ISC CCSP Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) Exam Practice Test

State notification laws and the loss of proprietary data/intellectual property pre-existed the cloud; only the lack of ability to transfer liability is new.

Data owner is a management role that's responsible for all aspects of how data is used and protected. The database administrator, data custodian, and data processor are all technical roles that involve the actual use and consumption of data, or the implementation of security controls and policies with the data.

A process is an administrative control; sometimes, the process includes elements of other types of controls (in this case, the access control mechanism might be a technical control, or it might be a physical control), but the process itself is administrative. Keystroke logging is a technical control (or an attack, if done for malicious purposes, and not for auditing); door locks are a physical control; and biometric authentication is a technological control.

Removing antimalware agents. Hardening the operating system means making it more secure. Limiting administrator access, closing unused ports, and removing unnecessary services and libraries all have the potential to make an OS more secure. But removing antimalware agents would actually make the system less secure. If anything, antimalware agents should be added, not removed.

Data masking does not support authentication in any way. All the others are excellent use cases for data masking.

An intrusion prevention system (IPS) can inspect traffic and detect any suspicious traffic based on a variety of factors, but it can also actively block such traffic. Although an IDS can detect the same types of suspicious traffic as an IPS, it is only design to alert, not to block. A firewall is only concerned with IP addresses, ports, and protocols; it cannot be used for the signature-based detection of traffic. A proxy can limit or direct traffic based on more extensive factors than a network firewall can, but it's not capable of using the same signature detection rules as an IPS.

The business impact analysis gathers asset valuation information that is beneficial for risk analysis and selection of security controls (it helps avoid putting the ten-dollar lock on the five-dollar bicycle), and criticality information that helps in BC/DR planning by letting the organization understand which systems, data, and personnel are necessary to continuously maintain. However, it does not aid secure acquisition efforts, since the assets examined by the BIA have already been acquired.

While the provider might share any of the other options listed, the provider will not share administration of security controls with the customer. Security controls are the sole province of the provider.

Configuration management tracks and maintains detailed information about all IT components within an organization. Availability management is focused on making sure system resources, processes, personnel, and toolsets are properly allocated and secured to meet SLA requirements. Continuity management (or business continuity management) is focused on planning for the successful restoration of systems or services after an unexpected outage, incident, or disaster. Problem management is focused on identifying and mitigating known problems and deficiencies before they occur.

Interoperability is ability to easily move between cloud providers, by either moving or reusing components and services. This can pertain to any cloud deployment model, and it gives organizations the ability to constantly evaluate costs and services as well as move their business to another cloud provider as needed or desired. Portability relates to the wholesale moving of services from one cloud provider to another, not necessarily the reuse of components or services for other purposes. Although resiliency is not an official concept within cloud computing, it certainly would be found throughout other topics such as elasticity, auto-scaling, and resource pooling. Scalability pertains to changing resource allocations to a service to meet current demand, either upward or downward in scope.

The jurisdictions where data is being stored, processed, or consumed are the ones that dictate the regulatory frameworks and compliance requirements, regardless of who the data owner or custodian might be. The other concepts for protecting data would all play a prominent role in regulatory compliance with a move to the cloud environment. Each concept needs to be evaluated based on the new configurations as well as any potential changes in jurisdiction or requirements introduced with the move to a cloud.

According to the MSP Alliance, typically MSPs have the following distinguishing characteristics:

- Have some form of NOC service

- Have some form of help desk service

- Can remotely monitor and manage all or a majority of the objects for the customer

- Can proactively maintain the objects under management for the customer

- Can deliver these solutions with some form of predictable billing model, where the customer knows with great accuracy what her regular IT management expense will be

Background checks are controls for attenuating potential threats from internal actors; external threats aren’t likely to submit to background checks.

We should do all of these except for requiring multifactor authentication, which is pointless in key management.

ExplanationThe ultimate size of the audit report is not something that would ever be included in the audit scope or definition. Decisions about the content of the report should be the only factor that drives the ultimate size of the report. The structure, audience, and format of the audit report are all crucial elements that must be defined and agreed upon as part of the audit scope.

SIEM does not intend to provide any enhancement of performance; in fact, a SIEM solution may decrease performance because of additional overhead. All the rest are goals of SIEM implementations.

Confidential recipes unique to the organization are trade secrets. The other answers listed are answers to other questions.

