Passed at 100! - First Attempt with 70 Minutes Left
That was definitely the hardest exam I've taken. I've done the CC and Sec+ certs as far as Security exams go and with a total of eight years of experience under my belt of IT. The last couple years doing more GRC for my organization though still in a mixed-technical manager role.
Attempted to study earlier this year but shortly after starting to study, I had something personal happened and postponed studying until June.
Study tools utilized:
- OSG 10th Edition
- DestCert Concise Guide
- DestCert Mind Maps
- Quantum Exam
- LearnZapp mobile app
- Pete Zerger's cram video and addendum for 2024 on Youtube
- Andrew Ramadayal's 50 CISSP question and mindset on Youtube
- Kelly Handerhahn's Why You Will Pass DestCert edition on Youtube
- Claude to build study tools
Read the OSG cover to cover my unfamiliarity with the formal process of CyberSec. Aimed to complete reading a chapter a day and two if the chapters were shorter. Doing the chapter quizzes at the end of each chapter and recording the results in my study tool built with Claude to log.
During the reading process, I aimed to do 25 LearnZapp questions a day in the app. At the end of this process, I've done 1685 questions in LearnZapp and three of the practice tests.
Quantum exam once a week once I finished reading the OSG then utilizing Claude to help identify concepts/explain why an answer is such. I found that the QE's explanation weren't always clear to me. Attempts scores: 509 > 369 > 694 > 948 > 1000. I told myself I'd only schedule the exam once I clear the QE which I did after the fourth attempt.
The DestCert guide was used for catching up on any weaker domains or overly long domains (in the OSG) after the initial reading. Used mindmap videos when I commute to and from work and during my morning runs.
Pete Zerger's videos were used during my morning runs too and before work when I was getting ready.
Andrew and Kelly's videos utilized during the week and morning leading up to the exam.
Claude built tools for me to help identify questions where I should be looking at within the question. Some of my weak areas were remembering which step of a framework or process I was in and when it came to 50/50 choices, the definitions for terms.
I don't think I really felt the answer recognition change for the practice items until 3/4 through the study process where I needed to hold back looking for the technical solution first and think more broadly.
For the actual exam, D8 was my weakest domain and it seemed like I got hit with a lot of those questions so it felt like I was going to fail and that wasn't the only reason why I thought I'd fail; that was the overall sentiment throughout. I also had questions where I stopped and pondered for way longer than I anticipated. Though my mindset was still to get to question 100 and if it continued past 100, it would've been pure survival instinct from there.
Large weight off my shoulders now and I hope others here will pass too!