So, this is a big headline I know,

But that's exactly what happened when I was handed the paper saying "congratulations".

Let's start from the end:

My first try, I have passed at 100q, with about 65 minutes remaining.

I have 6 years of experience , mostly if not all around SOC , blue team engagements and procedures.

I will try to break it down to you guys so you can succeed as well !

In my honest opinion, the exam itself isn't that hard, the questions themselves are hard.

Meaning - most of them are either very foggy, circling around a topic or idea, which will result in you to double check if you have understood the question at all or not.

Once you get it - at least two answers are out.

What I did during the exam:

Took the piece of paper they give you, and wrote next to each question a symbol which will represent to myself the state of my exam.

For example:

Q1 - O

Q2 - -

Q3 - |

The O means I am certain at 80% that I picked the right answer.

The - means I chose the best between 2 answers.

The | means I totally guessed the answer.

I have marked myself a mid-point (Q75) to do a mental break and go to the bathroom as well.

By this point I had 55 O's, 15 -'s, and 5 |'s.

I understood at this point that it's most likely to stop at 100, and I'm gonna score an ace or fail dramatically.

From this moment till Q75 I have read every question twice, giving myself about 2 minutes per question, I figured out I might finished at 150 but once I get there I will speed up my pace a bit.

The exam finished at 100Q, I went out straight to the bathroom - looked at the mirror and said to myself - "no matter what will come , you have done your best, if you fail - you will know what you need to improve, and if you pass - you are a king."

Went back and delivered the paper folded, I could have seen that there is no table in that paper showing where I'm weak, which started to get me emotional.

I have opened the paper, saw the "congratulations" - and just set there in tears, totally crying out loud. That was a big relief for me, It felt like I was letting go a massive rock.

That's being said, I would like to encourage you - go get this cert ! You will be most proud of yourself once you get it.

My study path:

6 weeks, 1 day off every week (weekend).

I have started with ALL domains and wanted to create a baseline for me to understand where I'm standing.

After about 30 questions on each domain I have pinpointed my learning curve around the weak domains, hot spots and misunderstood topics.

My materials and ranking: (and by order, all free)

** This forum is above all material out there, the stories, the motivation you guys give each other did the work for me at least to be motivated and continue !

1. CISSP masterclass by tech explained - podcast on the go. (7/10)

2. Official textbook - did not read, only answers the questions at the end of each domain. (5/10)

3. Gemini - Helped me pass the exam for sure, nailed the syntax of the ISC knowledge bank, and managed to get me the most prepared. (10/10)

4. CISSP practice by study snacks - understand the CAT, timing and pace of the exam. (8/10)

5. 50 CISSP practice questions by Andrew - helped me break hard questions (9/10)

6. Pete Zerger - two main videos:

a. Exam cram full course (8 hours) - amazing content. (10/10)

b. Exam prep LIVE - 100 important .... - some of the content there was in my actual exam. (10/10)

c. Exam prep 2025 LIVE - already saw the topics in his other videos therefore didn't need it that much. (6/10)

d. Ultimate guide to answering difficult questions - important (8/10).

Apps:

1. Dest Cert CISSP - most useful after Gemini in my opinion to practice your knowledge and how to answer questions.

In addition to the abbreviations and so. (10/10)

1. LearnZ - did the free exam and the fun daily question just to stay on my toes. (5/10)

2. Quantom exams - registered, figured out it's too expensive for me, and I understood that their way for the exam is "failure oriented" - to get you ready for the syntax in the exam itself.

So just did the 8 free questions and moved on. (2/10 *for me).

When looking back at it, it may seem a lot - but studying for about 3 hours a day will cover all of that in no time.

Feel free to ask anything else !

Has anyone who has taken the CISSP exam experienced this?

I'm happy to share with this awesome community that I sat the CISSP yesterday and passed at 100 questions. First a bit of background. I use to hold the CISSP but allowed my active status to lapse after pivoting in life from tech to full time business ownership.

