With our question bank fully updated, it’s time to update the study guide, which is freely available at no cost to both visitors and members alike. We do this so that candidates throughout the world can benefit from our mnemonics and recommendations that we know are valuable. That said, we’re happy to announce that our Super Study Guide (sm) is updated through Domain 8 (as of 10/21/2022). As mentioned in our educational videos, only a small amount of the previous CBK was removed from the domains – most of what changed was a vast amount of new content and terminology that candidates are now forced to learn. We are working as fast as possible to update both our study materials (including coming up with new mnemonics), and create new and even more challenging questions.
We’re now moving on to Domain 8, and one of the most interesting things we’ve noticed while going through the materials is that the domain allocations and the amount of new content doesn’t align. What does this mean? Well, aside from ISC2 making this journey as convoluted as humanly possible, it basically means that the domain allocation and the CBK are totally unrelated. The only link between the two is that they draw from the same mass of “stuff” i.e. content. Confused? Don’t worry, we were too at first…
To illustrate our point, ISC2 indicated in the latest exam outline that the Domain 3 allocation remains at 13%, however, while reviewing the materials from ISC2 we noticed that there are at least 77 new concepts to learn in Domain 3, each of which could easily be on the exam, and each of which requires at least one paragraph to explain, if not an entire page (or chapter). So the domain allocations are simply how much you’ll be tested on from that category of “stuff”. The CBK itself can be however bloated they want it to be, whether it’s 1,000 or 5,000 pages.
You can visualize this by thinking of a cake. I can make a cake the same size as my last cake, and add 77 new ingredients if I want – this is the Domain 3 CBK ‘contents’. However, the slice I give you will still only be 13 inches (yes, it’s a BIG cake). For Domain 4, which was reduced from 14% to 13%, it’s the same concept. Your piece of cake is no longer 14 inches, but now 13 inches. ISC2 can add thousands of new topics (or ingredients) to the same cake, of the same size, but change their mind on how big of a slice you get.
Our main point in bringing this up is to simply say that the process of updating the study guide is arduous since there are so many new topics. Our goal is to be thorough and include everything because as many of you have told us, anything in the CBK is testable. Our current focus will be writing new questions and creating new and free educational videos to both promote and enhance our content.
Thank you all very much for your patience if you rely on our free tools. We are (and continue to be) a work in progress.