How to pass ISACA\'s CISA. A tried and tested method.

1. Passing CISA Tried and Tested Method. Based on interviews conducted in the United Arab Emirates 1 Anil Babladi

2. CISA? Certified Information Systems Auditor Exam owners: ISACA Pre-Req for Exam: None Pre-Req for Certification: 5 years of Audit experience. Waivers for certification: Please visit ISACA.org 2 Anil Babladi

3. Exam Details Held every year twice (June and Dec). Percentile based exam. Results released after 8 weeks. Do not bother about calculation for marks, just aim to study hard and smart. 200 questions. MC Questions. 4 hrs. No eatables, phones allowed. Hydrate yourself so that you can think properly. 3 Anil Babladi

4. CISA EXAM, WHAT IS NEEDED.. FROM ISACA CISA REVIEW MANUAL, LATEST. QUESTION AND ANSWERS. LATEST. FROM OUTSIDE WIKIPEDIA 4 Anil Babladi

5. CISA Review Manual (RM) A gold mine of information. Make sure you do not even leave a single sentence unread. Attempt all questions in the RM and all scenario based questions. Do not cram. This is not a cramming exam. Full six months preparation gives you time to assimilate the material. Four months to be dedicated completely to RM. Order of preference: Well, it may be based on the person but the best way to pass the exam is to cover those which are higher marks in exam. 5 Anil Babladi

6. CISA Review Manual (RM) Order of preference: Chapter 5 to start with. Finish each and every line and understand it. Do all questions and review all answers and explanations. Sometimes questions are framed from the explanations you study. Hence make sure all questions are done. Then CISA QnA. Chapter 5. Finish all QnA and explanations. Do all of them until you get 100%. If you get in excess of 500/800 in this and score decent in other chapters then you are mostly thru. Then Chapter 3,4 as above. Then Chapter 6 and that finishes technical chapters. Chapter 2, last but one and chapter 1 final. 1,2, & 6 are scoring chapters and aim is to score 100% in those chapters. Try to finish everything above in 4 months. These 4 months might be too long, but it gives you optimum experience to be able to attend to interviews also after you pass exams. 6 Anil Babladi

7. CISA – Final Two months Even though QnA has been done one complete time, it has to be done at least three times before the exam. Take the first exam. Finish 200 questions. Do not take more than 4 hours. Go through explanations of both right and wrong answers. Identify which chapters you are falling short. Then review CISA RM and then QnA for that chapter. 7 Anil Babladi

8. CISA – A month before Second and third exams in the same way. Finally there are 825 questions in the QnA. Attempt 100 at a time after third exam. Although this entire presentation says more about ISACA and ISACA products alone, believe me, you do not need anything more. Wiki is only used when you do not understand a basic concept like Encryption. A word of note: All copyright terms belong to respective companies. 8 Anil Babladi