Trouble Spots
There are 90 to 110 questions listed for this exam even though I got the full 110 questions on my exam. You have 120 minutes to do these, so ideally you want to plan for one minute per question. You cannot mark and review these questions, so you have to answer every question in order with the final result being displayed after you complete the final question.
Time management is therefore key to your success; if you run out of time you will lose marks for the questions you have not answered. Some of the questions can be quite in-depth with a lot of reading to be done, so these may take you longer than the allocated minute. Balance these with a quick response to the simple one-word or one-sentence multiple choice questions that will also be on the test.
Rather than clock watching on every question, I find it good to break the questions into quarter blocks and the time into quarter blocks. At the end of every quarter block I check the time and also have a quick break (if time permits) to breathe, maybe stand up, and clear my head for the next quarter.
This is an expert level exam, and I have found that there is no book in print that has all of the information you need in order to pass this exam. I know this is a contentious issue, but I do believe that it should be able to pull from your real-world knowledge. This does disadvantage the junior engineers who are very well certified and do not have as much industry experience, but I do believe that the knowledge you gain over time is of great benefit, and this exam does appear to test you on this by throwing in some real curve ball questions.
Obviously, these curve ball questions are quite hard to prepare for, but if you work in security day-in, day-out as I do, and keep up with the security news and technologies, you will be fine.