I Passed The CISSP and So Can You!

going on my name is cody and i passed the ciasp exam 24 hours ago uh here's my official paper and i'm feeling pretty good i wanted to record my thoughts down on the exam my process that may help you my thoughts on studying study habits right and then review some of the resources my thoughts on on those um and i'll actually talk about um you know maybe an introduction in the cyber security if you're thinking about getting into the the career or the industry or transitioning or just looking to enhance your career whether it's sales or i.t or what have you um and and then sort of wrap up but uh just to kick it off um i passed 150 questions uh i i knew for those of you aren't aware the exam is adaptive it can go up to 150 questions and you have three hours it's multiple choice some drag and drop some other some other things you you can read about this you're probably aware but um it drills you in areas your weekend which is really kind of crazy as you're taking exams kind of it's kind of fun to see it's like it knows you're weak in this domain and it's going to hit you there and it was the same topic for me kept coming up and the exam was saying this guy sucks at this domain let's hit him let's hit him once hit him and i kept having to like you know hold my ground and and fight back and and and really dive deep into some of my knowledge that i'd gained over the study and the stuff my um my studying in the past couple months so um you know like people have said the exam is an inch deep in a mile wide it covers a lot of different stuff and i'll talk about sort of my studying based on that but overall um i thought the exam if i had to sum it up in one word it was familiar um i've read i've read from people's reviews that they were seeing topics um they kind of broke up questions into easy hard um and like question mark type of things things are not they were they had no idea what these questions were asking but i went i went through all 150 questions and there were maybe like three questions where i thought what is this i don't know really what it's asking but at least all the answers from the list of answers i could kind of pick out what it was asking and the answers were familiar so i never went through the exam really thinking what is this i've never seen this in my studying and that may be attributed to various resources i used to study which i'll talk about um so it felt familiar um and i'll talk about you know my thought process on that as i go over my resources um about the exam environment but you know it i i booked it early in the week yesterday was tuesday i booked it at 11 a.m figure out what works for you when you're if if your exam's coming up and you're thinking about rescheduling or you haven't scheduled an exam or you're looking to schedule a date figure out what works for you with your personal life for me friday i would have been tired from a whole week of whatever um 3 pm would have been too late i would have been thinking all day about the exam and overthinking 8 am 7 am way too early i'm still waking up so i chose tuesday at 11 which gave me enough time to wake up have coffee have some water i went for a quick run listen to some uh some more cram videos on my run at the gym and then came back rinsed off felt kind of refreshed my blood was flowing i got dressed hit the exam center chosen exam center about 20 minutes away so i was able to drive and listen to some videos um there was one closer but i actually actually i did want to drive and separate myself from my home environment to the exam environment so on my way there i'm transitioning got there about an hour early they checked me in you read the paper do a palm scan they check you for like you know make sure you're not sneaking any materials in you log in you take your exam done right so pretty well run uh operation but that's sort of my thought process on scheduling the date the time and the location so think about that stuff when you're scheduling the exam or rescheduling exam or thinking about taking the exam just just think about those dates and maybe maybe it just gives you a little bit extra it's probably not a determining factor but just every little bit helps right um so so i covered the exam and my thoughts on it and you're probably familiar with how it's laid out and then my thoughts on scheduling now the resources my study habits this is the area that i had the the most trouble um sort of figuring out my biggest battle was with myself so i had actually planned to take the sisby uh in 2019 2020 with covet and work i got so bogged down and busy that i didn't really focus on my studies and then in 2020 or at least leading into 2021 i thought okay i got to set a deadline instead of date and it's true if you set that deadline if you schedule your exam and set a date you're going to work towards that goal you got you're going to hold yourself accountable and maybe even tell a couple people so they hold you accountable oh i'm studying for the sisby here i go you know um and so i set that exam date and finally started making progress towards that along that way had some milestones i think helped which may help you so if you're two years out or two months out or two weeks out maybe this will help you this is what worked well for me these three books i purchased early on you can see look at how big these things are i could not get through these resources i was just staring at them not absorbing anything found out uh the hard way over like that period of a year or so or maybe less than that whatever give or take some months