Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Don't expect to learn anything
Comment: I hate to be difficult, but this is an awful, mediocre book.
I'll keep it simple and factual:
- This book is horrendously inaccurate. Some chapters are OK - Crypto approaches 90%. Some are terrible. Telco and Network Security was maybe 30% accurate.
- Shon does not understand a great deal of the material that she is presenting. Examples that stick in my mind are "what is a race condition" and "why do we do processing on a smart card". Tracing the references, it becomes plainly obvious where Shon has paraphrased without comprehending the (very important!) subtleties of the subject.
- A mechanical point, but important nonetheless: when a new idea is explained, it is explained using all of the jargon and assuming all understanding first. Afterwards, the lower-level understanding is filled in. This makes it very difficult to follow - you constantly need to move back and forth to get the full picture.
- It's extremely verbose and conversational. I believe this is inappropriate for a topic area where correctness and precision is crucial. A previous reviewer commented on the jokes inline with the material. I probably missed a lot of the inline jokes, mistaking them for factual errors.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture. I bought the book to get an understanding of where my knowledge was lacking in advance of taking the exam, and it served that purpose. The obvious and consistent factual errors made it difficult for me to actually believe anything, however - I found myself looking things up on Wikipedia (of all places!) when I needed clarification on a topic.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Read, But...
Comment: Ms. Harris' book is written in a more conversational style than your average technical read, but don't forget you will be tested on the official ISC2 materials. I recommend their book for studying and Ms. Harris' book as a supplement, not a substitute.
Now less than 12 hours away from taking the test, I found many of the post-chapter questions to be not well-formed, though much the same can be said about the ISC2 workbook. It is evident the human factors practioners (those who actually study how to write good questions) have not vetted these.
The CD that comes with Ms. Harris's book is somewhat better. By the way, the 4th Ed. cover has a blue field, not a red one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Faster Than a Speeding Bullet
Comment: Wonderfully quick response and shipping time. Nice to have a request for any comments.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Overly wordy novel on CISSP
Comment: This book is presented in novel format where huge paragraphs dominate.
People don't mentally store information in paragraph format; they store it in bullets or chunks of data so you first have to read the paragraph, then deduce the bullets for mental storage. It's weird but I think most books are written like this.
There are endless stories about security using sometimes inappropriate metaphors for security which don't always equate to the technology at hand.
Also, the chapters aren't laid out in the 10 Domains covered by the CISSP exam so you have to jump around to go through the domains.
By comparison, the Sybex CISSP book does a worse job because the chapters aren't even named in relation to what the ten CISSP domains are so you have to guess which chapter goes to which domain.
There is good use of graphics but there is a lot of extra information not on the exam so if you're looking for a concise technical review of CISSP exam material, look elsewhere.
PS the Shon Harris videos are as long and drawn out.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wouldn't have passed without it!
Comment: I can honestly say that if it weren't for this book I probably would not have passed my CISSP exam. Unlike other prep-guides, Shon engages the reader and keeps their attention. Also, this book doesn't read like a "read this book and pass an exam" book. It reads like a security book which just so happens to teach you the contents of the CISSP CBK. Good work and congrats on the 4th edition.
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