Although all the other options are ways to harden a mobile device, two-person integrity is a concept that has nothing to do with the topic, and, if implemented, would require everyone in your organization to walk around in pairs while using their mobile devices.

DNSSEC does not require any additional DNS queries to be performed. The DNSSEC integrity checks and validations are all performed as part of the single DNS lookup resolution.

Adopted in 1995, Directive 95/46 EC establishes strong data protection and policy requirements, including the declaring of data privacy to be a human right. It establishes that an individual has the right to be notified when their personal data is being access or processed, that it only will ever be accessed for legitimate purposes, and that data will only be accessed to the exact extent it needs to be for the particular process or request.

Regardless of which cloud-hosting model is used, the cloud customer always has sole responsibility for the governance of systems and data.

Security requirements should be incorporated into the software development lifecycle (SDLC) from the earliest requirement gathering stage and should be incorporated prior to the requirement analysis phase.

The recovery service level (RSL) is a percentage measure of the total typical production service level that needs to be restored to meet BCDR objectives in the case of a failure.

A private cloud model, and the specific contractual relationships involved, will give a cloud customer the most level of input and control over how the overall cloud environment is designed and implemented. This would be even more so in cases where the private cloud is owned and operated by the same organization that is hosting services within it.

DNSSEC is designed to prevent the spoofing and redirection of DNS resolutions to rogue sites.

Tokenization is the practice of utilizing a random and opaque "token" value in data to replace what otherwise would be a sensitive or protected data object. The token value is usually generated by the application with a means to map it back to the actual real value, and then the token value is placed in the data set with the same formatting and requirements of the actual real value so that the application can continue to function without different modifications or code changes.

Reservations ensure that a minimum level of resources will always be available to a cloud customer for them to start and operate their services. In the event of a DoS attack against one customer, they can guarantee that the other customers will still be able to operate.

Penetration testing involves using the same strategies and toolsets that hackers would use against a system to discovery potential vulnerabilities.

A bastion host is a server that is fully exposed to the public Internet, but is extremely hardened to prevent attacks and is usually dedicated for a specific application or usage; it is not something that will serve multiple purposes. This singular focus allows for much more stringent security hardening and monitoring.

SOC Type 2 reports are focused on the same policies and procedures, as well as their effectiveness, as SOC Type 1 reports, but are evaluated over a period of at least six consecutive months, rather than a finite point in time.

Regardless of which cloud-hosting model is used, the cloud provider always has sole responsibility for the physical environment.

GitHub is an application for code collaboration, including versioning and branching of code trees. It is not used for applying or maintaining system configurations.

A major difference between IPsec and other protocols such as TLS is that IPsec operates at the Internet network layer rather than the application layer, allowing for complete end-to-end encryption of all communications and traffic.

With dynamic masking, production environments are protected with the masking process being implemented between the application and data layers of the application. This allows for a masking translation to take place live in the system and during normal application processing of data.

Cloud environments are constantly changing and often span multiple physical locations. A cloud customer is also very unlikely to have knowledge and insight into the underlying systems architecture in a cloud environment. Both of these realities make it very difficult, if not impossible, for an organization to provide a comprehensive systems design document.

Upon successful user authentication, the identity provider gives information about the user to the relying party that it needs to make authorization decisions for granting access as well as the level of access needed.

The standards put out by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) cover general fire protection best practices for any type of facility, but also specific publications pertaining to IT equipment and data centers.

The standards put out by Building Industry Consulting Service International (BICSI) primarily cover complex cabling designs and setups for data centers, but also include specifications on power, energy efficiency, and hot/cold aisle setups.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires the U.S. Federal Department of Health and Human Services to publish and enforce regulations pertaining to electronic health records and identifiers between patients, providers, and insurance companies. It is focused on the security controls and confidentiality of medical records, rather than the specific technologies used, so long as they meet the requirements of the regulations.

Local, physical access in a data center is done via KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switches.

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) encapsulates its information in what is known as a SOAP envelope and then leverages common communications protocols for transmission.

The cloud service developer is responsible for developing and creating cloud components and services, as well as for testing and validating services.

When operating within a global framework, a security professional runs into a multitude of jurisdictions and requirements, and many times they might be in contention with one other or not clearly applicable. These requirements can include the location of the users and the type of data they enter into systems, the laws governing the organization that owns the application and any regulatory requirements they may have, as well as the appropriate laws and regulations for the jurisdiction housing the IT resources and where the data is actually stored, which might be multiple jurisdictions as well.

