FROM THE AUTHOR

Thank you for investing your resources in this ninth edition of the CISSP All-in-One Exam Guide. I am confident you’ll find it helpful, not only as you prepare for the CISSP exam, but as a reference in your future professional endeavors. That was one of the overarching goals of Shon Harris when she wrote the first six editions and is something I’ve strived to uphold in the last three. It is not always easy, but I think you’ll be pleased with how we’ve balanced these two requirements.

(ISC)² does a really good job of grounding the CISSP Common Body of Knowledge (CBK) in real-world applications, but (let’s face it) there’s always a lot of room for discussion and disagreements. There are very few topics in cybersecurity (or pretty much any other field) on which there is universal agreement. To balance the content of this book between exam preparation and the murkiness of real-world applications, we’ve included plenty of comments and examples drawn from our experiences.

I say “our experiences” deliberately because the voice of Shon remains vibrant, informative, and entertaining in this edition, years after her passing. I’ve preserved as many of her insights as possible while ensuring the content is up to date and relevant. I also strove to maintain the conversational tone that was such a hallmark of her work. The result is a book that (I hope) reads more like an essay (or even a story) than a textbook but is grounded in good pedagogy. It should be easy to read but still prepare you for the exam.

Speaking of the exam, the changes that (ISC)² made to the CBK in 2021 are not dramatic but are still significant. Each domain was tweaked in some way, and seven of the eight domains had multiple topics added (domain 1 was the exception here). These changes, coupled with the number of topics that were growing stale in the eighth edition of this book, prompted me to completely restructure this edition. I tore each domain and topic down to atomic particles and then re-engineered the entire book to integrate the new objectives, which are listed in Table 1.

Table 1 CBK 2021: New Objectives

Note that some of these objectives were implicit in the previous (2018) version of the CBK and were therefore covered in the eighth edition of this book. The fact that they are now explicit is an indication of their increased importance both in the exam and in the real world. (Please pay particular attention to these as you prepare for the exam.) All in all, this ninth edition is significantly different (and improved) when compared to the previous one. I think you’ll agree. Thank you, again, for investing in this ninth edition.