I used the 'look inside' option at Amazon and tried 'cryptography'... Well... to my surprise, the first couple of pages felt like reading Shon Harris' "CISSP All-in-one Exam Guide". It was only a slightly condensed version of her book but the attempts at humor and light-heartedness were expanded. "Hmmmm...", I thought. Shon must have condensed her "All-in-one" and repackaged it as a "... for Dummies" product. But, then, I looked at the front page and I couldn't find her name there. She wasn't one of the 2 authors.

This is very interesting.

Nutshell review - If you want a very fast, high level, quick, shallow, big picture overview of the CISSP exam then this will do. However, you will not pass the exam on this alone.

This book is suitable both as a starter and final review material.
For newbies, it provides a bird's eye view of CISSP and quickly
get you into the mood. For the more experienced IT professionals,
it provides a quick summary of knowledge points.

I bought it two weeks before the CISSP exam ... it helped me clearing my head.

For more extensive coverage, you can look for other CISSP `tome' books, such as "Handbook of Information Security Management". My advice is: don't read too many books. CISSP exam is more about security common sense, less about those nitty gritty details. Most of exam takers have a full-time job, it's important to focus the energy/time wisely. It's very hard to read extensively for couple of months ... It took me about one month of dedicated study ... your mileage may vary

Good day to all,

Once again the CISSP for Dummies book offers a nice, concise, and to the point overview of the CISSP CBK. I would definitively recommend this book as a second step in your studies. It has lots of tips and tricks that will most certainly help you on the real exam. The book is very well done and it even has some jokes to make some of the very dry subjects a bit easier to digest.

This book is probably NOT enough by itself for a beginner, it would have to be supplemented if you don't have 8 or more years of experience in the security field. However, it is a great tool to use for experienced people and people who wish to do one final review of the key points within the 10 domains wihout having to spend three weeks reading some of the other very extensive book.

This book combine with the CISSP All In One from Shon Harris would give you an edge in preparing to pass the CISSP exam.

I strongly recommend it to all.

[...]

This book summarizes all of the main contents of CISSP. It is a simpler version of other books with full contents. But do not rely on it 100%. Use it as a preliminary study so that you can grasp the idea of CISSP exam.

Pretty good book, well organized and fairly easy to follow considering the complexity of some of the information.
I'll try to update the review after I take the Exam

I found the book to be an excellent companion to the All-in-One by Shon Harris. Great for review of knowledge, or as a springboard into the material covered by the CBK.

This book is a must for initial review. It covers all 10 areas of what needs to be studied in a clear and easy to understand way. It is not, however, detail enough to get you pass the test. You need something more detailed and more sample test questions.

CISSP -- Certified Information Systems Security Professional

After reading this book you can't be considered a Dummy any more. Nor, however, do I think you'll be ready to call yourself a Professional.

The real strength of this book is that is is so simple, so well written, so complete in its subject coverage that giving it a quick read will give you the overall view of where you want to be when you are ready to call yourself a Professional. This book is also quite inexpensive when compared with some of the other exam preparation guides, and especially when compared to some of the classes offered either in person or on CD.

The book is organized about like you would expect with a separate chapter on each of the ten domains that are covered on the exam. There are a number of other useful security certifications such as those put out by Check Point, Cisco and others. He covers each of these to the point of at least letting you know what they are, i.e. the Check Point certifications cover the use of the Check Point Firewall products. The book is supplied with a CD that includes additional sample testing and other materials.

Recommendation: Read this book first for an overall view, then study one of the harder books.

CISSP -- Certified Information Systems Security Professional

After reading this book you can't be considered a Dummy any more. Nor, however, do I think you'll be ready to call yourself a Professional.

The real strength of this book is that is is so simple, so well written, so complete in its subject coverage that giving it a quick read will give you the overall view of where you want to be when you are ready to call yourself a Professional. This book is also quite inexpensive when compared with some of the other exam preparation guides, and especially when compared to some of the classes offered either in person or on CD.

The book is organized about like you would expect with a separate chapter on each of the ten domains that are covered on the exam. There are a number of other useful security certifications such as those put out by Check Point, Cisco and others. He covers each of these to the point of at least letting you know what they are, i.e. the Check Point certifications cover the use of the Check Point Firewall products. The book is supplied with a CD that includes additional sample testing and other materials.

Recommendation: Read this book first for an overall view, then study one of the harder books.

I just recieved word last week I passed my CISSP exam, and I used this book among others to study for it. Let me give you a little background: I've been in IT for 10 years, starting as phone support, and moved on to desktop support, LAN administration, Exchange administrator, and eventually became my company's ISSO, then moved on to become an Information Assurance (Security) Engineer on one of our larger programs. Consequently, I had real world experience in many of the domains already.

Despite this, I think if I had only read this book, I would have failed the test. It is an excellent starter, since you can sit down and read it cover to cover in a day (plenty of white space, large font etc.) and you will get a good outline of the ten domains. But it just doesn't go into enough detail to keep you from getting tripped up on the test. A Section that is particularly lacking is cryptography. I don't think a single question on the test would have been answered from the knowlege I gained in that section.

The CD-Rom practice test is also too easy. I finished the book, took the 260 question test immediately afterwards, and scored ~95%. I then went online to the cccure.org website quizzer (which I highly recommend) and scored a 65% on their test!

Bottom line, if some one else has it, borrow it for your first read, it won't hurt and is a good way to get started, just don't stop there!

A book I highly reccomend is the CISSP prep guide by Krutz

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/047126802X/ref=cm_lm_fullview_prod_6/103-8873493-6496642?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155

The advanced questions at the end of each chapter are excellent. Remember, (ISC)2 jealously guards the actual test questions, and changes them all the time, so brain dumps are a waste in my humble opinion, but this book closely matches the conceptual depth and breadth you need to be confident of passing the exam.

I sat for and passed the CISSP test in January 2006. I used the following resources to help in passing the CISSP:

Shon Harris - All-in-One - 3rd Edition - 30%
Official ISC Guide to the CISSP Exam - 15%
Kurtz - CISSP Prep Guide - Gold Edition - 10%
CISSP for Dummies - 5%
Cccure.org - 25%
Other resources - 15%

"CISSP for Dummies" by Miller is a decent tool at preparing for the exam. I had thought this book would be a great cram book (if possible for the CISSP), where the `core' topics would be documented. After referencing the book, I do not feel this to be true and stopped referring to the book after the first few chapters. I did not find any typos or editorial mistakes, so while I do not think the book is necessarily wrong, I just do not feel it is nearly enough to pass the CISSP. Everything found in "CISSP for Dummies" can be found in other books/material. Please see my other reviews to see how I rated other books that I used to help pass the CISSP.

I give this book 3 pings out of 5:
!!..!

This book is a good resource for keeping yourself focused when preparing for the exam. The chapters are not "in depth reviews" of the 10 Domains, but they do a good job of keep your mind in the study mode. I did like the accompanying CD which contains a series of questions and answers that can be read on a PDA. These were also helpful to stay focused. I would not recommend this book as the sole source for anyone preparing for the exam. For that you should consider the Official (ISC2) Guide or the Shon Harris All-In-One book.

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.

This book is an overview. It does not cover the details that are required for CISSP. I found more helpful resources (PDF, PPT, doc)) on the internet free of cost.

Save some money and buy Shon Harris's or Wiley's Exam Prep Guide instead. That is what I did.