Passed CISSP exam on 2nd October 2015

Passed the CISSP exam yesterday 2nd October 2015(Friday), finally accomplished this target by spending more than 4 months study, it is time consuming and a little painful experience, sometimes I don't like the high level/theory thing, suitable for Manager level(only talking, not doing), I think CISSP is one of them, and I would like more hands on skill like RedHat certification,  it is kind of relieve after got the exam pass result yesterday.

I took the CISSP course at NTUC learning hub, from 30 May to 27 June, it was every Saturday, whole day lecturing by a teacher, spanning a month, totally 5 days, the course taught the whole CISSP exam thing, and did the summarization and outline of the CISSP knowledge area and exam points, it is helpful, but I would say, if you want save money, you still can go to the exam directly, this NTUC CISSP course cost me more than 2000 SD.

I book the exam on 20th August initially, but found I had no time to study and postponed my exam to 2nd Oct., this cost me 123 SD to make the change, sometimes the work comes, it's out of your control, the study was on and off lasting more than four months, I would say it will be your resolution, commitment, perseverance to make your effort on the road of preparing this exam, I have spent my weekend, Monday to Friday after work time to study, this need your focus during your study for the time constraint, it won't be so easy if you have poor time management, as I said it is a little painful for me.

On 2nd Oct. Friday, I arrived the exam centre at around 8 o'clock, from the bus, MRT train to test centre, spent all the time in the morning before the exam to review "CISSP Sunflower PDF", trying to refresh all the key points, registered and entered the exam room at around 8:45 AM, and started the exam, it took me around 5 hours to complete all the 250 questions, during which I took 10 minutes break to have some food and water, I am quite a slow exam taker, most of the questions are not wordy, only one or two lines, a few questions are more than three lines, a few drag and drop questions,  all the questions are not similar to any questions I have practiced before, so those who rely on the question bank will be disappointed, this exam really test your knowledge about all the CISSP knowledge domain in high level/concept, and you need to think as a Security Management level, after I completed all the questions, I did the review on the marked questions, during the review, I changed three answers, two of them I think I have changed wrongly after I checked the book, those are some technical detail I couldn't pop up to my head, there are so many technical detail to remember, I just tried to mnemonic as many as possible, but can't manage to remember all, luckily it didn't test much on technical detail, and I had flagged too many questions to review, most questions are with "Most, Best" in the questions, and a lots are really hard to choose, sometimes you need to take the best guess, I just feel not comfortable to sit in the exam room anymore after 5 hours of my brain continuously working, after 20 minutes of "review", actually  it's just a skimming reading, changed 3 answers, submitted and approached the reception, the service lady just print out the result, I saw "Congratulations!..."

Study material as following,

CISSP ALL IN ONE(Sixth Edition) by Shon Harris, someone says this book is too verbose(more than 1400 pages), but it really explain all the CISSP knowledge in detail and in a very easy to understand way, I read the whole book once, gave me the concept of all the domain, the remaining time just review the summary and questions. Shon Harris passed away on 8th October 2014, my respect to her.

CISSP_Summary_V1.1 (CISSP Sunflower PDF), this is the note I downloaded from internet, it summarized all the key points in 24 pages, I just read it all the time on the bus, MRT train in the last few weeks.

ExamCollection more than 2000 questions and some other exam practice questions, to practice did help for the exam in the way to find out your weak points, and strengthen your knowledge on each domain by repeatedly refer you to the key points, train you to adapt to the question answering skill, and practice your CISSP thinking way/mind in exam logic.

EXAM CRAM CISSP Practice Questions (Third Edition), I downloaded this PDF, but totally forgot to study it during preparation, not sure how good it is.