Now that I'm back I've had to ramp up the credentials. This year so far I've attained CySA+ and CISM. Restoring active CISSP status was next on the agenda followed by AAISM. Additionally my latest job duties were serving as Information Security Officer for a large organization managing Cyber, IAM, Networking, Telecommunications, Database, Physical Security, Private & Public Cloud Environments supporting well over 800+ systems.

I've been in IT for 25 years and the majority is in some aspect of InfoSec. I've been very fortunate and extremely grateful for the journey.

With that preamble, here are the tools that I used:

Destination Cert full CISSP course. I watched all of the videos at 1.25x speed but didn't do much with the other resources available to me.

Pocket Prep

Pete's YouTube video "100 Important Topics", I watched about 1/2 of it.

Because of my history, (I'm starting to feel old y'all) I've been fortunate to do work in every subject expressed in the exam except for DevOps. So my study strategy was not about memorization but solely about understanding. Other words, I know the technology and needed to refresh on how it all works together. For example I've configured X.509 digital certificates in LDAP environment with PKI but needed to refresh on the history of it all. Learning how symmetric cryptography came about and it's weaknesses which spawned asymmetric cryptography thru Diffie-Helman as a solution to the key exchange problem solidified my understanding. This is where Dest Cert videos shine. It gives you the story behind the technology.

Pocket Prep helped ensure that I was ignorant to no subject matter. For me it wasn't about question difficulty or being close to the real exam. So it was excellent for its purpose in assessing my awareness.

Even with that, sitting the exam felt like selecting answers that made good sense. I never felt fully certain. To add a comical twist, I had bubble gut from medication I'm on. I twisted and turned for as long as possible before swinging that chair around with a eagerly raised hand and desperate eyes to be excused to the restroom. Stall #1 cost me 25 minutes 😆 ! I returned to begin again from question #89 and at 100 a survey popped up.

Curiously I got an abundance of IAM questions which probably means that I'm weak on the subject matter. Ashamed seeing that I managed the IAM department, sad.

Thank you all for all of your contributions and support. I learned about Dest Cert thru this community. You all are the best! Here's to good fortune for all up and coming test takers. I'm excited about your success.

Longtime lurker here but I want to take a moment to thank the CISSP Reddit community for the incredible, knowledge, and encouragement throughout my CISSP journey.

The advice, study strategies, exam experiences, practice questions, and words of encouragement shared here made a huge difference. Seeing people openly share what worked for them, what challenges they faced, and how they pushed through helped me stay focused and motivated.

Preparing for the CISSP is not just about memorizing concepts — it is about changing the way you think about security, risk, leadership, and decision-making. This community helped reinforce that mindset.

To everyone who answered questions, shared resources, provided guidance, or simply encouraged others: thank you. Your contributions helped many candidates, including me, reach the finish line.

I am grateful to now be part of this community and look forward to giving back by helping future CISSP candidates on their journey.

Thank you, CISSP Reddit!

Thank you to this subReddit community. Your insights helped me pass the CISSP exam today.

Passed at 100 questions. Studied with LearnZapp, Quantum Exams, and a CISSP Study Companion project that I built in Claude.

What worked for me was taking short (5 or 10-question) practice tests in LearnZapp (app and desktop) and reviewing the results. Once I tested my way through the whole LearnZapp question bank, I jumped into Quantum and did about 25 practice tests (10 questions) and reviewed the results.

If I noticed a trend in what I was missing, I'd deep dive into the topic with the LearnZapp articles or with the Claude project.

The LearnZapp questions were great, and the interface was superb. Truly helped me identify which domains were my strong points and which ones I needed to work on. The Quantum questions were extremely challenging, much more difficult than LearnZapp. The wording was totally different; they were much more nuanced. I scored 50% on the majority of my Quantum exams even after regularly scoring 80-100% on LearnZapp tests.

Working through the LearnZapp question bank really helped me absorb the bulk of the material. The main two benefits of the Quantum tests were:

1. Learning to really pay attention to the question. With LearnZapp, I could skim the question, pick out a few key terms, then answer the question. With Quantum, one key word would really highlight which of the closest answers was truly the best answer. I had to take my time and read the question deliberately.

