Fwd: [CISSP-D] my exam

Ciao Igor,

visto che molti chiedono dell'esame CISSP, se ti interessa da pubblicare ti 
giro la mail che ho mandato a CISSP-Discuss dopo aver fatto l'esame.

>Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 09:30:38 +0100
>To: CISSP-Discuss@yahoogroups.com
>From: marco misitano
>Subject: [CISSP-D] my exam
>
>
>I happy to say that my turn arrived to write this email down, i just got 
>my exam results from October 19th in Milan, ITALY, and I passed the exam.
>
>Here's how i've sorted this out:
>
>As a bottom line I have a 6 years experience in 
>antivirus/firewall/VPN/encryption/IDS arena, as i've been and i still am 
>working for vendors of such technology, and during this time i've been 
>always intersted in security topics surrounding the technology. In a 
>nutshell i've been browsing NIST publications on a timely fashion and 
>following several non cissp related mailing lists, such as focus-basics, 
>focus-vpn, focus-ids, bugtraq, firewall-wizards, and so on. So, i must say 
>i had a lot of help from my professional experience but i was *totally* 
>blank in other domains.
>I had no idea about laws, acts and many other things.
>Anyway, here's the cookbok.
>
>I got myself Shon Harris gold book in august, and i started reading domain 
>by domain, taking notes on it and having someone asking me random question 
>about the chapters.
>I must say i studied very lightly until the end of september. Often i've 
>tested myself against test quizzes. I've used CCCure.org online, boson, 
>and my book's CD.
>Boson was crap, allowing even multiple questions unlike the real exam, so 
>i've throwed that away.
>CCCure.org online was good and i've challenged myself domain by domain 
>with 10 questions each time (i get bored easily with quizzes, so i kept it 
>short). I was scoring an average of 80% in the tests. Just a couple of 
>times i went up to 100% and down to 50%, 80 was the average.
>I've been scoring much better on my book's quizzes, and the questions were 
>very different from cccure.
>
>I did always keep in mind that i was NOT taking real exam questions like 
>you do for say cisco certifications or stuff like that. I kept in mind 
>that i was checking my knowledge agains the CBK and that this was the way 
>to understand my weaknesses.
>I was reviewing each and every wrong questions about my book or internet 
>references (RFC, NIST,...)
>I did write summaries and schemes about unclear topics, and at the end i 
>had a LOT of handwritten papers to refer to.
>
>I've seriously started studying two weeks before the exam, but even then 
>it wasn't full time as i've been pretty busy with my daily job. I was 
>studying and answering to emails and phone calls in the breaks, i would 
>say that half of the time was study and half work. I've extended the study 
>time to the evenings in the last week in order to gain more time.
>
>Short tips i can give are:
>
>one book is okay. but you need to enhance with personal experience, and 
>the internet, thought i haven't used any of the material on cccure.org but 
>the online quizzes the internet is a huge heap of material.
>
>books are not enough. even a good one, as i've foung harris's gold book, 
>CISSP is not a matter of reading a book and being able to keep it on top 
>of your mind.
>
>it is not a cisco/microsoft exam. with the best luck you won't get any 
>real exam question before the real exam. you test how many of the book you 
>have in mind. do not even think "i will take quizzes until i score 100% on 
>everything and i am done".
>
>quizzes help. they tell you your weaknesses. take time to review wrong 
>questions against different sources. never assume the quiz is 100% right 
>100% of the times. sometimes quizzes are just wrong or doesn't make sense.
>
>mailing lists like this one help a lot. lurk, ask, write, keep an eye on 
>cissp mailing lists.
>
>google helps. feed keywords to it to understand what is going around about 
>a topic you are studying.
>
>find someone to study with. I did not have this luck but have spoke to 
>many knowledgeable people regarding my doubts. a study mate/group would help.
>
>do not rush at the exam. I took my time, and spent 5.5 hours in the room. 
>i first browsed thru ALL questions, answering to those that were 
>straightforward to me, then i went back to the beginning and again, this 
>time with each question. i left obscure questions for the end. i had a 
>number of  obscure questions that really did not made any sense to me. 
>i've tried to do my best with those.
>
>Take breaks diring exam. grab coffee, cookies (there were coffee and 
>cookies/croissants available in the room) and relax two minutes. go to the 
>toilet and wash your face.
>
>arrive at the exam early and well rested, you will spend six hours in a 
>room without serious lunch  just reading and filling bubbles on a sheet. 
>have an headache pill ready for the worst case.


________________________________________________________
http://www.sikurezza.org - Italian Security Mailing List