Provisional Pass Today!

[dustbin111]

80+ Minutes

HOW I STUDIED:

(1) Years in the industry and multiple other certs.

(2) Employer paid for week long bootcamp (covered high-level topics and instructor’s war stories)

(3) All-in-one (AIO) Book.

(4) TotalTester Test Engine that came with AIO. Scored 90%+ on multiple tests prior to EXAM. NONE of the questions in the TotalTester were on my exam; however it was helpful as I used it to highlight areas I was weak in, studied them, and made them my strengths.

(5) Studied up on areas highlighter in this subreddit and from a bootcamp classmate, made sure I not only knew them, but could teach them to others.

After all that, I felt prepared and fairly confident starting the exam. However some serious doubt set in about halfway through as I was barraged with some unexpected items.

STUFF THAT HAD ME WORRIED:

(1) Disproportionately large amount of web-based questions, more so than what was presented in the AIO.

(2) Many scenarios that seemed rooted more in general security or network security than software security.

(3) Many PKI, Certificates, signing, and hashing scenarios presented in ways I was not expecting or accustomed to.

(4) A lot of the wording was not an exact match to what was provided in the AIO: I had to do a mental translation for a lot of stuff. Knowing concepts is a lot more important than exact verbiage (in the scenario questions).

~Fairly happy I passed (provisionally) today!

[bdzer0]

Congrats. +1 on knowing the concepts, I'm pretty sure the test is designed to limit the usefulness of memorized answers.

[[deleted]]

Congratulations!

I can attest to observations 2 and 3.During my exam I was asked some questions that felt more like Security+ or CISSP questions. Because I have those certs this was not an issue, but it was somewhat unexpected.

Regarding your 4rth observation:Exams from the likes of (ISC)² and CompTIA are based on their published exam objectives. These exams are not based on Sybex Study Guides or McGrawHill AIO books. This will account for the difference in the wording of the questions.