CISSP for Dummies

Everyone knows that the CISSP exam is not for dummies, but don't let the title of this book put you off. It was great as a review/final cram before I took the exam. I think it would make an excellent first read, too. I studied using The CISSP Prep Guide and an online study group and then bought this book on the recommendation of someone in my study group. There is a chapter for each of the ten domains. There are no frills here, but the coverage is accurate, balanced, and matched pretty closely what I found on the exam. I particularly appreciated the study tools on the CD-ROM. The flash cards were pure genius. I was able to download them to my Palm, and I quizzed myself in the car all the way to the testing location. I definitely got my money's worth out of this book and highly recommend it to others sitting or considering sitting for the CISSP exam.

This book is jam packed with valuable exam-specific material. I think this book is great for a first review of the material as well as a last minute cram before the exam. I bought the Prep Guide too, but, so far, I've found the information here extremely compact, accurate, and digestible. By the way, the CD is a God-send-- in addition to the test engine, the authors included a very practical set of flash cards with at least 300 sample test questions and answers (supplied on separate cards) that you can print or even download to your PDA. This is just genius and alone worth the price of the book.

The first thing that impressed me about the book was the wealth of information in it. I was really impressed with the networking section. It was a very good and had a complete look at networking from the physical all the way up.

This book did a really good job of going through each of the domains and I feel it is one of the better books out there for prepping for the CISSP test.

For you to understand my rather positive rating of this book, I feel that I must describe the context of my decision to read it. I'm a pretty experienced software developer (10+ years, network engineer (2 years), & solution architect (5 years), who recently accepted a position of Security Director for a large corporation. To educate myself for my new role I searched for good, well rounded books on the subject. I found CISSP books very attractive as they provide a structured 20,000 foot view of information security. I chose CISSP for dummies as my first book so I could get this high level view as quickly as possible.

The good:
The book satisfied my objective. It was indeed a quick read... at least as far as CISSP books go. The 320 or so pages with a big font & white-space allow one to read this book in a small fraction of the time it takes to read the official ISC guide or Shon Harris's book (though both of these provide a more complete & accurate education). The author does a good job hitting the subject at a high level with clear text. I especially like the way this book wraps up business continuity planning.

The bad:
Don't rely on this book to prepare yourself for the CISSP exam. After finishing this book I scored >80%, or high enough to make one think you could pass the test. After reading Shon's book (CISSP Certification All-In-One) I realized I really didn't know that much yet. I have since earned my CISSP & don't think the dummies book alone would have been enough for me.

Great book! Took my test 2 weeks ago and passed the CISSP. The only book I used was this one!