I just wanted to say thanks all the contributors to this sub (i owe you all a drink of some kind) , as i passed the CISSP exam today, by literally seconds!

My experience of the day was mixed.

I arrived to the testing centre at 7:45am this morning. Not the greatest centre i've ever been to, but did the job. Unless i missed something somewhere, i didn't realise that I couldn't bring a bottle of water for the exam (i get it - water, next to computers, not a great mix) but this slightly annoyed me.

Anyway to the exam. As I was working my way through it, as many have said, the questions stumped me whereby i really had to read the question - once, twice, three times on some occasions. My first language is English and even I had to slowly dissect some of the questions, to understand what they were really asking.

Confidence was draining and I went out for a toilet break at 50. This did me the world of good. In my mind, i was expecting for the exam to finish with a fail at the 100 question mark - already glad that i had a free re-take!

As i passed 100, my next target was 130 (not sure why) then when i got to around 150, i started really getting annoyed, as i was convinced i had failed and wondered why the computer was putting me through this misery, when i had clearly failed!

Next - 160 came and went and by this time, i had approx. 20 mins left - then 170 , then 172. by this point I had about 3 mins left and was stressing as i didn't want time to expire as I've read this is an automatic fail.

I got to 175....clock was ticking. I didn't know how many more questions i'd have left but there was 40 seconds on the clock - i skim read it and pressed enter - exam ended - Oh, is that it???

Didn't fill in the questionnaire, waited for my result, expecting to get feedback as to where i needed to improve, but I bloody passed - It's 7pm in the evening where i am and still cannot believe it!

Materials i used:

Boson exam simulation - Question format is great and much like i found in the actual exam itself, although the exam questions are totally different to what i was expecting.

OSG - Read this from from to back and to front again. Excellent resource and don't think i would have passed without it

Mike Chapple - Awesome, Awesome, Awesome! All resources (linkedIn, youtube, etc) all such valuable content.

I don't think i would have pushed myself to take this exam if it wasn't for the free retake on offer from (ISC)^2 currently on offer, but I'm glad i did - it gave me a real reason to relax.

Anyway, it's done now - what next - I have no idea :-)