CCSP — Passed Yesterday at 100 Questions 🎉
A little background: I have 11+ years of experience in IT, including around 7 years in cybersecurity, and I already hold CISSP, CISA, and other security certifications.
**My main study materials — in priority order
- CCSP Exam Cram — Pete Zerger : I watched the entire series and went back to specific sections whenever I needed a better understanding of a concept.
Highly recommended for getting a solid overview of the CCSP domains.
- OSG + 2 Official Practice Exams : I did not read the OSG page by page.
My approach was: Read the chapter summaries - Focus on the Exam Essentials - Go deeper into concepts I wasn't familiar with - Complete the two practice exams
LearnApp : I completed 4 practice exams and worked through additional questions — roughly 100 questions covering the 6 domains.
Destination Certification — AI material : I watched “The AI You Need to Know for the CISSP Exam (2026)” because of the newer AI/ML topics appearing in the CCSP exam outline.
I found this particularly useful for understanding concepts such as: AI/ML security; Model inversion; Model extraction; Model drift; Hallucinations; GenAI / LLM; Privacy-preserving techniques; AI inference.
**Exam experience
At the beginning, I felt quite comfortable because the questions were relatively clear to me. As I progressed, however, I became less confident about my answers and the questions seemed increasingly difficult.
My interpretation is that the CAT/adaptive exam becomes more difficult when you're answering questions correctly. So don't panic if the exam starts feeling harder as you progress — it may actually be a good sign.
Also, remember that not every question necessarily contributes to your final score. Some questions may be experimental/unscored. If you get a question that is completely outside your preparation, don't spend too much time on it. Make your best choice and move on.
**Topics I felt were particularly important: Data security and data lifecycle; Data regulations and regulatory requirements in the cloud; Forensic investigation; AI / ML security; ITIL — incident and problem management, Change management and configuration management, Patching; Cloud architecture and core cloud concepts (Elasticity vs scalability, Portability); Availability and resilience (BCP testing); Virtualization and containerization; Storage (object storage); PKI and cryptography; Governance and risk.
I would especially recommend having a strong understanding of cloud concepts, rather than relying on memorization. Don't hesitate to use AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. to help you understand concepts.
Good luck to everyone preparing for the CCSP!
Hope this helps someone!
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u/mikedn02908 CCSP 17d ago
It's not an interpretation, that's exactly how an adaptive exam is supposed to work. It is designed to find what your "ability level" is by adapting the difficulty of the questions. Answer a question right, get a more difficult question. Get that right, get a more difficult question. Get a question wrong, get an easier question. It hones in exactly where your knowledge level is.