Customer Reviews

CISA Exam Prep: Certified Information Systems Auditor

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really enjoyed reading this study guide as it does cover many aspects of CISA exam. I am also impressed that the author provides real life examples and tools that are used for IT auditing. Such information works great for rookies like me who have no professional experience in this field. However, this book alone is not sufficient to clear the exam. Apart from professional experience in ICT industry, I used the following to clear the CISA exam in December 2007:
CISA exam prep study guide (latest edition)
CISA study guide by sybex (latest edition)
ISACA question and answer set (software) - latest edition

This should suffice to give anyone a good try at the CISA exam. Cheers.

I would recommend this book as it does a good job of covering the topics addressed in the areas required for the exam. The front of the book describes each objective and lists where that information is in the book. It covers the practice areas as laid out for the 2007 exam. I liked the way that several of the larger domains were broken into two chapters. This made it easier to read and retain the information.

ISACA expects candidates to have 5 years of experience. You need to read more than one book on the CISA examination areas to round out your understanding. Don't underestimate the difficulty of this exam.

In many areas ISACA gives review classes that can help supplement the needed knowledge to pass the CISA exam. In the end I attended the review classes, browsed the official text and read this book. In that role this book fit my needs as its much easer to read than the official text. CISA candidates should map out a preparation plan months before the exam and then stick to it. Read this book but also use other materials such as the official questions and answers book and other third party practice exams.

I purchased this book in January 2008 to prepare for the CISA exam in June 2008. I thought the book was quite helpful in explaining concepts. The material is very structured and it is a useful tool for preparing for the CISA exam. I used this book, one other book, and the ISACA CD (review questions) and passed the exam on my first attempt in June 2008. (I also had the ISACA official review guide/book and found that too comprehensive and dry to study from for more than short periods of time.) I do recommend this book to others looking to prepare for the CISA exam. Note that this book would not be the ONLY book I would use to prepare for the CISA exam but that it is a good part of one's preparation.

I am not going to write a detailed review, but hopefully this will be helpful to others. Also note that I haven't read cover-to-cover, but have read a couple hundred pages and have skimmed the entire book.

I sat for the CISA yesterday. I signed up to take the exam and planned to basically take it cold. Though, as with any good exam and certification, you need to know what the "BEST" answer is for the scenario presented so I planned on buying something to read in preparation.

This book did not map at all to the version of the CISA exam I received. Since the exam is a "Choose the BEST answer" type of exam where the possible answers are all correct, I left wondering how I should have answered a few questions. I came home and tried to find answers in this book. None of them were even touched on. Then I spent a couple hours skimming through the book to see how much it mapped to the exam I just took. Some of the content was relevant, but most of it not.

However, the book has some 'OK' content. I don't care for the writing style that much or how the book is put together (too many sidebars, notes, etc). It's not a bad reference for auditors in general.

Bottom line: the CISA exams change frequently and there are different versions for a given cycle as it should be with any good exam. You probably won't find a book that maps exactly to the exam.

I've used this while preparing for the CISA exam this December. Since I did not have any other material to begin with (especially the CISA Review Manual#, I found this very easy to go through. Book follows a logical sequence in introducing various CISA knowledge areas and have good questions at the end. It highlights key points to remember. From the exam point of view, this is an excellent resource. I'd think that, this book plus other sample questionnaire available on the web are sufficient - if your objective is to just clear the exam. One must keep in mind that, this is only an exam prep guide not a full study material. My strong suggestion is to go through the CISA official review manual too, to gain a deeper understanding of the various auditing standards and ISACA's guidelines. Starting with CISA review manual would surely scare you, though! It's bulky with way too much information. At least 25-30% of that material is not covered in the exam. however this guide is useful as a quick reference before the exam. The 2009 edition of this book, I referred to, does have few minor mistakes in the text. And yes, this book too has few pages that are not really relevant for the exam, IMHO. In summary, this is a useful and dependable resource. Good luck with your exam.

The topics covered by Gregg are a mixture of high level policy management issues and some low level computing material. The latter should be straightforward to anyone starting out as any type of IT professional. As in using ping to measure the latency (or effective network temporal distance) to another internet node. Then we have the groupings of internet subnets into Class A, B or C. And the 5 layers of the internet. I'm glad to see that the text only gives brief mention of the 7 layer OSI model, describing how in practice it is the 5 layers of the internet that is by far the dominant occurrence.

On the most basic material, there is a bare 2 pages that takes the reader from machine language to 5th generation software languages. Admirably concise. But do CISA students really have such a brief background in this?

On other topics, there's some recent material about e-commerce. Good, given the rapid buildout in the last 10 years. So we see various categories, like b2b, b2c, b2g [business to government] and b2e [business to employee - i.e. think portal].

The exercises and questions at the end of each chapter do seem rudimentary. Given that each chapter is rather brief to begin with. A casual parsing of a chapter should suffice in letting many readers get most questions correct without too much sweat. Presumably, Gregg's assessment of the level of difficulty of an actual CISA exam is accurate, and he has thus pitched his questions at a correspondingly suitable level for you. But if this is so, I'm underwhelmed by what it means to be a CISA. A credential that's way too easy to get.