Customer Reviews

Mike Meyers' CISSP(R) Certification Passport

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The CISSP strikes terror for some, since it is not an easy exam to prepare for. I picked up this book because of its portability (I travel so I need something light to carry around), not expecting anything substantial to be inside, only pointers to help me remember some of the material I have already covered. Instead, I found this book to be a gem, a book full of concise material written in style that is uncluttered, presented in a format that is structured. Plus, the book offers online questions for practice. Besides the occasional typo or two, the only fault I can criticize about the book is its Q&A section--it seemed a little too simple for a professional exam.

Overall, I would recommend this book as a good first book to use, to quickly gain as much grasp of the security concepts in as little time as possible, and then slowly graduate to the more substantial offerings from QUE or Wiley.

/* Disclaimer
The CISSP is a *very* tough exam to write a review book for. It is quite correctly described as "a mile wide and an inch deep". Therefore do NOT expect this book to cover everything that you will encounter on the exam, and certainly don't get angry when you take the test and there are things not covered in this book.
*/

So the material .... I found the chapters to be well laid out and direct. There was a lot of information crammed into a very small book, which made it ideal for me as a "last week" review. I took notes on every chapter and picked up quite a few little nuggets of information that I hadn't seen anywhere else. Of course this was my only "exam" book. Everything else I used to prepare was actually a book on a given subject (ie Incident Response, Network Intrusion Detection, etc.) so I can't really say how it stacks up against other prep books.

So overall it's definitely worth the money since it's cheaper than most tomes, but I regret not using a second "exam" review. That is not a reflection of this book, but of the massive amount of material on the exam.

I've read several reviews on this book that say it lacks the necessary depth; and I think they are a bit unfair. The objective of this book is simply to provide the least amount of information necessary to pass the exam. Conversely, many of the "larger" books contain information to teach the reader the subject, which may seem unnecessary to many who already know their subject matter. If you were to condense many of these books, you would end up with something resembling this one.

Many other books encourage the reader to memorize unnecessary information, such as vendor specific data, history or countless examples that aren't really relevant to the exam. In memorizing this unnecessary matter, it is possible to overlook more important items. Basically, more information is not necessarily better information. This is the objective of this book.

That being said, it would be extremely risky to rely solely on this book. This is because it contains the "least" information required, written some time ago, in an ever changing industry and exam.

I passed the exam recently using this book and the Official Guide. At first I started using the Shon Harris All-In-One, but found her very irritating and long-winded, so I dropped it (literally and physically). Interestingly she is the co-author for this book, and some would consider this a very condensed version of the All-In-One Book.

A lesser advantage of this book is that you can carry it and read it on trains, work etc. which I found very difficult to do with the bigger 1000 pager hardcover books.

I passed the exam last month using this is my primary reference. This book is well organized and touches on all the material, and should work well for any experience level. Of course you'll want to use at least one other guide (Advanced CISSP prep guide would be a good complement) and take plenty of practice exams, but I would highly recommend having passport in your library.

Dear all,
This book is well organized. It is summary of All-in-One Exam Guide by Shon Harris. Most of the mistakes in All-in-One book by Harris are corrected in this book. The weakness of this book is the practice exam as they are very easy. It is a good book, even after you pass the exam, you can use it as a reference for future requirements. If you have to choose between this book and All-In-One, to my opinion The Passport is a better buy.
I would recommend having Passport, but do not be depend on this book to pass the exam.

Maybe it's because the exam has changed since this book was written. But this book is very dangerous.

If you took the CISSP exam and could refer to this book in the exam - but it was your only source - you would flunk the exam. It flat-out does not cover areas of knowledge that the exam asks questions on. (And also covers a number of areas that the exam never touches on.)

The danger is if the book was your main basis for the exam, you will walk in to the exam totally unprepared. (I can't give specifics because you sign a confientiality agreement when taking the exam.)

My suggestion for taking the CISSP exam; 1) Exam prep alone won't do it - you need to be an experienced security professional to take this test (that's what saved my a**). 2) Get a prep book that was written recently (I am assuming the problem with this book is that the areas being tested has changed).

And good luck with the test.

I just got my results back from ISC2 and I passed! All I used with the Passport book. It is a great book if you are already familiar with many of the topics of the exam and just need to get focused on what you need to know for the test.

Thanks Shon Harris!

Great Book

This book takes the original Shon Harris book, and explaines the 10 domains from a higher point of view. I would fully recommend reading this book, along with reading the Risk Management and Access Control section of the Shon Harris book.

The test questions are pretty simple, thus I do not recommend relying soley on them. [...] The test questions [...] are all written by CISSP's and closely resenble the questions that will be on the exam.

This book is older and I think it is a little outdated for current CISSP exam. That being said if you don't use this book as your sole source of CISSP studying , it is a great book. I found this book very informative for the very basics of the of security. Mike Meyers' Certification Passport CISSP is a great starting point to build your knowledge foundation. I would recommend The CISSP Prep Guide: Gold Edition.

This book is most definately not intended to be your only source of material for the CISSP exam. The coverage of the 10 domains is very very light. Some explanations are very limited and a few of the figures associated with many of the concepts are completely useless. For example, in explaining the concept of a fax server, the figure shows one server computer, labeled "fax server", and two workstations, and lines between the server and the two workstations. So you may ask yourself, what was the point of the figure? Was it supposed to add to the concept in some manner? Clarify? It simply appears to have been done to fill in the page, really. There are many diagrams like the one displayed above.

One last thing, I bought the book 4 weeks ago. When I attempted to login and use the online practice exam I was confronted with a message indicating the registration code for the online exam was too old and the exam was no longer offered. So much for the sample questions eh?