that i can't just stare at books and absorb material never worked for me uh over my life and it's been so long since i studied i brought you know i totally forgot what really works for for me so figure out your study habits early on um figure out how you're gonna absorb the material what what keeps you engaged so what and what kept me engaged was this and this pen and paper is what really worked well for me and a live or pre-recorded instructor right so um these and i'll these did help at some point um i'll cover that in a sec i took larry greenblatt's um pre-recorded sisby boot camp course which allowed me to kind of you know take that course over my own time frame rather than taking a week off to take his live class because it's like a eight hour class or something like that every day for a week so i was able to do that on my own time and then on cybere took kelly henderhan's class and took notes on that throughout the whole time i didn't actually review these notes i probably could have but for me this is a way to keep engaged so another thing that may help is if you're on facebook or youtube there's a lot of distractions a lot of notifications a lot of things popping up all the time so how do you keep focused on the material when you're on your computer with all these fun things that you can do besides study you got to set your set your time aside and you gotta work with your family and friends hey i'm i'm studying monday through whatever your time frame is monday through friday monday through sunday who knows um set set some time in your calendar reoccurring one hour two hours whatever four hours whatever you want to do in your calendar and dedicate that time so you have a reminder at the end of your workday or whatever it is okay got to study got to get in the mindset i got over the ear headphones so i have a small living area and i wanted to block out excess noise so i had small you know i over the ear headphones i'm taking notes and i'm focused because i'm taking notes on paper if i'm sitting back just watching the videos i'm not going to absorb the material because i can just kind of look around and do other stuff so i'm writing notes and i slowed down the videos which is really nice like i said i didn't take any live courses i took pre-recorded courses and it worked well for me because i was able to um for example if a pre-recorded video was two hours long i was able to slow down the material to my pace and go okay tonight i'm gonna just watch one hour and pause and take notes and pause and take notes play the video pause that really worked well for me i was pen and paper pre-recorded videos slowed down the material and throughout my course of studying uh i started high at a very high level of all covering all the domains um and i think this helped give me a familiar approach to the material so like like the 11th hour covers all the domains really quickly really well defined it just gets there's no fluff these books look how thick these books are look how thick this book is compared to this one right this thing is like like a 1 100th of the size i don't know i'm just throwing out a number but look at look at the difference in the size of these books compared to this one so this gets right into the right into the material there's no extra stuff which is which was good so i i skim through this first so that i was familiar with each domain and kind of what each thing was about so give it gave me a good overview of the sisby exam and then i took the videos which did a deeper dive and areas i was still kind of weak in that i wasn't absorbing i watched other specific youtube videos you can search anything you want you can't figure out the waterfall method for sdlc you can't you're still having trouble with rpo and rto and bcp plans and the bia process you can search anything on youtube and just kind of focus on like there's people that have two minute five minute hour long videos on those specific topics so uh that's that's that's one little recommendation as you're you know just use different sources uh youtube there's linkedin learning videos um obviously the study guides smaller books um more in depth books use different sources that work well for you so at in the end of my studying everything actually came into play um i i say i didn't like these books but i did actually do deep dives on these over time if i had to probably get um three resources or five resources i would say uh the 11th hour was hands down my favorite i think this is this is a perfect like representation of the sisby exam it just covers everything inch deep mile wide right uh this book luke ahmed how to think like a manager is a great resource it uh it's 25 questions big pictures big big words very fluffy questions so it's asking a lot of stuff in the question with a lot of material and you have to break down what's the question asking and what's the right answer and then he goes into what the correct answer is and then also explains what the uh wrong answers are and why they're wrong even though they may look correct he explains why they're not correct for the question really great really great resources this is one that's like pretty thin as well you kind of i guess he designed the book to kind of roll up throw in your backpack on the go really great to just take i actually took with me on a vacation and just kind of flipped through a couple times good resource one resource that i will um actually before i get into that so we have 11th hour how do i think like a manager i'm going to put kelly henderhan's sisbee course on there because i love how