Here we attempt to answer the common questions we are asked about earning the Certified Information System Security Professional certification. For example, you must be dying to know about the best CISSP study strategy, and we’ve got you covered!

Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated using speech to text software. It’s imperfect, and we recommend listening to the actual video over reading this for the most accurate presentation.

Sid:

Hi everybody. It’s Sid and Chris back here to answer more questions about the CISSP exam. Another question that we’re asked is, “What’s the strategy that I should use to study for the CISSP exam?” So Chris, how would you answer that question?

Chris: 

Yeah. I think there’s a number of different ways that you can approach strategically studying, whether you’re taking a self-study route or if you’re going through the route of going through a class or a bootcamp.

There’s different approaches but generally speaking because the content is a mile wide you know a few inches deep you’re going to be exposed to things that your you don’t have a background in, that you don’t have exposure to. You might be really deep in this one area and really shallow another, so the first thing is to figure out what is that?

So, there’s eight domains to CISSP that are covered on the CISSP exam, and the simplest way is to go to some of the practice materials that are out there and take an exam.

The first thing you do is just go find a practice exam – you could take an official one or an unofficial one and you can go through take those. You sort of just get a sense of what the test looks like to put some meat on the bones so to say. Get an idea of what this test looks like.

Sid: 

So sort of like a diagnostic exam for yourself?

Chris: 

Yes and you know it’s going to be a little bit disheartening because there’s going to be a lot of material that you don’t know. You’re being exposed to some of these concepts…either you haven’t seen in a long time, you just forgotten, or you’ve never been exposed to them.

But that’s going to help refine where you’re going to study.

And then you go from there depending on the materials that you’re using. If you are using self-study materials, then you can use that to guide where you spend your time or where you do a little bit more research, and if you’re going through a class, the nature of a class lends itself to you getting served up with everything that you need to know and they’re going to curate the content either to curate this big universe content down to you know what’s up what’s the smaller relevant pile of information but again there’s going be this process you know go expose myself ask questions in class what do I understand can you explain this concept to me and then go back and take some more practice questions and keep doing that and by going back for between the contents and practicing you know exercising after questions. The act of actually taking a practice question really forces your brain to think in a deeper way.  One of the best ways to learn is by actually taking a test when you go and sit for your actual exam you will come out of that exam smarter than you walked in even though you won’t have studied anything during the test, but you have to think so much harder during the course of that test and so your brain is going to form a few percent of connections and so during that a practice environment is it is a great way to show more robust option.

But this oscillation of this big universal material what we like to do in a classroom is we take it and it’s really seems like it’s just overwhelming amount of information and I’m a massive fan of breaking it down to bite size chunks so you don’t take the whole thing on at once. You take it into a spoonful of time and you care that specific set of contact with them a grouping of questions that are relevant.

And then you go to another batch of content and so any little increment doesn’t seem like all that much. There might be a whole lot of fun when you have an opportunity to be laser-focused on this thing the subject and then immediately after that practice that subject your uptake of it’s going be a lot faster your retention if it’s going to be a lot stronger.

Just the cycle of closing the loop helps a lot. If I take the opposite approach and say I’m going study a hundred different things and I’m going take a test on all hundred of those things it’s just harder for our brains.

That makes sense.

Sid: 

Absolutely.

Chris: 

Awesome.

Sid: 

Thanks.

If you have any other questions about this CISSP study strategy, give us a call at (800) 460-2575 or register for our CISSP Certification course by clicking the graphic below!