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I am a sales and product professional who has a total of 9 years experience in IT; related to selling products indirectly or directly. I started my career working as a product manager for hardware vendors like Dell and HP. But was not selling directly.

Later I joined another hardware manufacturer and there was managing sales of its products (notebooks, peripherals and desktops) by appointing distributors. Now recently I started taking interest in selling Cisco and Sonicwall firewall and Fortinet products and did Sales Certification of these products in security. I have a four years BS in Computer Science, but I never worked as a hardcore techy. Please advice me is CISSP the right path for me, as I want to leave the "Sales Dept". I have been jobless because of it recently and already have a lot of stress.

At the same time I don't have a technical work experience nor a sound knowledge, but I can try to learn.

If I should go for CISSP, will I get a waiver of 1 year as I have 9 years sales experience and 4 years BS in CS degree also.

Vilican
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Haseen
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  • You may struggle to justify having 5 years experienced within 2 of the 8 domains and im not sure a CS degree will take a year off the experience requirements. You never know though. Regardless you can go for associate that will give you a few years to get the experience. The main question is, why do you want it? And do you need it? – TheJulyPlot Nov 16 '15 at 08:13
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    CISSP may not suffice for hardcore techy stuff in Information Security but gives you a solid understanding of fundamentals about everything. I am not clear about your career objective as well. Please elaborate in which role you see yourself e.g. Do you want to sell Products related to Information Security, etc. – Krishna Pandey Nov 16 '15 at 08:17
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    Sorry, I think the only people who can give you a definitive answer are ISC2 (the people who run CISSP). Any answers you get here will be speculation, which could be counter-productive. – paj28 Nov 16 '15 at 12:48
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it needs to be addressed to ISC2 not this site – paj28 Nov 16 '15 at 15:31
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    The ISC2 website explains the process of how to get the CISSP without the required experience: https://www.isc2.org/cissp-how-to-certify.aspx – schroeder Nov 16 '15 at 16:18

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The CISSP is certainly useful to have. You may have to apprentice under somebody in order to meet the experience requirements. You can do the course and pass the exam, but make sure you are within 9 months of the experience requirement so you can get your endorsement when you meet that.

Companies, particularly start-ups, should be willing to hire security interested, but uncertified people for this kind of work. It will come at a discount base pay wise, but if you can afford that it's a good stepping stone.

Another alternative would be to join a security-products or services company as a technical sales person or product manager and make a point of getting technically involved to bridge the experience gap.

You could also start security consulting for small businesses without certification on the side if you have time. You can build experience there.

Alain O'Dea
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    Dear Guys, Thank you for all the inputs on my career related question.. – Haseen Nov 17 '15 at 09:27
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    Dear Guys, Thank you for all the inputs on my career related question.. Dear @K.P:Yes I want to do Pre-sales and Sales of security solutions. Dear TheJulyPlot I want to come out of this declining PC business and pursue a career in something that has a future. Dear Paj28.. I did talk to ISC2 people and they are not giving straight answers.. they shared the links to their website and asked me to check where my previous experience matches with the 8 domains. Why dont they tell me straight away that its not a piece of cake for IT sales guys? Guess they are there to earn money! Thank you every1 – Haseen Nov 17 '15 at 09:39