CRC Press Official (ISC)2® Guide to the CISSP®-ISSMP® CBK®

Great for Cybersecurity students

Just passed the ISSMP exam yesterday, no thanks to this book. I took a prep course through Infosec Institute and was advised to disregard the book as it is out of date and not very good. I’m glad I took that advice. As I prefer practice exams for my preparation, I was looking for more information to work from and wanted to use the 100 questions that come with this book. Not only were the questions in this book poorly edited and sometimes nonsensical, a number of them are absolutely incorrect and contradict the answers to almost identical questions found in other practice exam sources. I’m lucky I didn’t rely on the information in this book for my real test day!

There are so many simple mistakes in this book that you have to wonder if the same inattention was paid to the content. This book is riddled with spelling, grammar, formatting and simple sentence structure mistakes. The review questions after each section are non-sensical and almost unreadable, let alone able to teach you anything. I actually stopped reading this book because I was worried I'd learn something wrong for the test. If you want the ISSMP, I would say find another source for your information but then again, if this is the "official" source material, then I don't think any derivative sources would be any better. Makes you wonder if the cert this ostensibly prepares you for is even worth attempting.

If you are a CISSP thinking about upping your credentials with the ISSMP concentration, wait until this certification is vetted with a few more revisions before attempting the test. In April 2015, (ISC)2 released this second edition with updated references and question bank for the certification test. After failing the test the first time by a couple of questions, I doubled down targeting the identified weakness identified in the test feedback. I was somewhat concerned the test did not appear to reflect the CBK, but figured it was from how I targeted my preparation. After failing the test a second time with the same weaknesses and the same score, I sent a query to (ISC)2 identifying my concerns about the certification test and the information in the CBK and CIB. An excerpt from their response follows: "The exam itself is truly designed to gauge the members real world professional experience across the domains ... The CBK Guides themselves have never been designed to be written to the exam or as a study guide for that matter. Instead, they are meant to be an authoritative reference to the Common Body of Knowledge (CBK) and serve as a go to reference guide for the certification in question." IAW, the CBK is not intended to prepare you for the certification test. Individuals contributed questions for the certification test based on real world experiences in the domains, not the CBK. Hopefully you have the right experiences to pass this certification. The CBK is not going to be much help in preparing for the test.

Worse than useless. Much of the material is off-topic, or just plain wrong. For example, out of 20 questions on the chapter 4 quiz, six are completely wrong. There isn't much study material out there for this exam, which is probably why not many people take it. The best way to study is use a test engine, like exam collections, and google every question until you are sure you have covered all the material.