Despite the catchy title, I have nothing to sell you, so this will be a short blog post. Mostly, I wanted to write something up to celebrate passing the exam and freedom from studying for it! Luckily, I’m not the first person I know to take the CISSP, so I got a head start on recommendations for preparation from several friends. The main recommendations I followed were “do practice tests to find the areas you need to improve on instead of reading straight through books” and “Quantum Exams is pretty good”. With those combined, the majority of my study plan was focused around running Quantum Exams problems. I started studying with Quantum exams roughly 6 months ahead of time, and I mainly ran the 10 problem quick practice sets.

As I did more, I identified areas I was weak on like data stewardship & e-discovery so that I could read up and develop my understanding. I already had a decent background in the IAM & Security Operations sections from my work experience. Once I’d passed the Quantum Exams CAT twice with scores >900, I felt ready. Quantum Exams definitely helped significantly in developing the mindset & understanding for tackling the CISSP, identifying the key pieces of information in the questions, and eliminating answers to find the right one.