entertaining she was with the material i also took larry greenblatt's courses also very entertaining i love that they use real world examples in their studying and that helped me tie it into the greater purpose or whatever of the exam which is i think very helpful to tie everything together and then there is a cloud and security youtube channel that they have a cram session of all the domains which i really really well explained and thought out and very clear high crisp audio i think it just came out in 2021 would recommend watching those videos kind of towards the last two weeks and then i guess if i had to pick one one more resource i've got one i've got two i've got the kelly's video for three i've got uh oh right here um this is the sunflower study guide you don't have to print it out it's like 26 pages long but i did i kind of took i actually took this for with me i'm walking around town going for a walk and i'm flipping through this um but but it helped sort of hit all the just a bunch of definitions right so the sunflower guide would recommend like within your last two weeks um real quick before i go on to um some some thoughts on sisby and maybe like a career transition for you or recommendations or whatever um two weeks out actually about a month out everything should be familiar if you're flipping through one of these books nothing should look out of place nothing should be you know what is this you shouldn't be asking yourself i have no idea what this is i think about a month out you should you don't have to be an expert in sdlc you don't have to be an expert in pen testing or or whatever whatever the topic is but you should be familiar with with the concept you should be familiar with the definitions um you may not know it word for word but at least you're like okay you can differentiate between rpo and rto right um versus something else um waterfall versus devops versus agile whatever whatever you should be able to differentiate between them you don't have to be an expert um at least not yet about two weeks out you should just be refreshing i think i think one month one month out and two weeks out you're really finally you're finishing up hammering down those weak areas so i was i was i was weak in two domains and the last month the last two weeks i really focused on those areas funny enough the exam still knew i was weak in those areas but at least i had focused focusing on my weak areas and rounded those out i was strong in some domains towards the end i focused on a couple domains and then the night before the day of um day of i watched the videos i think i mentioned that night before i just skimmed through this came through the sunflower and that was it you're not going to learn anything last week it's all review at that point all right you're not going to absorb it just do a quick overview maybe you'll pick up one one or two more things and that's it take your exam and go with it so that that worked really well for me um i'm not rating any of these resources i have my personal opinions but i thought they all they all played a role i think they all helped combination of videos audio i forgot to mention a mobile app called pocket prep although i think it's under a uh a new name uh as of as of today or as of this year or whatever it is but there's a there's a mobile app around that that is good for quizzing on the go so if you're taking a walk or if you're out and about you can just open up your phone and pop in some stuff with larry's pre-recorded videos you can download the audio to your phone listen to that listen to youtube videos in the car just hit yourself constantly from different angles from different sources flashcards very helpful for learning uh like the different types of fire extinguishers right there's there's a bunch of different types so help me drill down that some of some of those things you just got to memorize right so flash cards classic can't beat those um sometimes just writing them down gets you to memorize them which is pretty funny um so that's my thoughts all these helped the main thing on these is figure out what works for you if it's books if it's videos if it's audio figure out what works for you and then you know use that material to your advantage one last thing um as i actually i'm going to transition now into the exam maybe and about being a cisp um cyber security general maybe answer some questions if you're wondering drop a comment below whether this is on youtube or my personal facebook happy to answer some questions this is the security plus exam uh certification when i was going into cisp i was a bit nervous because i hadn't taken a test in 10 years so i took this uh for one to get me familiar with an exam environment and i think i played a bit of a role but two i just i should have had it i should have had i've been in infosec for like five years i should have the security plus um if you're in it now or transitioning into if you're in it transitioning to security you want to make the transition if you're in a different industry you want to make that transition in if you're in security already like i was and don't have it i would recommend it if you have the sysbe if you have uh cisa cism you might weigh away the pros and cons you might not need to get the security plus um but if you have it keep it if you don't have it and you and you have other certifications think about that if you don't have other certifications i mean why not the exam is half the price of the sisby it's a good introduction into cyber security and the there's a there's a bit of mature i'm not going to say a