I just took the CISSP exam this week and wanted to come back and give my thoughts on this book. I was fairly disappointed in the lack of detail that this book provided, and wouldn’t recommend it as your single study resource. In my opinion, this book lacks the amount of detail that the average person would need to get their CISSP certification. I used two resouces while studying for the exam. (this one and The CISSP Prep Guide) I thought the prep guide was better written and I also liked the advanced question and answer sections that that book has. If I was starting over again, I wouldn’t use CISSP for Dummies as one of my study resources.

For you to understand my rather positive rating of this book, I feel that I must describe the context of my decision to read it. I’m a pretty experienced software developer (10+ years, network engineer (2 years), & solution architect (5 years), who recently accepted a position of Security Director for a large corporation. To educate myself for my new role I searched for good, well rounded books on the subject. I found CISSP books very attractive as they provide a structured 20,000 foot view of information security. I chose CISSP for dummies as my first book so I could get this high level view as quickly as possible.

The good:
The book satisfied my objective. It was indeed a quick read… at least as far as CISSP books go. The 320 or so pages with a big font & white-space allow one to read this book in a small fraction of the time it takes to read the official ISC guide or Shon Harris’s book (though both of these provide a more complete & accurate education). The author does a good job hitting the subject at a high level with clear text. I especially like the way this book wraps up business continuity planning.

The bad:
Don’t rely on this book to prepare yourself for the CISSP exam. After finishing this book I scored >80%, or high enough to make one think you could pass the test. After reading Shon’s book (CISSP Certification All-In-One) I realized I really didn’t know that much yet. I have since earned my CISSP & don’t think the dummies book alone would have been enough for me.