The journey to the CISSP, it’s an epic thing.
There isn’t a single person who has taken the CISSP exam and said “Maybe I’ll get lucky and pass". That’s not how the CISSP is handled.
It’s simple: the more you study, the less you take out the fear of failing. This group was created not only to help you pass the CISSP exam, but also explore the deep and fundamental concepts of security which can be applied in multiple security environments.
When you’re sitting in the testing center, and the timer begins to countdown from 3:59:59, there is nothing to focus on except the computer terminal in front of you presenting mind-bending deep-level security questions. You take everything you learned in all those thousands of pages of your study guides, all those hours of watching videos, all those days of going over nothing but practice questions, and focusing all that into the glow of the screen in front of you. The exam is so intense it is as if you took a breath, and when you exhaled the exam was over; your fate is either a pass or a fail.
You have to push yourself to pass this thing, you have to want it more than anything at this point of time in your life. You have to feel crazy enough to think that when others have failed, you will somehow pass.
Then after grinding through over 125 – 175 deceptive multiple-choice questions, the exam suddenly ends. You feel an incredible relief. Are you relieved because you know you passed? Or because this thing is finally over regardless of a pass/fail?
You walk toward the testing center proctor, the longest walk you’ll ever take, and wait to hear the laboring engine of the printer writing up the destiny of your information security career.
You’re either going to feel a crushing feeling of disappointment, or a warm moment of the impossible realization that you have passed the exam.
Regardless of the outcome, you’re still not the same person that you were just a few hours, days, or months ago. You’ve improved. You’ve become a smarter person about security fundamentals than you ever were before. You can navigate your way around the conversations of both technical engineers and upper-level executives.
You can use what you have learned to understand why everything in security is the way it is. You see the reality that nothing is perfect, you can’t eliminate all risk, and you start to unavoidably accept that humans will always be the weakest point of any organization no matter how many expensive safeguards have been implemented.
If you’re studying for the CISSP, then now has never been a better time. There are volumes of books, videos, practice questions, communities, resources, and shared experiences. You can explore concepts and experiences from security environments like you never could before.
Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter if you pass or fail your exam.
The knowledge gained in your journey to the CISSP is the real prize.