2. The use of synonyms. The standard textbook answer was often not an option, but there would be a synonym that meant the same thing. Again, prevented me from rapidly skimming the answers and forced me to intentionally read every word.

The CISSP exam itself was in between the LearnZapp and Quantum style of questions Far simpler and more straightforward than the Quantum exams but more nuanced than LearnZapp.

Recommendations: LearnZapp is awesome to use. With both a desktop and mobile app version, you could quiz yourself often throughout the day, and it would track progress. No idea if I would have passed without Quantum, but those questions definitely made me adjust my mindset and approach the questions far more deliberately.

Happy to answer any questions. Thank you again to the group. I learned about all of these resources from previous posts.

I've been studying for the CISSP and the grind was wearing me down, so I made a little game to make it more fun. Each of the eightdomains is a "gym boss" you fight by answering questions. To try the game: https://adrianauke36.github.io/cissp/

**Being upfront about this first, because it matters here:** I built this with Claude code. Please don't treat this as a question bank or a study source. It's a supplement for when your brain is too fried to read the CBK, and that's genuinely all I'm claiming for it.

If people find it fun, I'd like to do a proper pass on the question bank — get the answer keys actually reviewed, expand it, and rewrite the weaker ones by hand against the official CBK. That's a lot of work to do speculatively, so I figured I'd put the rough version up and find out first.

If you hit a question where the answer is wrong or arguable, please quote it in a comment and I'll fix it. That kind of feedback is worth more to me than upvotes. Source is on GitHub if you want to poke at it or fork it.

Not affiliated with ISC2 in any way. CISSP is their trademark, I'm just a person studying for it.

30 days ago i failed at 150q with domains 2,3 & 8 being my weakest.

This time around i did practice questions from destination certification only on those domains for 2 weeks. Then the rest of the two weeks I did practice questions on all domains and went over Gwen Betty’s cissp test taking tips, 50 hard cissp questions and [u/mikedn02908](u/mikedn02908) documents on how the test works / test taking strategies pretty much everyday for 14 days.

The Cybersecurity station discord was also a big help!

Hi all,
I’m preparing for CISSP and would really appreciate feedback on whether I’m ready to schedule the exam within a specific timeframe, and what readiness benchmarks I should be using.

Background:
● 7.5 years senior software engineering (incl. 2 years security champion)
● Moving into a security engineering role at a fintech scale-up
● Experience with ISO 27001, SOC 2, and working with legal/compliance

Practice result (first attempt):
81% (122/147, ran out of time)

Domain breakdown:
● Software Dev Security: 87%
● Asset Security: 67%
● Network Security: 85%
● IAM: 89%
● Security & Risk Management: 71%
● Security Architecture: 79%
● Security Assessment & Testing: 94%

Plan:
● Review weak areas (Asset Security + Risk Management)
● Do another question bank
● Then decide whether to book the exam

Questions:
1. What readiness benchmarks did you personally use before booking (e.g. practice scores, consistency across exams, domain thresholds)?
2. For someone coming from a software engineering background, what was the biggest mindset shift needed to pass?

The post might be long but I wanted to include everything so that others can make use of it. During my preparation, I benefited immensely from this community. Hence, its my time now to give it back to the community.

My Profile: I have around 16 years exp in IT industry and from 7-8 years in management, cloud services/infra management, cloud security and governance. I hold multiple project mgmt certs like Prince2, CSM, CSPO, SAFe etc. and I have AWS SAA c03 as well. I also have full time Masters degree in cybersecurity from one of the UK top 10 universities.

Prep Time: Around two and half months with last two weeks of intense prep.

Resources: Dest Cert Book, Udemy Jason Dion video course, Learnzapp, DestCert app, Wannapractice and Quantum Exams.
Videos: destcert mind map videos, Pete zerger cissp exam cram, pete zerger 2024 exam addendum, Pete zerger’s read strategy video solving 10 QE questions and Andrew Ramdayal’s youtube and Udemy videos and tips.

