When I first decided to pursue CISSP, I had already spent more than a decade in cybersecurity.
I had done penetration testing, sat in SOC shifts at 3 a.m., responded to incidents under pressure, and fixed more vulnerabilities than I could remember. Like many technical professionals, I had a simple assumption:
“CISSP must be an advanced technical certification.”
I was wrong.
The real turning point didn’t happen when I passed the exam.
It happened months later, during a security review meeting.
Instead of jumping straight into controls and tools, I paused and asked a different question:
❓ “Does the business actually need this risk eliminated completely?”
That single question marked a shift in how I thought about security.