How I passed the ISO 27001 Lead Implementer exam

Before I took the exam, the research and discovery I made about the exam online are listed below

(a)    It is an open book exam

(b)   There are 40 questions on the exam

(c)    Not as difficult as not being able to pass it.

(d)   No special requirement to take the exam (provided you have undergone the 5 day training by either PECB or BSI).

Upon attempting the exam, now the true facts:

(a)    Pray and pray

(b)   Ensure you attend the 5-day course completely.

(c)    During the 5-day course, please and please, make it as interactive as possible. Participate when the instructor ask questions. My instructor was great.

(d)   Revise all the quizzes, (exercises in case a question might repeat itself). It would prepare your brain to the kind of questions to expect in the exam.

(e)    Just before I forget, the revision quizzes are no match for the real exam.

(f)     Study all the slides and make some jottings to revise. It is about 150 slides per day X 5 = 750 slides.

(g)     It is an open-book exam (but permit me to say that the availability of the material should not be leveraged upon as to a yard stick to passing the exam). I never used it because looking at the questions, it was of no use.

(h)   There are not 40 questions but rather 80 solid questions.

(i)      Whoops.. half of the questions (about 35-40) of the questions are scenario based (big time)

(j)      When I say scenario based, I am not talking of a short scenario. I am talking about a scenario of between 10-15 lines for each scenario based question.

(k)    Some questions that are not scenario-based appear to be straight-forward but folks; you need to do some real thinking outside the box.

(l)      If you have some cyber security skills beforehand (like 3 A’s, CIA triad, their meanings, applications, classes of security controls with correct examples), those would help.

(m) Try to pass through all the questions completely within 2 hrs

(n)   Spend the remaining one hour to go back and review the question you have not concluded an answer on. This is very important.

(o)   Believe me, for some scenario based questions, you need to focus your concentration so that you don’t get lost while still reading the scenario.

(p)   Do not leave you seat as it is proctored live with a proctor who sees you but you cannot see and capable of communicating with you.

(q)    Do not be in a rush to finish.

(r)     I attempted all 80 questions using a first and second pass with about 1 minute 20 seconds left just before I clicked the submit exam button and guess what….

I Passed.