Just wanted to share some stats for my book "How To Think Like A Manager for the CISSP Exam":
Over 13,000 copies sold
Rated Top 6 CISSP Books of All Time by ISC2
Helped over 3,000 CISSPs globally
Personally presenting an autographed copy of my book to Clar Rosso, the CEO of ISC2
Listen, all the above is great and all, but it gets real gritty out here in Luke's world. Below is what may seem like a normal user-submitted picture of someone who has purchased
my book to study for their CISSP exam. But it's an image I will never forget. It's an image that keeps me going, pushes me to do my best work, and keeps in perspective the real importance of being a CISSP and security professional.
What's so special about the below picture? It's shocking.
Civil war broke out in the northeastern African country of Sudan around April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. At this time, I received one of my many random messages from a user who simply asked "Hello Luke. I am looking for materials to complete my study and have exam of cissp".
A few days later, he sent me the below picture with the writing:
"Inspite of the war i still studying to have the CISSP".
If you look at the background in the image below, there is a picture of an explosion. And our friend is just a few miles from it. And yet, he is still studying CISSP.
How many of us are living peacefully enough to study in our quiet rooms knowing we have a high percentage of waking up alive the next day?
This is what I remember on the four-year anniversary of my CISSP book - all the different types of students and security professionals it has helped around the world. The impact, importance, and the dire need of some to become CISSP, as it could save their very life.
The gentleman from Sudan has since left to Egypt as a refugee. Here is a picture of him trying to find cell phone reception so he could send me questions about cryptography and to also let me know he is okay.
It took me a few days to understand the true scale of the situation.
I'm a quiet and private person because it enables me to help more people that way. I have no need to be recognized, Liked, Commented, or Followed. I have a much bigger responsibility to the real world.
I have my work to do and that's all I do. While I appreciate the gestures and requests from others in the game, don't ask me to "collab", be on your podcast, or hype up whatever you got going on. I just have more serious things to deal with in reality with people who just can't shut their computer off at the end of the day.
I like to spend my time engaging with the CISSPs on the ground. The administrators who have to update hundreds of computers manually after a security update knocks out thousands of Windows computer.
The cloud specialists who is undertaking a physical Checkpoint firewall migration to an all-virtual Palo Alto environment and requires the use of Double NAT.
The Chief Information Security Officer's who needs to draft a Shadow IT policy.
Or the dedicated wife/mom/sister working in military intelligence at a remote area of the world that sustains multiple border skirmish attacks per year, and watching the burial of the young soldiers who died defending it.
These are security professionals who don't do it only for a paycheck, but because of duty.
To all my fellow CISSPs across the world: Sudan, Vietnam, Singapore, Europe, Iraq, Japan, Korea, India, Silicon Valley, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Canada, Taiwan, Australia and additional regions of the world experiencing war and conflict...thank you for the opportunity to help in your CISSP journey with my book and other security courses. I promise to always bring you true cybersecurity in its purest form.
Thank you.
Luke Ahmed