I've been lurking here for months and figured it was time to actually contribute something useful. Took the ISAC exam for the third time last Tuesday and finally passed with an 84. First two attempts I scored a 71 and a 68 — basically the same weak spots showing up both times in the network security and incident response sections.
What finally clicked was ditching the approach of just reading through the official materials and actually forcing myself to work through an ISAC practice test under timed conditions every single day for three weeks. Not just doing questions, but writing down WHY I got things wrong. That habit alone probably added 12-15 points. I also found a solid study guide that broke down the threat intelligence lifecycle in a way that finally made sense to me instead of just memorizing definitions.
Happy to share my notes on the sections I struggled with most. If you're in prep mode right now, the biggest exam tip I can give is don't skip the scenario-based questions in your practice sets — the real exam leans heavily on those.