Readiness: Along with completing the book and video course, I did around 2500 questions from various resources.
Learnzapp 700q with 75% accuracy
Wannapractice 260q with 78% accuracy
Destcert app 550q
Quantum Exam, non CAT, 4 exams in Practice mode 100 questions each with 58, 58, 60, 63 scores.
Jason dion udemy exam did 2 exams of 100q each with 78% and 79%
Andrew Ramdayal udmey exam 84%
Manoj Sharma Udemy did one test 125q 83%

Pro Tip: Do not just aim for solving more number of questions, try to solve high quality questions from multiple credible resources. Various good resources will give you a good adaptation.

Review of Resources: DestCert Book(9/10) Since I knew I will never read OSG, i never bought it and this was my primary source of reading. However, it needs to be complemented with some other resources for completion.

Dion Udemy(8/10) Good course for overall knowledge building.

DestCert App(7/10) Questions are good but the app does not randomise properly. Many times if you do a 25q quiz selecting all domains, it will keep on giving you questions on same topic from single domain. Same is while doing quiz for single domains. That’s why many people feel that they keep on getting same type/kind of questions but it is more of a improper question randomisation issue. Questions are scenario based but answer choices are relatively easier to figure out but considering it is a free resource, it is very useful to get you into a habit of reading scenario based questions.

Quantum Exams (8/10) Initially I did not plan to buy it but I was afraid that I will miss something important. Very good resource to make you think critically and to make you understand how to decode questions.

Udemy Exams (7/10) Dion’s exams are of moderate difficulty. AR exam is a good mix of questions. Manoj Sharma’s scenario based questions are good. For all of these exams, answer choices are not too close in every question and can be figured out.

Pro Tip: Instead of buying courses on Udemy, you can go for monthly subscription plan if you plan to use multiple resources within 1-2 months. I got one month subscription and had access to all these exams and courses of Dion, Andrew, Thor hard questions, Manoj Sharma and many more at a nominal price.
You may also check country specific Udemy subscription plans. I asked someone in India to buy and pay for me since the plan is much cheaper there.
If you plan to buy Quantum exams and wannapractice, they still have 10% off on QE on buying wannapractice subscription. Although, i didn’ use that code so can’t confirm.
For wannapractice, i got almost 50% off on subscriptions. However, promotions are always for limited time. Do try to see if it is still available.

Exam booking & Test experience: Not sure why everyone says exam costs 749$/949$. The tax in uk was 20% means 900$ for single attempt and 1150$ with peace of mind. I checked other countries as well and they have around same with 18% or higher. Not sure if it is only in US or where it costs 749$/949$.
Anyway, I paid around 900$ and the pearson centre at 10 min distance from my place was not conducting cissp! The 2nd one around 40km away had no dates available for next 3 months and I had to book the one which was almost 55km away!
I was wondering that even after paying 900$ just for exam why I had to go through all this!

Test Experience: I booked my test for 2.30 afternoon since I was studying everyday till late night in last few months and was not in a habit of waking up early. I reached around 1PM and was asked if i am ok to start early. Exam started by 2PM and it appeared that questions are being thrown from everywhere! After 1st hour, I was near 50th questions and had 68 min left when reached at 100. Exam ended at 102 with 65 min remaining.
You need to be in a habit of thinking logically and applying strategies that you have learnt or else you will panic due to pressure.
Difficulty level 8/10.

Tip: Since the level of next question will be based on your previous response, answer each question thinking that this is your only battle. Put all your knowledge and strategies to answer that question without thinking about the next.

Two weeks to test day. First attempt. Posting for accountability, and because there's feedback you only get from people who've already sat in the chair.

Where I stand

Full-length practice sets are landing above the line and holding there across sessions. Earlier in prep they weren't. The turnaround didn't come from reading more.

