already making so it confirmed that you know the cisp is definitely worth your time and you're going to be able to secure high salaries with that certification now the journey that i had to take in order to attain this was nothing like the security plus which i passed the security plus exam within like 24 or 28 days or something like that i did in like three weeks um the the cisp it took me six weeks to go through this and i was studying like a mad person with a security plus i think i was studying like i don't know four hours here at night five hours there not that big of a deal maybe a few hours maybe i'd skip a day like it was it was okay it was a lightweight certification exam the cissp six hours a day during work days eight to ten hours a day at night i i went through my notes to double check to see what my study schedule was like it was insane insane i had a study schedule i mean that right there says something if you have a study schedule and you're trying to meet that study schedule guideline or that deadline that the the goal that you set for yourself i mean that right there just says it's a big deal so anyways i had to study six hours a day during my work days and what did that look like i woke up early would study about two to three hours before work go to work try to cram in a few study sessions if i could during some downtime and then after work i would put in another three four hours or whatever it was until i basically crashed rinse and repeat every single day on the weekends man there was no video games no tv shows no hanging out with friends nothing like that i basically didn't have friends i've kind of threw out the idea of during this session during this study time because i wanted to make sure that my energy my i was basically like living eating breathing sleeping cisp just because you can you can lose your your placement right it's so easy to get lost and forget some of the things that you learned i mean i was during this book let's look at the size of this book again it's it's huge right so i would start from the beginning and i would work my way to the end and i was always concerned like as i'm progressing through this and and the subject is changing so much how am i going to retain the information that i learned previously like in week one or a few days ago how do i know that i didn't forget that right so what i did was the first four weeks of studying for the cissp i just read through the book i wanted to get through this massive book i wrote a ton of notes i bought these huge college ruled binder yellow notebooks or whatever the big ones those eight by eight and a half by eleven notebooks and i would just write my notes and i think i filled up like two or three of those bad boys so i would fill that thing up with notes as detailed as i possibly could one thing that i was actually finding is that sometimes there weren't enough details about a particular topic or a technology or something like that inside this official study guide i'd have to go on google i would go on youtube i'd find videos i'd go and find courses whatever i could out that whatever resource i could find i would use it to supplement the knowledge that i was trying to obtain that i was pulling from this book so that i could write more detailed notes on it i did that for four weeks and then what i did was i started to practice i wanted to actually practice for this marathon of a certification exam and um prepare myself for this cat type testing methodology so i did some research i found a couple you know vendors that make practice exams for the cissp but the one that really stood out to me that i kept hearing was a really good provider was this provider called boston now if you've been you know studying for cisco certifications or microsoft certifications you may have heard of boston they have a couple simulation exam environments where they actually teach others like the ccna and other certifications too well they have one for the cissp and while i don't think it's actually a cat certification exam i'm pretty sure it's just your standard linear exam method the exam questions are very very similar and we didn't actually talk about that the exam questions for all isd square certifications have this way of asking you a question and all the answers tend to be correct it's just your job to figure out which one's the most correct which makes things even more stressful as you're taking your exam so that's a whole nother topic in itself with the boston questions the the boston practice exam questions i found that a lot of those answers could be correct depending on how you looked at it which is the same thing i was hearing about the cissp and so i went with boston i went ahead and i you know went through those practice questions i studied i drilled and i remember the first practice exam i took with them i'm pretty sure my score was like 53 or 54 by the end of that and after studying four weeks diligently going through the study guide and researching it was crushing to see that score and know that i didn't even pass on my first attempt with the practice exam but the cool thing with boston is that when you pay for the bundle you can only pay for a bundle you get like eight practice exams or something like that when you pay for the bundle you can go through these practice exams you can take them as many times as you want so i took that first practice exam i took the areas that i was the most weak in so it basically my threshold was if i'm not scoring an 85 percent or higher on a particular domain remember there's eight domains if i'm not pulling an 85 or higher on one of those domains i'm going to go ahead and go through the chapters in the book and i have two books so i would go through those chapters uh go through the topics that are being mentioned and i would relearn it i would pull out a new notebook write down new notes as if i had never read those pages before and try to look at it differently try to dig deeper try to get myself to understand the concepts because the cissp is all about understanding the concepts it's not about making sure you understand what an an ids is versus an ips or something like that intrusion detection versus intrusion prevention it's not about that it's about you understanding why you would choose an ids versus an ips and how it applies to a particular scenario because those are the types of questions that you're going to be getting when you take your exam so understanding these concepts are very very important and that's what i wanted to make sure that i did when i was preparing for my exam and when i was studying so i did that after i got my first practice exam score of 50 something and said this isn't going to work i went ahead and touched back into the books and tried to get more notes and i retook another exam another one not the same one because i i didn't want to make sure that i was i didn't want to remember those questions and then take the same one because i didn't want to remember those questions i wanted to take another exam