CISSP: 5 Brutal Truths: Why 30 Years of Cybersecurity Experience Trumps Any Exam

The Myth of the CISSP Badge

Let’s be honest – the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification has long been considered the gold standard in cybersecurity. It’s respected, difficult to earn, and heavily promoted by recruiters who often treat it as the minimum requirement for senior security roles.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: a piece of paper doesn’t make you a capable cybersecurity professional. It proves you can study theory – not that you can defend a live environment when the sirens go off at 2 am.

After three decades in information security, I’ve seen every flavour of certified and non-certified professional imaginable. The pattern is clear: the best defenders are those who’ve been in the trenches, not those who’ve simply memorised the (ISC)² Common Body of Knowledge.

CISSP: A Framework, Not a Field Manual

The CISSP exam spans eight domains, from Security and Risk Management to Software Development Security. It’s broad, but that’s also the problem. Real security incidents don’t arrive neatly categorised into exam domains.

The certification tests your ability to remember controls, frameworks, and acronyms. It doesn’t test your ability to detect lateral movement, triage a ransomware outbreak, or communicate risk in plain English to a panicking board.

For that, you need something the exam can’t measure: experience.

Experience Isn’t Memorised – It’s Earned

A professional with 30 years of cybersecurity experience has lived through the full evolution of the threat landscape – from dial-up viruses and floppy-borne malware to AI-driven phishing and supply-chain compromises.

That kind of experience can’t be condensed into multiple-choice questions. It’s built through failure, pressure, and accountability – not by ticking boxes.

You can’t teach the instinct to spot a breach forming, interpret anomalous traffic patterns, or negotiate incident impact with executives. Those are earned behaviours developed through time, exposure, and resilience – not textbooks.

The Dark Truth: Hackers Don’t Sit Exams

Meanwhile, the people most successful at exploiting systems don’t hold certifications at all. Nefarious actors aren’t studying for the CISSP – they’re studying you.

They don’t sit in classrooms, and they certainly don’t pay exam fees. Their motivation isn’t a line on a résumé – it’s money, influence, and impact. They learn through experimentation, failure, and collaboration in underground forums that move faster than any certification syllabus ever could.

Every exploit they build, every zero-day they discover, every defensive bypass they perfect – that’s practical, hands-on mastery. It’s messy, unethical, and undeniably effective.

And yet, the industry continues to value certificates over capability, while adversaries are out-learning us in real time.

Rethinking Cybersecurity Competence

This isn’t an argument against the CISSP – it has its place. It provides structure, terminology, and shared understanding across teams and industries. But the idea that a certification defines competence is dangerously outdated.

The cybersecurity field needs to reward demonstrated skill, measurable outcomes, and adaptability and not just exam success. Practical labs, red-team exercises, and simulated breach scenarios should carry equal (if not greater) weight than theoretical exams.

It’s time we stop equating accreditation with ability. The best security professionals combine learned principles with lived experience, and those without the letters after their name often outperform those who do yet are constantly rejected or sidelined by automated processes or HR vetting systems.

Final Thought

If you’ve got thirty years of battle-tested cybersecurity experience, you don’t need to prove yourself with a certification. The industry should value what truly matters: the ability to protect, recover, and adapt in the face of real-world threats.

Yes, the farcical holy grail of security certs known as the CISSP – “Certified In Sitting, Studying, Passing”.

The CISSP exam is built around memorizing frameworks, definitions, and governance models. Real incidents don’t give you four multiple-choice answers with one “best” option. An attacker doesn’t care if you can recite the 7 layers of the OSI model or list out all the cryptographic algorithms by key length.

When ransomware hits at 3am, nobody is calling you because you can quote NIST 800-53.

They’re asking one question:

“Can you fix it?”