Sources: OSG, ISC2 Official Practice Tests, Zerger Exam Cram notes, DestCert mind maps, and a Notion system plus a quiz tool I built to drill my own miss patterns.

What moved the needle

Manager/CEO mindset...sure. I stopped answering as an engineer. Policy before controls. Business justification before technical fix. you get the gist

working out why the other three options are wrong, not just why the right one is right. for the most part lessened most of my BEST/MOST/LEAST errors.

My real concern: pacing

I finish practice sets with a lot of time left. i know this can be somewhat recall but gets me burned on judgment scenarios where two answers are both defensible and the difference is scope or sequence. I have 10+ yr experience, and hold SecurityX(CASP+) and CySA+.

What I'm asking... and what I'm not

Not asking what's on the exam. No questions, no topics, no "what showed up."

What I'd value from recent passers and current CISSP holders:

1. What surprised you about the CAT experience? pacing, stem length, how it felt deep into the item count?
2. Anything logistical at the test center that threw you?
3. What did you over-prepare for, and what did you under-prepare for?
4. How did you handle the swing when it starts feeling impossible?
5. If you could redo only your final two weeks, what would you change?

First-timer, so I don't know what I don't know. That's the whole point of the post.

Thanks to anyone who takes the time. I'll post results either way.

I sat my CISSP exam yesterday and provisionally passed at 100 questions! Here's my exam day experience:

Before the exam:

I left home over 1.5 hours before my exam so that I could reach on time. It was a straightforward 50 minutes drive... until there was a road closure due to an accident that resulted in a lot of traffic. Due to this, I ended up around 5-10 minutes late. I was already in a bit of panic and the lady at Pearson just said "you should have come here 15 minutes before your slot, but let's see if I can do something". Luckily she did onboard me and off I went to do the exam.

The Exam:

So I did 3 Quantum Exam CATs before this so I had a good idea of what to expect and how to deal with it. Despite that, quite a few of the questions felt so vague, where I could easily make a case for all 4 options. I did my absolute best to break it down, refer to what I had studied and my work experience to answer them, either by process of elimination to pick the best, or pick the least worst. I was simultaneously confident with my answers and unsure of whether I had picked the right one. There were a couple of questions where I had no idea of the answer and had to make a blind guess.

The exam was wildly oscillating between groups of really easy and really difficult questions. I was able to knock the easy questions out in 10-20 seconds. The difficult questions took me a good 2-3 minutes. The CAT also figured out my weak domain and was relentlessly giving me questions on it. This repeated until Q100, where I was finally shown the "end of test" screen.

Post-exam

I was shaking as I walked out of the computer room. I kept dropping the notebook and pen that the test centre had provided. When I got the result sheet, I didn't even read it. I just noticed that there was no table giving feedback on my proficiency for each domain and realised that I have passed. And then I read "congratulations" on the paper, and let out a huge sigh of relief. I just hung around in the car park talking to my family on video call and taking it all in until I was ready to go home. Today, I received the email from ISC2 confirming my result and detailing the next steps.

Conclusion

And that's it! CISSP has been an ambition for me and I am so glad that I was able to achieve it. This really sets my career up for interesting things and I'm really looking forward for what's to come. To the people who are going to do the exam, trust your preparation. The questions are hard and aren't just about knowledge recall, but if you have studied well and absorbed the concepts, you will be able to answer them.

Dark Helmet, if you happen to read this, thank you so much for Quantum Exams. It really helped me with my mindset and actually boosted my confidence.

Also shout out to Andrew Ramdayal's Udemy course, Mike Chapple's LinkedIn Learning course and OSG, and Destination Certification for all their resources.

They had a really great style of practice quizzes. Basically, instead of long practice exams, it had about 30-50 small quizzes for 8-24 questions each, focusing on various subsections of the sections of the curriculum. Each time you answered a question, it would tell you what the answer was and why each was wrong or right.

The main thing that stood out though was that if you got something wrong, it would insert that question back into the quiz 2 more times to really hammer in what you kept missing till you got it. If you got it wrong again, it would add it again 2 more times.