lot there there is material overlap as you're studying for the security plus some of the things you learn in that will apply to the cisp exam so if you're thinking about getting a cyber security this is this is this is one first step you can take this is just it covers a lot of different topics uh on um all sorts of stuff within the security realm from from basics to business continuity planning disaster recovery um different types of malware all sorts of stuff it's a little bit more technical than the cissp good introduction though and a good sort of gets your foot in the door to the security world so if you're an i.t thinking about security or not even thinking about security um this this the security plus and the speed give you a good idea of security in your environment or heck just um having a good overview of how things work which i think is kind of the big takeaway that i that i got out of this is i'm able to not only did i educate myself but i can educate others and i can also it also helps my company um and so i know how things work a bit about them i'm not an expert but i know you know at least how how they work from a high level and i know kind of where to get information so i think that's a big takeaway so if you're thinking about getting into cyber security uh security plus recommendation and also on comp the comp tiaa website uh they have a number of other certs that you can consider um i just wanted to get the security plus to get me in the exam uh familiarity ex environment type of thing going in the cisp since i like i said it's been 10 years since i took an exam so would recommend if that's a strategy you're you're thinking of employing i took that in january i obviously took my sisp exam in um april yesterday and so three four months apart i'm kind of studying for the same thing i didn't study too much for the security plus but this one i i forgot how many questions was on this exam um but it's not as lengthy and not as difficult for sure for sure right um final wrap-ups um just watch kelly hand her hands while you will pass this casp she has a positive outlook i think her videos are helpful i think they're worthwhile getting you to the mindset um i thought the process of learning the material from different sources was was really really fun it was challenging balancing my time my personal life with studying i'm ready to kind of transition a little bit more of my time to my personal life but just because i passed the cissp exam doesn't mean my learning stops in fact we'll always be learning our whole lives i think that's what's what's kind of cool with passing there's a bunch of resources um you have to take continued education units to re retain your certification i'm not going to let my certification lapse because i don't want to take the exam again so i'm definitely taking those uh continuing education courses uh and think about maybe you've passed think about some of the other certs there's there's probably overlap with cism the c risk the cisa and you can take those continuing education units kind of overlap and hit two uh two topics with with one course or something so um final thoughts the exam was was challenging it was familiar there wasn't anything that was thrown at me that i i had no idea what it was asking um i i don't think i would consider it an entry level exam because it's pretty it's kind of high level um like i said i started high level i dove technical and finished high level and i don't think it's really an introduction although it doesn't really dive deep into any particular domain uh super technically and i think it gives you a really good i would say it's a good first a first certification because it covers all the different domains and that's a huge swath of cyber security uh topics but uh you know it's probably not like the first one you're gonna go you wanna go out and get but don't let that discourage you um i i think it's a worthwhile endeavor i think the process of learning um the materials is really fun especially if you're new to cyber security if you're thinking about getting the cyber security security plus plus sisby awesome awesome fun awesome combo i think you will pass just based on uh your study habits figure out what works for you figure out your study habits what time uh set some time aside have fun with the process that's my big my my big thing right have fun this you're learning you're educating yourself you're probably educating others as you're learning you're helping your company you're helping your career this is just it's fun to learn right i mean you're taking time out of your day to educate yourself how is that not awesome so think about that have some fun take a breath go to the exam uh trusting your your study hab knowledge take a breath go question by question and just power through uh you've got it just plan for that 150 questions and uh i think you'll do fine feel free to drop a comment below i'm happy to provide some more info um i probably i may link some of the content later a lot of stuff you can find on various websites um but uh feel free to drop a comment like i said and i'll i'll be happy to uh respond to your questions or comments or whatever you have feedback um but yeah yeah i'm happy to be cisp certified this is this is pretty cool surreal good luck to you and your studies and thanks for joining me

Channel: Cody Keller

Views: 3,201

Rating: 4.9259257 out of 5

Keywords: #cissp, #infosec, #security+, #cybersecurity, #informationsecurity, #study

Id: ZQEdH_AhZzk

Length: 22min 49sec (1369 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021