Hi all, I’d like to share my exam journey to help those who are currently preparing for it. First of all, I purchased the Peace of Mind (POM) voucher, and I highly recommend it to everyone. During my preparation, I felt mentally exhausted at some point, so I decided to take a step back and consider my approach. One thing that stood out from my exam experience was the number of technical questions, which was significantly higher than I had anticipated. I eventually passed the exam at 100 questions. Interestingly, there were still technical questions, but the overall balance seemed more focused on managerial and scenario-based questions. I also read the OSG cover to cover to identify my knowledge gaps. Although it was helpful, I wouldn't recommend going through the entire book unless you really need to. This is where I spent most of my preparation time without getting the best return on investment. Practice Questions – The Most Important Part of My Preparation Here are the resources I used, All of them added something valuable to my preparation. 1. Quantum Exams 2. Prep IQ Practice Questions (From Udemy) 3. Cissp Study Group & cissp.app 4. DestCert Mobile App A Few Final Tips - Get the Peace of Mind voucher. Knowing you have a second chance takes away a significant amount of psychological pressure during preparation. - Don't spend all your time reading books. Focus on practice questions, understanding the reasoning behind each answer, and identifying your weak areas. - When you finally sit in that exam chair, treat it as your only shot. Trust your instincts when answering scenario-based questions. Don't overthink things, and remember that understanding the mindset behind the questions is just as important as knowing the material. Good luck to everyone preparing for the exam! <3

Hi Everyone, I Passed the CISSP exam on Saturday. I attempted the exam in April 2024 but did not pass. Before now I used the following study materials - Official Study Guide (OSG) 9th edition, Sunflower, Luke Ahmed's How to think like a manager, ISC2 official exam prep and few you tube videos by Andrew Ramdayal. Preparing for this attempt, I joined the CISSP Skool Community where I gave me access to all the CISSP test questions and answers with explanation posted by Vincent and most importantly I joined the daily collaborative learning link where I was privileged to study alongside folks like Ed, Matthew, Ricardo, Pavithra, Aidah. Vishal, David, Babar, Emma and others using numerous question banks. I believed this helped me expand my learning and sharpening my exam mindset. I found this write up for my last minutes study - Cleared For Wealth | Break into defense contracting and build real wealth in IT as posted by Chiru. I really appreciate everyone that has helped me accomplish this milestone, especially to Vincent for running such a wonderful platform.

Hello All, I am so happy to share that I provisionally passed my CISSP exam today :). I want to take this opportunity to thank this community and everyone who were part of the study groups that I was part of. Learned a lot from our discussions, tips and tricks and recommendations that you all shared. I am not sure how I would have passed it today without this community support! You all are awesome :). Completed the test in 100 questions in roughly 2hours and 10mins. Cleared in first attempt (had purchased peace of mind option but now wont have to use it). 11 weeks of preparation. I believe there are many ways/paths/strategies to reach the goal. Below are some of the things that worked for me, maybe you find something that works for you (most of the below ideas I copied from others success stories :)). Learning tips: - Made a broad study plan into 3 phases. Phase 1 and 2 is to complete all 8 domains. Phase 3 is rework and lots of tests. - Each week made a weekly plan of what has to be achieved in the following week. Week starts on Monday and ends on Sunday. Review date is Thursday/Friday to see what is on track and obstacles.  - Took study holiday to catch up on/focused learning sessions. Took 4 days in total (1 each in week 2, 3 and 2 days before the exam day) - After each learning session, took 5-10mins to summarize what was learnt. Without looking. During the session wrote down the key words or headings and then fill it in at the end of the training session. Took quite a few pictures from the training sessions and was a good refresher to go through all the notes and pictures in last few days of the exam. - Learn every day. Take practice questions every day. - Used AI to deep dive and learn about the topic which I could not answer in the mock test. - Took mock tests from different sources/question banks. Taking from one source/question bank can create a bias to getting familiar with the pattern. Idea is to go beyond pattern recognition. - Built a rhythm/routine in the last few days. Repeated the same set of activities. My exam was in the afternoon, so for the last 5 days I did the same routine: Study for 1 hour, followed by morning run for 1 hour, short nap and post lunch full mock test for 2-3 hours! 

Hi everyone, I am thrilled to share that I officially cleared the CISSP exam yesterday at the 100-question mark on my first attempt! To give a bit of background, I started my CISSP preparation right after passing my CCSP 6 weeks ago. Here is what my preparation looked like: - Core Study Material: Studied the Official Study Guide (OSG) 10th Edition cover-to-cover, using AI tools (Gemini and Claude) to deep-dive into areas where the OSG lacked a bit of depth and to effectively cover that delta. - Visual Learning: Utilized Destination Certification's mind map videos to solidify concepts. - Practice Assessments: Leveraged the Destination Certification app practice tests, alongside the Skool "CISSP, CCSP & CISM Practice Exams | Expert-Calibrated Questions — cissp.app" practice and full-length tests, to benchmark my readiness. - Final Refresher: Used The CISSP Field Manual by Clearance to Wealth as a fantastic quick refresher right before the exam. - Collaborative Learning: Participated actively in classes alongside a diverse group of talented professionals. The interactive sessions fostered a healthy and professional environment where we could analyze questions from multiple angles. Hearing different viewpoints on scenario-based reasoning provided valuable insights into why a choice is correct or incorrect, significantly sharpening my exam mindset. I want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who made this journey a success: - Vincent: For initializing and running this amazing CISSP Skool community. - The Facilitators: For exposing us to a rich variety of challenging questions through the classes. - My Study Group: A heartfelt thank you to Ed, Ricardo, Enrico, Victor, Matthew, Pavithra, Emma, Aidah, Vishal, David and many more for your incredible support and camaraderie. Thank you all again. On to the next chapter!

Passed today at 100q with about 25 mins left. Thank you to everyone for the advice and resources you've shared. The exam was not exactly easy but also not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I felt I was doing okay through most of it. There were a handful of questions that I truly didn't know from the CBK. And a handful that were very difficult, but mostly it was applying analytical thinking to the scenarios. One approach that really helped me is to ask myself what the end game is. What is the true outcome the question is asking for. Framing it that way helped me answer a lot of questions correctly. Here are the resources I used and my study journey: I started about a year ago reading the OSG but found it too dense and boring. I then moved onto the Destination Cert guide, which I highly recommend. After completing the Dest Cert I started with the official Wiley test questions but those were too literal and technical. Then I started with QE. I also later bought the Boson exams (good but slightly too technical) and joined the CISSP Study Group on skool.com. I started doing learning sessions through that group which I found really helpful and motivating. A big shout out to everyone who participated. I also started using https://cissp.app which has an excellent question base. One more test bank I want to mention is really excellent, especially when prepping close to the exam are the questions at the end of Andrew Ramdayal's Udemy course: https://www.udemy.com/course/cisspcertification/?couponCode=MT260928G1A The first set, 50 hard questions, are free on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbVY0Cg8Ntw Many of you will already know of them. But it was totally worth getting the additional 100 exam questions which accompany his course. In my opinion these were the closest to the actual exam. (I probably used too many test banks and know that others won't choose that path. But I found that each test bank seems to gravitate towards its own favourite topics so overall it was very helpful to train on a number of them. But everyone is different and some people have passed just using one or two test banks.)