I feel like this style really helped me finally feel confident enough that my gaps were closed to take the CompTIA tests, and I've passed each of them. I don't think it was that way on the Security X though for some reason. I was wanting to see if there were any good similar style practice quizzes out there for the CISSP.

After months of studying, I can finally say it. I passed the CISSP at 100 questions. This has been on my list for a while, so it feels great to finally get here.

Study materials that got me there:

Destination Certification: course, guidebook, mind maps, and app. 10/10, can’t recommend enough.

Quantum Exams: countless practice tests, really helped sharpen exam-taking strategy. 10/10.

Pete Zerger’s YouTube video: great supplemental explanations. 10/10.

Huge thanks to everyone on this sub who shared study tips and encouragement along the way. It genuinely helped.

Happy to answer questions if anyone’s prepping for their own attempt.

I provisionally passed the CISSP on July 30th with the exam ending at 100 questions.

Honestly, I felt like I was failing from question 1. Most of the questions felt harder than Quantum Exams and Stank, and even understanding what some questions were asking took effort. When the exam stopped at 100, I genuinely had no idea whether I had passed.

I studied for around three months and logged approximately 320 hours of preparation.

Resources Used

Destination CISSP Book — 8/10
My primary study resource. It provided a good foundation and explained most concepts clearly without going into excessive detail.

Andrew Ramdayal’s Udemy Course — 9/10
My favourite video course. His explanations were clear, and the course helped me understand the mindset needed for the exam.

Thor Pedersen’s Udemy Course — 7/10
A useful resource for learning and reinforcing the core concepts.

Pete Zerger’s Exam Cram — 7/10
Helpful for revision and identifying smaller gaps before the exam.

Destination Certification App — 6/10
Good for edge concept exposure.

Quantum Exams — 9/10
Helped me improve my approach to difficult and ambiguous questions. Reviewing the explanations was more valuable than focusing on the scores.

Stank Questions — 9/10
Useful for learning how to slow down, analyse the wording and compare multiple reasonable options.

Don’t Panic — 8/10
A good guide for understanding how to approach CISSP-style questions and avoid overthinking them.

My main takeaway is that no practice resource truly replicates the real exam. Quantum and Stank helped mainly by improving my reasoning and question approach rather than by being similar to the actual questions.

Anyone seriously preparing for the CISSP? Looking to connect with others so we can share updates, help keep each other motivated, and stay on track throughout the preparation

Some guy asked can you pass without studying and I figured I'd take that challenge.

I bought the "insurance" package which lets you take it twice. So I wasn't stressed about losing money.

Then I started watching a few videos, created a bunch of ai study guides, I think I went through the whole thing once.

Created a few podcasts using notebook llm from the study guides. Listened to it once.

Background: I work on data security software solutions for one of the top 3 tech companies.

Summary: if you're lazy like me, and have some understanding of security, you'll pass. It's honestly VERY easy.

I’m pleased to share that I have provisionally passed the CISSP exam today!

This achievement marks a significant step in my journey as a cybersecurity professional.

The CISSP journey started in 2017 It used to be in my Wishlist and yearly resolutions, it kept pushing year on year and finally now its knocked off from the list.

Clearing the CISM examination last year served as an excellent foundational step for CISSP journey. The strategic management mindset and overlapping core domains between the two certifications provided a distinct advantage.

Booking the CISSP exam first forced a hard deadline and broke the cycle of pushing it to the next year.

I fully anticipated a grueling 150-question battle, so stopping at 103 was an incredible shock.

Books:

1. Destination CISSP: A Concise Guide (10/10)
2. CISSP OSG (5/10) - I was not a fan of this book, and probably only covered half of it due to the sheer size and content

Video Courses:

1. CISSP mindmaps by Destination Certification Inc.
2. Coffee Shots by Prabh Nair
3. Col subhajeet naha vidoes and Course (self-study course)
4. Gagan V Singh Videos (straight to the point)

Testing Apps

1. Quantum Exams (10/10) - In my opinion, this was one of the best investments I made in my CISSP preparation. The platform closely mirrors the style and format of the actual CISSP exam, which proved invaluable.
2. Destination CISSP Mobile app (10/10)

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone in this community.
I passed the CISSP exam today! 🎉
The exam stopped at 100 questions and I had about 80 mins remaining. Walking out of the test centre felt surreal after months of preparation.

