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I'm looking to sit for my exam in a few weeks, and I want to have a good set of practice tests to bounce against and make sure that I'm up to par with the types of questions that will be asked.

Jeff Ferland
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  • I don't know what your situation is, but if you have access to a university (or other?) library, there are sometimes unexpected electronic resources available. I work at a university, and discovered that through a subscription to Safari Books Online/O'Reilly, there are several CISSP titles available, including question-oriented offererings. – jgbelacqua Feb 01 '11 at 20:12
  • Sharon Harris' book was a prescription sleeping aid for me. I enjoyed the [Sybex](http://www.amazon.com/CISSP-Certified-Information-Security-Professional/dp/1118314174/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1398265432&sr=8-8&keywords=cissp) book as well as the [Syngress](http://www.amazon.com/CISSP-Study-Guide-Second-Edition/dp/1597499617/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1398265432&sr=8-4&keywords=cissp) book. Both great reads. –  Apr 23 '14 at 15:06
  • If you haven’t seen the Skillset exam prep engine, it is worth checking out - http://www.skillset.com. Thousands of [CISSP exam questions](http://www.skillset.com/certifications/cissp) and totally free. –  Sep 09 '14 at 21:04

9 Answers9

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Though not practice exams, I found the mind maps offered @ mindcert.com to be a great set of notes to use in keeping things together. They have published maps of 7 domain areas for the CISSP and a few for the CEH. Additionally, you can always make your own.

http://www.mindcert.com/resources/

Hope this helps, and good luck to you!

iivel
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cccure is a great resource. I also paid for study questions when i was studying and the cccure were harder, and more accurate to the test. Actually a lot of the cccure questions were harder than the actual test questions.

Testing youself against a test bank is a good practice but I didn't really find it super helpful. It is a good activity if you are tired of reading or memorizing. Honestly the best study help that I found was to create a bank of terms that I didn't know, understand, or couldn't remember and then create flashcards for them. Going through the flashcards was helpful, but it seemed like the act of writing down the answers during creation was almost the most helpful part.

I know everyone learns differently and this is a bit of a departure from the op's question, but hopefully this is helpful.

eficker
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    Since the test is so, so broad I did find the definition approach to be the most helpful. If you know all of the terms and loosely how they relate to each other and what each terms main security implications are, that is pretty much as good as you can do. The test questions are a good measure of how well you have done this. – freb Jan 25 '11 at 19:39
  • Since ISC^2 attempt to provide high confidentialiaty for the test questions, they expects practice exams to relate only to the material and not specifically to the actual test questions. This is different then say SAT prep questions which are ment to be representative of the exam. Those who take the CISSP exam sign a non-disclosure agrement regarding the test questions. You might actually be better off attempting to write your own questions then to try someone elses. – this.josh Jun 09 '11 at 02:08
  • Cccure no longer exists. – Rory Alsop Mar 29 '17 at 21:25
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For CISSP, I highly suggests Shon Harris's book.

It's the single best book to cover CISSP I've read.

Alex
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  • Which one in particular? – JMK Jan 10 '13 at 11:22
  • The [All-in-one](http://www.amazon.com/CISSP-All---One-Exam-Guide/dp/0071781749/ref=la_B001I9Q6M8_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357844070&sr=1-1) version. – Alex Jan 10 '13 at 18:56
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I found this to be good as well. CISSP Free 50 question Practice Test

Rebecca
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The Shon Harris All in One book, as pointed out by Alex, is quite good. In my opinion, however, you can't just rely on one book. You may also want to look into the offical (ISC)2 study guide, from their web site. I would also supplement any 'study guide' with reading published specs (NIST 800 series and the 17799/27001 series IEEE/IEC at the very least). I would also HIGHLY recommend that you get some real exam simulation experience under your belt. The All in one book comes with some good simulator sets but there are also good ones on the net. The cccure sims were a good tool for me as well.

All the best in your studies,

-grauwulf CISSP, CEH, CHFI, GPEN

grauwulf
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There are a few other useful exam resources:

I know about a few more, but the links appear to be dead. I'll check and comment again.

Steven Volckaert
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shangti2
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Adding to this list would be the list of relevant articles at 100Questions Exam Portal (http://www.100qns.com), which has a good set of reference articles on CISSP domains, CISSP Tips on security architecture and design, physical and environment security, cryptography and many more. The only thing is that it is not a pure CISSP site but also contains other exams, but it's neat interface makes it easy to find the CISSP resources.

The other good thing is that you can test your CISSP knowledge and prepare for the exam via the exam library, which contains free-to-try exam questions. The CISSP section could be accessed from the drop-down menu, and because the portal covers several topics, it could be confusing initially due to the enormous amount of data, but if you spend some time navigating the contents you might be well-rewarded!

And if you want another exam portal with game-like exam resources, you might want to try Exam Fight at http://www.examfight.com

I should try to compile a list of useful resources which would be easier to refer.

shangti2
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Not free, but cheap: Find the CISSP Dummies book, take the disk out, and throw away the book. You might be able to find it at a used book store or used on Amazon.

The disk has hundreds of questions. I thought I was well prepared, then I tried the dummies questions. This proved I had lots of holes in my knowledge and motivated me to study much harder.

user2616211
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Shon Harris is the best book to prepare for CISSP. Other than that, I think you must take expert training as it helps a lot in understanding the concepts better thus, clearing the examination. You can check Simplilearn for that. They have great course content. They have free CISSP practice test too. I think for that one need to sign up on their website. I hope this helps! Good Luck!

Sanjana
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