Hi everyone,

I have been lurking here for the better part of a year. The Reddit community was a major part of my research about preparation methods and as such played a large part in my success. Thank you. Now that I have passed the exam, I'm excited to have the opportunity to add my own experience to this community so that it might help others.

About me:

I have almost 20 years of experience from helpdesk to management in a variety of organizations from large, publicly traded companies to small nonprofits in the United States. The small nonprofit experience actually benefited me most as the scope of work, like the CBK, is remarkably wide. In small businesses, your helpdesk tech might also be the person configuring firewall rules and negotiating with vendors. I never finished college. I have no other certifications. The CISSP exam was the first test I have taken since high school.

My preparation:

I could say I have been studying for over half a year, but it would be disingenuous. My serious preparation only happened within the past 3 months. I am going to review the tools that I used, but I want to stress that what you are about to read is just one person's experience, and my needs might be entirely different than yours.

-Training Camp in-person class: I recommend this service especially if you are able to get your company to pay for it. I have heard people say that boot camps are designed to just teach you what you need to know to pass the exam and I was highly skeptical. In my experience with this boot camp, that is entirely false. The week-long Training Camp class contained lectures with anecdotal examples of real world use cases. Being in a class with other students was motivating and immersing myself in the material was essential for my study requirements.

-Quantum Exams: I DO NOT recommend this tool. This service is relatively overpriced. They are not actually representative of the exam questions, and they're only "hard" because they are wordy and contain arcane vocabulary. The explanations came off unhelpfully snarky and often do not even cite a source, so I found myself researching answers on my own using other tools. The worst offense to the value was that questions began to repeat during my second practice exam. I suspect that when people say they start scoring higher in this service, it's simply because they are beginning to remember the questions. I never scored higher than 350 or 400 on merit, yet I passed the actual exam at the minimum possible questions. (Note: QE tends to be reviewed favorably on Reddit. A subreddit [not this one] has a moderator with a conflict of interest that may remove discussions critical of the QE product. Consider this when reading reviews.)

-LearnZapp: I recommend this tool. It's relatively cheap and can be purchased on a monthly basis. The application interface makes it easy to log in and start drilling some questions while you're waiting for the subway, taking a poop (lol), or tempted to scroll through social media. These are also not representative of practice questions, but since they aren't pretending to be, you can quickly run through multiple topics and have an understanding of what you need to study. I consistently scored between 70 and 80% on these tests, but what really mattered to me were the high-quality, detailed, and objective explanations from trusted source materials.

-Destination CISSP: I highly recommend this book, by the Destination Certification folks. It's cheap and easy to pick up and read. A complaint I do have is that the book has inconsistent tone, occasionally poor grammar, and sometimes can ramble. These flaws are outweighed by the raw quality and accessibility of the actual content. I read my copy cover-to-cover once.

-Pete Zerger on YouTube: I highly recommend Pete's "CISSP Exam Cram 2026" playlist. This is the closest thing to the in-person class that you will find, and it's an appropriate substitute for it. This resource misses out on some of the practical anecdotes that I mentioned from the in-person class, but for the cost ($0) and the time commitment, it's absolutely stellar.

-Andrew Ramdayal on YouTube: My highest recommendation is for Andrew's "50 CISSP Practice Questions. Master the CISSP Mindset" video. It did the best job explaining the "Think Like a Manager" mindset that I heard so much about during these past few months.

My exam:

As the title states, I had answered 100 questions and had 70 minutes left on the clock when my exam stopped. I thought I was failing the entire time. I was only actually confident about maybe 5 or 6 answers that I had selected, and when the test stopped I was certain that meant I had bombed it. The exam does an excellent job at simulating a real world situation where you are sitting in a meeting room and given incomplete or inaccurate data and asked to make the right decision on the spot. The overwhelming majority of the questions WERE NOT technical and DID NOT rely on memorization. Understand the concepts and their applications well, and maintain that "manager mindset" that everyone talks about. I think the important takeaway here is to not give up on the test, even if you think you are doing poorly. It's designed that way and it's intentional. Commit to reading the question in front of you, stick with your first selection, and move on.

In closing:

I again want to thank this community for all of the posts like these. This type of crowdsourced information is truly the best of Reddit.