currently reading

I'm currently reading


The CISM (Certified Information Security Manager) 2011 Review Manual. I'm taking the exam in a week and I'm just getting around to reading and finishing the book. Now to start taking practice exams. This is either going to go really well or very poorly.




I am also reading Good To Great by Jim Collins. But that's been on back burner for some time. I'm taking everything written in the book with a grain of salt because one of my mentors told me "Good to Great is for wankers".

I recently just finished Made to Stick. I think it's something that all IT people should read especially if they have to engage with stakeholders. I've noticed IT and specifically Security has a hard time justifying what they do and why it's important. 

CISA results

I took the CISA exam about a month and a half ago and I finally got my results...and I passed! It's not that I found the content challenging, but I found the questions themselves really confusingly written, so I wasn't sure of what the correct answer was. But now I don't have to worry about that. :) The difference between this exam and the CISSP exam is that the CISSP is far more technical and the CISA is more conceptual with an emphasis on general audit and governance topics. Lucky for me I took the CISSP recently so it was fresh in my head. Also CISA gives you a composite score along with scores for each of the domains. I found that I did on protection of information assets and worst on IT System and Service Delivery...I really don't even remember what was in that domain. Oh well....

my CISSP prep strategy

It is said that test taking is a skill that can be learned. This is something that I feel is true. But you need a certain amount of preparation to ensure a successful exam. I think the knowledge of the material will get you a certain number of points but test taking skills may net you a few more points. This can make the difference between a pass and a fail. I think lots of practice exams helps build this mind set.

Materials used
 cccure.org
Shon Harris CISSP All in One book+CD

Comments
 I skimmed through the CISSP book. After going through the ginormous book, I used the CD's practice problems. I found these questions to be much deeper in detail than the exam itself so it wasn't very representative. Also I felt that there wasn't enough detail around explaining why the question wasn't correct. After that, I spent a lot of time on cccure.org's questions. I found the explanations to be very helpful. Also there are lots of questions in their question bank.