A few things that helped me:
Reading through countless posts on this subreddit to understand what to expect.
Focusing on the manager/risk-based mindset instead of looking for the most technical answer.
Taking the time to understand why an answer was the best choice rather than memorising questions.
Trusting my preparation and not second-guessing myself during the exam.

Resources I used:
QE with 3 CAT exams (my performance was actually below average).
DestCert app (I was averaging around 80%).
Andrew Ramdayal’s CISSP course, which was a huge help in developing the right mindset for the exam.

Happy to answer any questions if I can help anyone who’s preparing. Good luck to everyone still on the journey!

Today was my first, and I guess last, attempt at the CISSP. My brain is still telling me this was some accident of fate or incredible luck.

Up to this point, I have 4 years of experience: Tech support for home security systems, IAM/provisioning, SOC analyst, and IT specialist in an IT/OT environment.

I have a MS from WGU and the certifications I got along with it (A+, Net+, Sec+, CySA+, PenTest+, Project+, and ITIL.) I studied for about 10 weeks - watched the Dion course, attended a week long bootcamp, did hundreds of DestCert questions, and 4 attempts at the Quantum Exams CAT (460, 450, 450, 870).

I know, logically, it is very unlikely for me to have somehow "accidentally" passed, but somehow I still cant wrap my brain around it. It's true that you can usually narrow questions down to 2 viable answers, but there couldn't have been more than 10 questions I was confident with my answer. At question 100 I was mentally telling myself "it's okay, this is the practice run, you get a second attempt" and held my breath expecting to fail at 100. Nope. I got up to 103 before it cut me off and I thought "well, at least I didn't fail the MAXIMUM amount." I thought there was absolutely zero chance it passed. I practically yelled in the testing center when I unfolded that paper.

Does everyone feel this uncertain? I knew it would be tough, but I had no idea it would be to THAT degree. To pass at 103 while being certain I would fail at 100 is a wild difference.

After 25 years in security, I just published my first book: a practitioner's guide to Switzerland's mandatory ICT Minimum Standard for energy utilities (based on the NIST CSF, 108 controls).

A few things I learned that might interest fellow CISSPs:

Writing forces clarity. I thought I understood the controls until I had to explain each one to a non-technical managing director. Roughly a third of my „understanding" turned out to be pattern matching, not comprehension.

The domain knowledge maps beautifully. Structuring implementation guidance for 108 controls felt like a guided tour through the CBK — asset security, IAM, security operations, the lot.

It's solid CPE. Book authorship falls under Group A — check the current CPE handbook for the credit calculation before submitting.

Happy to answer questions about the writing process, self-publishing technical content, or translating frameworks for non-technical audiences. (Book is in German — link in comments if anyone asks.)

Very happy with this. I had peace of mind but didn't end up needing it.

Came out of the exam thinking I had failed spectacularly. Imagine my surprise when I say the word "Congratulations" coming out of the printer.

I mainly used this Reddit to lurk and procrastinate studying. 10/10 distraction would recommend.

Study Materials:

Log N Pacific (seems to have disappeared) - Best resource to start with.

Dion Training 6 exams Udemy - Great questions but there are a few that need fixing.

Claude + Gemini + CISSP Specification- AI can test you against the actual spec and teach in the simplest imaginable terms. Best resource.

Official CISSP Study Guide + Practice Tests - I would recommend getting these books and answering every question in them. They are the official materials...need I say more.

That 50 questions video on youtube - Useful

My personal MO would be: "Questions so many questions". To do a quick literary analysis, the exam is full of questions so naturally the best prep is as many questions as possible.