The start of my CISSP journey

I'm a habitual procrastinator in my personal life; I don't know if it's because of my undiagnosed ADD, or something else. I've had a copy of the Sybex CISSP Official Study Guide since January 2019. At the time I ordered it I had fully intended to write it that year in the fall after studying. Unfortunately: life, kids, work all got in the way of me studying for it and I just never really started.

Fast forward to 2021, I've been going back and forth on getting a certification, part of me really wants to complete the OSCP, but in my current role it's unlikely to be much use. I then saw a post on Twitter about a new Discord server that will be hosting study groups for OSCP, CISSP and other security related certifications. I immediately signed up and joined the CISSP study group, while introducing myself I realized that many others in the group had already booked their exams, and it was something I had never done. As it turns out watching $900 CAD leave your bank account is a pretty good motivator for studying.

As of right now on August 19, 2021 I will sit to write the CISSP exam.

I've begun to develop my study plan which I'll share here once it's completed later this week. In addition to all of this; the CISSP exam is undergoing changes on May 1, 2021 so while my book is based on the old exam, I've had to gather additional resources for the changes in the form of LinkedIn training videos by Mike Chapple on Lynda.com and I'm working on a reference sheet comparing the exam outlines, which I will also share here.

With the pending changes to the exam I am also contemplating moving my exam date ahead to April, but given I'm a single mom to 2 young kids half of the time, I don't want to over commit myself. Once I develop my study plan and start to work through over the next couple of weeks I should have a better idea of the viability of taking the exam earlier.