CISSP Certification Journey: Challenges of a Six-Hour Exam

Does an alphabet soup of acronyms, which stand for certifications that you've obtained, follow your signature? Are you wondering which, if any, are really valuable? Are you contemplating a worthwhile certification challenge? Have you been working in the information system security . . . Does an alphabet soup of acronyms, which stand for certifications that you've obtained, follow your signature? Are you wondering which, if any, are really valuable? Are you contemplating a worthwhile certification challenge? Have you been working in the information system security arena? If so, the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) designation may be right for you.

Now, I don't like taking examinations, and I'm convinced that most IT certification programs don't produce professionals worth the piece of paper their certificates are printed on. So why did I sit a six-hour certification exam over 10 areas of information system security knowledge, sans water or coffee, with six sharpened pencils and a big eraser as my only company? Why did I pay $200 for some study guides, a $450 examination fee, and several hundreds of dollars to attend a workshop? Why, for three months, did I give up my Thursday nights to attend a study group, and many other hours to study things like lattice based access controls, ALE calculations, the Montreal protocol, Bell-LaPadula and Biba models?

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