If you’re planning on taking the CISSP exam, you know that it covers an extensive amount of knowledge and takes quite a bit of time to prepare. Your best bet is to get a comprehensive book such as the CISSP: Certified Information Systems Security Professional Study Guide (ISBN-13: 978-1118314173) by Darril Gibson, James Stewart, and Mike Chapple to learn as much as possible about the exam domains. You’ll also want to take some practice test questions to get an idea of the exam questions.
As a late stage study tool, you might like to use a recently released book titled CISSP Rapid Review (ISBN-13: 978-0735666788) by Darril Gibson. The book is currently available as an eBook on O’Reilly’s site.
This book is designed to remind you of the important concepts and help you determine if you still understand them. A common phrase with the CISSP exam is that it’s a mile deep and an inch deep. That’s certainly true, but when you’re studying you often have to study topics at some depth so that you understand them even if the actual questions might only expect you to have surface knowledge.
With that in mind, you won’t find a lot of depth in this book, but instead, it gets right to the point reminding you know what’s important. It includes listings of key exam topics, true/false questions to check your knowledge, and key information for each of the domains.
The following is a short excerpt from chapter 5 covering objectives 5.3 to give you an idea of how the book is laid out.
Of course, there also some great courses out there that are valuable to take prior to the exam. Infosec Institute hosts a seven-day CISSP Prep Course Overview that reports a 93 percent pass rate by the students.
Darrill – could you comment on the differences between the CASP and CISSP. I plan to take the CASP later this month followed by the CISSP.
You might like to take a look at these blogs that give my perspective on the CASP along with some practice test questions:
https://blogs.getcertifiedgetahead.com/comptia-advanced-security-practitioner-casp/
https://blogs.getcertifiedgetahead.com/comptia-advanced-security-practitioner-beta-exam/
https://blogs.getcertifiedgetahead.com/casp-sample-questions/
Here’s what I view as the order of difficulty from the least difficult to the most difficult.
Security+
SSCP
CASP
CISSP
However, the CISSP is much more difficult than the CASP with topics from ten domains instead of four and not much direct crossover in topics.
Many people pursuing the CISSP do the SSCP first as a stepping stone because there is a direct crossover.
Good luck on both the CASP and the CISSP.