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CISSP in 2026: The Same Outline, With New AI Guidance

What applies to a CISSP sitting in late 2026: the April 2024 outline still in force, ISC2's AI exam guidance, the $749 adaptive exam and what to study this month.

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Rachel Brown
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CISSP in 2026: The Same Outline, With New AI Guidance

A CISSP sitting in late 2026 still uses the April 2024 outline; ISC2 has also announced its successor for April 15, 2027. What it did add for CISSP candidates is guidance on artificial intelligence (AI): a document first published in April, updated in September, and a matching section on the CISSP outline page. Neither changes the domain weights or the objectives you'll be tested against.

The exam you'd sit this month

Book the CISSP for October 2026 and you get the outline that took effect on April 15, 2024, in the adaptive format ISC2 has used for every CISSP language since that date. The exam runs 100 to 150 items in three hours, and the pass mark is 700 out of 1000. ISC2's pricing page lists standard registration at $749 in the Americas and Asia Pacific, with $50 to reschedule and $100 to cancel. You can take it in English, German, Japanese or Spanish at any time, or in Chinese in March, June, September or December. What the current CISSP outline changed sets out what moved in 2024.

You'll sit it at a Pearson VUE test center. ISC2 ran two pilots of online proctoring and concluded that remote delivery with current methods is "an unnecessary risk to the reputation and integrity" of its certifications. Its FAQ says it may run more pilots as delivery technology changes.

A failed attempt means 30 test-free days before the second try, 60 before the third and 90 after that, with four attempts at most in 12 months.

What the AI guidance is

ISC2 published its Exam Guidance for Artificial Intelligence on April 2, 2026. The document maps AI topics onto more than 50 domains and 200 subtasks across all nine of its certification exams. The September 1 update mainly added material on CC, whose new outline started the same day.

The CISSP section is headed "Based on CISSP Exam Outline Effective April 15, 2024". It shows where AI fits inside objectives that already exist. ISC2 added a summary of the same mapping to the CISSP outline page, domain by domain:

  • Domain 1: governance of AI ethics, algorithmic bias, and assessing third-party AI providers
  • Domain 2: training datasets and model weights as assets to classify, and differential privacy
  • Domain 3: secure enclaves for AI computation, defenses against prompt injection, and explainability as a security requirement
  • Domain 4: micro-segmentation and zero trust isolation for AI environments
  • Domain 5: AI agents as non-human identities, behavioral biometrics and adaptive authentication
  • Domain 6: red teaming AI models and testing them against evasion and extraction attacks
  • Domain 7: AI in security orchestration, model drift monitoring and response to adversarial attacks
  • Domain 8: risks in code written by large language models, and the supply chain of machine learning libraries

Read the list as ISC2's account of how the current exam can frame AI questions. It isn't a new syllabus, and the eight weights are the same as in 2024.

What changed around the CISSP

The CCSP outline changed on August 1, 2026 and added two AI objectives; the CCSP outline update covers it. The CC exam got a new outline on September 1, and ISC2 closed its free CC program to new enrollments on May 20, 2026, so CC now costs $199. Neither touches the CISSP directly, though an active CISSP covers the CCSP's whole experience requirement, so the new CCSP outline matters to anyone planning that step.

For CISSP, ISC2 now publishes an upcoming outline effective April 15, 2027. That future change is separate from the AI guidance applicable to a late-2026 sitting. The published CISSP 2027 changes compare the domain weights and explain how to choose the outline for an exam date.

What to do this month

Study to the April 2024 outline. The ISC2 CISSP Official Study Guide, 10th edition (Wiley, 2024), was written for it. Then go through the AI section of the outline page against your notes. Most items are existing ideas applied to a new asset: classification, least privilege, input validation, supply chain risk. Make sure you can answer a question about each one framed around a model, a training dataset or an AI agent.

If your planned sitting is on or after April 15, 2027, use the published upcoming outline to check preparation. For a sitting before that date, use the current outline and its AI guidance. Choose the date around readiness and available study time rather than rushing to avoid the change. Both outlines lead to CISSP, with the applicable experience and certification requirements still to be met.

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