The Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) was created to address the growing need for an industry-wide standardized certification program back in the early 1980s. The International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium was then formed after the Special Interest Group for Computer Security managed to pull together a few interested organizations. Their goal was to create what is now known as CISSP. So you’ve decided it’s time to take a CISSP training course, but where do you start? How do you begin? Let’s take a look at some of the options that are available to you.

Are You A Beginner?

Entry-level certifications may be what you need if your career path includes CISSP certification. By starting off with the fundamentals and pre-training courses you’ll be better informed and better prepared to qualify for the certification when you need to take the test. There are a variety of courses that will help you to gain better knowledge in core fundamentals pertaining to the CISSP pre-requisites. You will want to plan on Information Security work of some kind in order to better your knowledge in this area. This includes studying materials, taking courses, and even professional networking.

Which Training Course Is Right?

There are a variety of training courses to choose from and the choice can quickly become daunting. You’ll want to make sure that the course you pick is both reputable and affordable; you can investigate this by doing some simple internet searches. You should be wary of courses that offer “100% guarantee pass” type of incentives because there is usually fine print and this is almost always a ploy to get you interested. Not to say that these courses are of a lower quality, but it’s never advisable to have this promotional tool make your decision. That said, there are some extraordinary training courses available to choose from.

Know What You’re Getting Into

Be certain that the CISSP training course you decide upon addresses specific testing strategies. This is especially important as the CISSP exam has much more to do with general expertise, requiring practical knowledge, rather than a simple question-answer exam. Knowing what you are getting into and preparing appropriately are very important aspects of that you should consider when making your final decision. You don’t want a cookie cutter course, you want access to someone who has real knowledge, training, and is passionate about both expressing and teaching the knowledge.

Regardless of how you decide to approach training for the CISSP certification there are some fundamentals that will be necessary to maximize your success. Apart from a training course it is always advisable to implement your own study process and stick to it!