Hello All,
Kindly find the approach I followed for the CISSP certification.
I started the CISSP journey initially in March 2022, with an online training course conducted by Mr. Saaz Rai. This course helped to gain valuable insights about the CISSP certification and concepts and the exam outline.
I could only start the studies seriously from October 2022 onwards (after a period of 7 months). I started getting up early at 4 AM for studies and planned my day accordingly. Some sacrifices like skipping social life etc. was evident in my case for a few months.
Initially, I tried reading the CISSP official (ISC)2 CISSP Certified Information Systems Security Professional Official Study Guide, 9th edition. Highlighting key points in the study guide was not at all helping me, so I extracted key points from that guide and started writing down my own notes in a book, and this approach helped me a lot learn the concepts in a better manner.
After reading the official guide, I read the notes from Mr. Tariq Ali Shaikh, which polished the concepts learned initially.
Also I joined the Certification Station “Discord Channel” https://discord.gg/certstation which had free CISSP sessions conducted by Mr. Adam Gordon. Also I joined a Linked In group by Mr. Adam Gordon, in which a question in the form CISSP quiz is shared on a daily basis. The questions also helped to gain an understanding of the concepts.
After you are through with the concepts and understanding then you should definitely go for questions and answers. I would highly recommend you subscribe to Study Notes and Theory by Mr. Luke Ahmed (This is a paid site in which subscription can be taken for 1 month, 3 month or 6 months). I took the subscription for 3 months. The questions are tricky to some extent, but they definitely help you to develop the answering skills, which is the most important factor for the exam. Apart from the details, the correct/incorrect answers are also provided which help you to gain a lot of information.
Apart from these, I also referred to the CISSP Certified Information Systems Security Professional Official Practice Tests Third Edition and the practice tests of the tests on https://www.whizlabs.com/ also helped me to strengthen the knowledge.
My sincere thanks to Mr. Luke Ahmed, Mr. Adam Gordon, Mr. Saaz Rai, & Mr. Tariq Ali Shaikh.
Key Notes: 1) Ensure you spend at least 2-3 hours daily for reading the CISSP material.
2) Make a planner, and track the progress of the topic you cover each day.
3) Don’t just rely on questions, first understand the concepts and then only go for the questions.
4) Writing makes the understanding perfect, practice to write down the concepts that you have learned.
5) Most important thing is that don’t think that you have ample time for the exam, every single minute counts. Telling this from my own experience.
Best of luck.
Thanks & Regards,
Rohan Garud