Study Resources

ISP Exam Test Sources & Study References – NEW

These resources are applicable for those taking the exam.

General Resources for the ISP Exam

ISP Source Materials

The following documents are posted in Prometric and will be available when you take the exam at a Prometric site. They contain all the items linked below. Using these documents in your study program will help familiarize you with the information they contain and how to navigate within the documents to find the information for which you are looking during the exam.

Security Administration Category

Document Security Category

Information Systems Security Category

Physical Security Category

Personnel Security Category

International Security Category

Classification Category

Security Education Category

Audits & Self-Assessments Category

Special Security Information Category

Counterintelligence

COMSEC

Intellectual Property

OPSEC

NISP Systems Category

DISS

NISS

eApp

eMASS

Study References

The below materials are additional materials that may be used to increase your breadth of knowledge on various topics, clarify your understanding of the information, and reinforce and sustain your retention of the information.

Study References

The below materials are additional materials that may be used to increase your breadth of knowledge on various topics, clarify your understanding of the information, and reinforce and sustain your retention of the information.

Preparing for the ISP® Certification Exam

To prepare yourself to take the ISP® Certification exam, you may want to consider:

  • Participating in the ISP® Exam Preparation Program. The program will consist of weekly WebEx calls. Facilitators will lead candidates in a guided study of the NISPOM and other reference materials.The weekly calls will be recorded and will be made available for on-demand viewing one week after the live call. The cost is $50.00 for members, $100 for non-members. Find out more about the program here, or e-mail the Lead Mentor Team at et-epp@classmgmt.com.
  • The test is “open book”. That means you will be allowed to look up answers within the references provided. Keep in mind that there is not enough time to look up every question on the exam. There are a total of 110 questions, and 150 minutes in which to complete the exam. Prometric allows organizations to include a maximum of 10 reference documents to be available during the exam, so in order to make the most critical ones available to candidates, some of them have been combined into a single document. It would be beneficial to use these combined documents in your preparations for the exam so you will be familiar with how these links within the combined documents work. Being proficient in the use of these combined references WILL save you time during the exam.

These references can be found here.

Free Government Security Courses

These courses are not strictly part of the exam question sources. However, they do provide training on appropriate security topics and you might want to consider taking them. They will help freshen up study and test-taking skills for candidates who have been away from school for a while. You should not consider them a substitute for reading/studying the sources listed above, especially a cover to cover reading of the NISPOM.