CISSP Certification Exam Prep Course vs PMP Exam Prep Seminar - Complete Exam Coverage with 35 PDUs

The course covers all eight CISSP CBK domains as defined by (ISC)²: Security and Risk Management, Asset Security, Security Architecture and Engineering, Communication and Network Security, Identity and Access Management, Security Assessment and Testing, Security Operations, and Software Development Security. Chapple structures each domain systematically, beginning with foundational concepts and building toward the scenario-based reasoning that the CISSP adaptive exam rewards. Learners consistently report that Chapple's lectures decode the conceptual density of the Official Study Guide and reframe key ideas in ways that make the most challenging domain content — particularly risk quantification, cryptography, and PKI — accessible without oversimplifying. His background as both an active security practitioner and academic means domain coverage contextualises theory within real organisational security decisions rather than presenting isolated facts. The main content gap noted by experienced candidates is the volume of built-in practice questions. The video instruction is comprehensive, but most successful CISSP candidates pair it with a dedicated practice test resource such as the Official (ISC)² CISSP Practice Tests, also co-authored by Chapple, or a third-party platform such as Boson ExSim.

Mike Chapple, Ph.D. holds the CISSP, CISM, CySA+, PenTest+, and Security+ certifications and serves as Teaching Professor of IT, Analytics and Operations at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. He co-authored the Official (ISC)² CISSP Study Guide (now in its tenth edition) and the Official (ISC)² CISSP Practice Tests, and has written more than 50 technology books and produced over 150 Udemy and LinkedIn Learning courses. His teaching style transforms dense regulatory and conceptual material into clear, structured instruction without sacrificing technical accuracy. Students consistently describe him as "calm," "methodical," "patient," and "one of the best technical instructors on any platform." His explanation of the CISSP managerial mindset — thinking as a security manager rather than a hands-on technician when selecting exam answers — is cited by numerous first-time passers as the single most valuable insight they received from any study resource. CertMike community testimonials note that his course is "far more helpful than a $2,000 boot camp."

At Udemy's standard promotional pricing of $15–25 (promotions occur near-weekly), the course represents exceptional value relative to the $749 CISSP exam fee and the $2,000–$3,500 price range of in-person boot camps. Multiple learners in Reddit's r/cissp community explicitly describe abandoning boot camp registrations in favour of Chapple's course after comparing outcomes reported by peers who used each approach. The course pairs naturally with the Official (ISC)² CISSP Study Guide that Chapple co-authored, creating an integrated study ecosystem where book and course reinforce each other at a combined cost still well below most single-day boot camp fees. For a credential with transformative career impact — median salaries for CISSP holders exceed $120,000 in the United States — the cost-to-certification-value ratio is unusually favourable.

Multiple learners report that the CISSP preparation process through Chapple's course produced a materially more comprehensive view of organisational security than their prior professional experience had provided. The eight CBK domains together constitute a breadth-first survey of enterprise security governance, and working through them systematically often surfaces gaps in candidates' understanding that were invisible from within their specialised day-to-day roles. Security professionals in roles such as security architect, CISO, security manager, and senior analyst specifically credit the course with reinforcing enterprise security governance frameworks — NIST CSF, ISO 27001, SOC 2 — in ways that improved their day-to-day security decision-making well beyond the exam context. The risk management and security assessment domains are cited as particularly rich in immediately applicable content.

Mike Chapple maintains a companion platform at certmike.com where he facilitates free 90-day CISSP study groups. These structured group programmes — featuring weekly schedules, live Q&A webinars, and community forums — are cited by multiple graduates as a significant differentiator that addresses the primary failure mode of solo CISSP self-study: losing momentum across the months-long preparation period. Within Udemy, Q&A response times are variable, a structural issue across the platform rather than specific to this course. The CertMike study group fills much of this gap. Learners seeking broader community discussion also gravitate toward r/cissp on Reddit, which frequently recommends Chapple's resources as a primary study tool. The slight fragmentation between Udemy Q&A and CertMike community is the main friction point noted by learners.

The course is one of the most complete PMP libraries on Udemy — 290 lectures across roughly 24.5 hours, mapped to the PMBOK Guide and split into the PMI exam's three domains (around 20 hours on ways of working, 9 on business acumen, 6 on power skills). Reviewers praise the depth of the worked case studies, the Earned Value Management and ITTO walkthroughs, and the formula coverage. The recurring content caveat is that some material reads as paraphrasing the PMBOK Guide and that the PMBOK 6-to-7 transition left a few coverage seams.

Joseph Phillips is the strongest part of the package and the reason most reviewers recommend it. A McGraw-Hill/AMA/Dummies Press project-management author with 25+ years of consulting and training experience, certified as PMP, PMI-ACP, ITIL, Project+ and a Certified Technical Trainer, he is repeatedly described as clear, articulate and good at breaking complex PMI concepts into understandable parts. The one consistent knock is that he does not answer messages — there is no real instructor interaction beyond the Udemy Q&A forum.

List price runs higher but the course is almost always on sale around $15-25 with lifetime access, and it delivers a genuine 35-contact-hour certificate that satisfies the mandatory PMI education requirement to sit the PMP exam — something most learners would otherwise pay a bootcamp hundreds or thousands of dollars for. That certificate alone makes it one of the best-value ways to clear the PMP eligibility hurdle, with the honest deduction being that you will likely buy a separate exam simulator for practice volume.

The weakest dimension and the one nearly every critical source flags. The course includes section quizzes, formula quizzes and two full-length 200-question practice exams, which is not nothing, but reviewers agree it is not enough question volume to be exam-ready and recommend buying a dedicated PMP simulator on top. There are also repeated complaints about quiz questions that are not covered in the lectures and a handful of wrong or unrevised answer keys.

The course has hundreds of learners crediting it with passing the PMP exam, often on the first attempt, and several describe a workable plan of pairing each PMBOK chapter with the matching lecture over about a month. The deduction is that almost no one passes on this course alone — the consistent advice across sources is to supplement with a separate question bank or simulator, so score movement depends on the learner adding practice the course does not fully provide.