It's far from unprecedented among certified IT professionals to take and pass a certification exam without so much as cracking the cover of a study guide, downloading a single video walkthrough, or sitting through even 60 seconds' worth of anyone's online training course. Many experienced professionals have learned everything they need to know to sail through a given exam just by working in the industry.

Among certified cybersecurity professionals who participated in our recent Security Certification Survey, 38.3 percent did not use any training materials or study aids created by the certification provider to prepare for their most recent certification exam.

In a similar vein, roughly 55 percent of survey respondents did not use any training materials or study aids created by a third-party training provider to prepare for their most recent certification exam. So one key takeaway relating to the various kinds of the certification study and training materials out there is that a lot of people in the industry don't use them.

Some individuals, on the other hand, probably especially including those who are relatively new to information security, do indeed rely on certification training materials and study aids to help them prepare for certification exams. For those who do use books, videos, training courses, and so forth, we asked them where they tend to get their training from.

Among certified information security professionals who prepared for their most recent security certification exam using certification training materials created by the certification provider, the 10 most popular sources of training are as follows:

1) (ISC)2
2) ISACA
3) SANS/GIAC
4) Cisco
5) CompTIA
6) TestOut
7) EC-Council
8) Amazon Web Services (AWS)
9) IAPP
10) Palo Alto Networks

Also Mentioned: ASIMM, The Open Group, PCI

Among certified information security professionals who prepared for their most recent security certification exam using certification training materials created by a third-party training company, the five most popular sources of training are as follows:

1) Sybex
2) Udemy
3) Cybrary
4) Wiley
5) O'Reilly
6) Dion Training
7) Training Camp
8) Coursera
9) Linux Academy
10) Pearson

Also Mentioned: A Cloud Guru, Bright Talk, CBT Nuggets, IBA, Infosec Institute, New Horizons, Learning Tree, LinkedIn Learning, Macmillan Education, Pluralsight, Skillsoft, Simplilearn, X-EXED

If there's a cybersecurity certification in your future, and you'd like to have the benefit of some additional training, but haven't been certain where to turn — well, now you have some options.