batch or another exam set practice exam so that i got some new questions and got to see some other areas that are that i was weak in and i think my score was higher i think i got like a 70. so not quite there yet at 85 percent but a little bit better i knew i still needed to work and i just continued that process until i took all eight practice exams and i was getting a little bit higher as i was going along through the exam the practice questions and uh once i got to exam eight uh practice exam eight i went back to exam one and continued and rinse and repeat for another two weeks and by that time i was already scoring an average of like 80 to 85 i think on some of my practice exams i was scoring closer to 90 and so i went ahead and booked my exam my real exam for the i for the cisp and uh i booked it for the morning the night before i didn't do any studying i actually think i didn't touch the book that entire day i just went ahead and pretended like nothing was going on i just wanted to relax get a good night's sleep hang out you know just watch some shows because i hadn't been doing that for six weeks already and i scheduled it for about 9 30 in the morning the following morning on a saturday morning so went to bed got a good night's sleep woke up around seven went to a starbucks and i whipped out my notes and i went ahead and focused on the areas that i knew i was still not that comfortable in and just kind of did a refresh like digging deep into it reviewing the notes doing some last minute google searching trying to recall anything any mnemonics or anything like that that i needed to make sure i remembered that i can write down on my whiteboard when i sit down for my exam and that certainly helped so just kind of having the tools fresh in my mind with a good cup of coffee and some some breakfast or something like that was totally helpful and so when i took my exam let me tell you i literally took the entire three hours and i had all 150 questions thrown at me and i was sweating my first 20 questions i know i was shaking and i'm pretty sure i sweat through the entire uh the entire exam which was it's disgusting but it's the truth i don't take questions i don't take exams that that well but uh lo and behold i passed it on the first attempt and it was totally worth the effort now let me tell you a little bit about the benefits of it and some of the the things that i noticed after i got the cisp so when i passed my cissp i called my friend up at work and i said dude i passed it now this guy he kind of knew that i was doing this he was inviting me to lunches and i kept turning him down because i was trying to study and he was a big supporter of that he wanted to see me succeed which is great surround yourself around people that want to see you succeed i called him up that morning and i said hey i passed it i can't believe it i'm pretty sure i was crying i don't even know and he was like that's awesome let's celebrate so you know later in that week we got together and got a got a cup of coffee bought me some coffee and we we had some good conversations about the exam and he had already passed the word around to everybody in the office which is abs absolutely insane and one thing i kept hearing was all these people say i attempted to see issp i attended this workshop and i didn't pass and so they were asking me about my study tactics and what did i do what was my regimen and my process and i just kind of explained it to them and one thing i kept hearing was that's so insane you were so disciplined um you know i i couldn't do that or that would be so difficult for me and you know i hear that a lot you i hear that a lot like people say they want to do these things but they don't want to discipline themselves and i just want to say it's worth it like if you're willing to go and and discipline yourself and go through the process kind of like what i did for the cisp you can accomplish anything and the cisp i mean like i said it has earned me high salaries it has earned me endless opportunities and it's something that i continue to see um people requesting for job opportunities or at least asking me if i know anybody that's qualified for the position and unfortunately most of the time i i don't because they're already taking jobs that they like and that they enjoy so if you're looking for a lot of opportunities especially right now within all the demand that we're hearing about for cyber security professionals if you have the experience requirements and you're looking to take that cisp let me just encourage you it's going to be well worth it and if you follow the study tactics that i put into practice when i was pursuing my cisp i guarantee you it's going to work for you you're going to pass it and you're going to see endless opportunities just like i do it's just going to be the best thing you've ever done in your career honestly it's probably one of the best things that i've ever done and i'm actually looking at possibly getting one of those add-ons cisp certification things like the iss mp or something like that just because i kind of missed that process and and that discipline that was something that was really really it was tough but it was a good challenge and i think it would be a good challenge for you too so if i can encourage you to do anything right now go ahead and pursue that's the issp if you're qualified for it and you're considering it all right everybody that about wraps up this video i hope you found this helpful i hope you found that me sharing my journey on pursuing the cissp might have added some tips and tricks maybe some tactics you can take away and apply to your study process if you're actually pursuing the cisp certification drop a comment down in the section below let me know what's working for you what's not working for you maybe there's something i can help you with and if you ask questions i'm always looking in the comments to answer and provide feedback in any way i can so i love hearing from you be sure to reach out and let me know if you're not pursuing the cisp certification but you are looking around for cyber security certs that might be more applicable to what you're interested in be sure to leave a question ask me down in the section below and i will be sure to respond and provide you with the best two cents i have on you know all the cyber security certifications out there or what might be most applicable to you all right until next time see ya

Channel: Nicolas Moy

Views: 40,382

Keywords: cissp, cissp certification, cissp exam, cissp training, cyber security certifications, cyber security training, cyber security, cyber security career, CISSP Certified, cissp certified information systems security professional, isc2 associate, The Cyber Mentor, is cissp worth it, is cissp difficult, how to pass cissp, how to pass cissp 1st attempt, how to pass cissp first attempt, cissp salary, top cyber security certification, how to study for CISSP 2021

Id: G6thZZGQiDY

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 07 2021