The functions of the management plane are typically exposed as a series of remote calls and function executions and as a set of APIs. These APIs are typically leveraged through either a client or a web portal, with the latter being the most common.

The cloud service operations manager is responsible for preparing systems for the cloud, administering and monitoring services, providing audit data as requested or required, and managing inventory and assets.

NIST Special Publications 800-145 is titled "The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing" and contains definitions and explanations of core cloud concepts and components.

The United States lacks a single comprehensive law at the federal level addressing data security and privacy, but there are multiple federal laws that deal with different industries.

Within IaaS, the number of users on a system is not relevant to the particular hosting model in regard to cloud resources. IaaS is focused on infrastructure needs of a system or application. Therefore, a factor such as the number of users that could affect licensing requirements, for example, would apply to the SaaS model, or in some instances to PaaS.

The SOAP protocol does not support caching, whereas the REST API does.

Object storage uses a flat structure with key values to store and access objects.

The standards put out by the International Data Center Authority (IDCA) have established the Infinity Paradigm, which is intended to be a comprehensive data center design and operations framework. The Infinity Paradigm shifts away from many models that rely on tiered architecture for data centers, where each successive tier increases redundancy. Instead, it emphasizes data centers being approached at a macro level, without a specific and isolated focus on certain aspects to achieve tier status.

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) are the most commonly used data formats for the Representational State Transfer (REST) API, and are typically implemented with caching for increased scalability and performance.

A virtual machine is ultimately an image file residing a file system. Because of this, even when a virtual machine is "powered off," it is still susceptible to attacks and modification. A physical server that is powered off would not be susceptible to attacks.

Cloud environments lack the ability to physically separate resources like a traditional data center can. To compensate, cloud computing logical segregation concepts are employed. These include VLANs, sandboxing, and the use of virtual network devices such as firewalls.

Measured service is where cloud services are delivered and billed in a metered way, where the cloud customer only pays for those that they actually use, and for the duration of time that they use them.

To monitor data in transit, a DLP solution would optimally be installed at the network perimeter, to ensure that data leaving the network through various protocols conforms to security controls and policies. An application server or a web server would be more appropriate for monitoring data in use, and a database server would be an example of a location appropriate for monitoring data at rest.

To monitor data in use, the DLP solution's optimal location would be on the user's client or workstation, where the data would be used or processed, and where it would be most vulnerable to access or exposure. The network perimeter is most appropriate for data in transit, and an application server would serve as middle stage between data at rest and data in use, but is a less correct answer than a user's client. A database server would be an example of a location appropriate for monitoring data at rest.

The Uptime Institute publishes the most widely known and used standard for data center topologies and tiers. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) publishes a broad range of fire safety and design standards for many different types of facilities. Building Industry Consulting Services International (BICSI) issues certifications for data center cabling. The International Data Center Authority (IDCA) offers the Infinity Paradigm, which takes a macro-level approach to data center design.

Fault tolerance allows a system to continue functioning, even with degraded performance, if portions of it fail or degrade, without the entire system or service being taken down. It can detect problems within a service and invoke compensating systems or functions to keep functionality going. Although redundancy is similar to fault tolerance, it is more focused on having additional copies of systems available, either active or passive, that can take up services if one system goes down. Elasticity pertains to the ability of a system to resize to meet demands, but it is not focused on system failures. Automation, and its role in maintaining large systems with minimal intervention, is not directly related to fault tolerance.

An injection attack is where a malicious actor sends commands or other arbitrary data through input and data fields with the intent of having the application or system execute the code as part of its normal processing and queries. This can trick an application into exposing data that is not intended or authorized to be exposed, or it can potentially allow an attacker to gain insight into configurations or security controls. Missing function-level access control exists where an application only checks for authorization during the initial login process and does not further validate with each function call. Cross-site request forgery occurs when an attack forces an authenticated user to send forged requests to an application running under their own access and credentials. Cross-site scripting occurs when an attacker is able to send untrusted data to a user's browser without going through validation processes.

Dealing with users or user access would not be an appropriate item for inclusion in an SLA specifically. However, user access and user experience would be covered indirectly through other metrics. Memory, CPU, and network resources are all typically included within an SLA for availability and response times when dealing with any incidents.

With a Type 1 hypervisor, the hypervisor software runs directly on top of the bare-metal system, without any intermediary layer or hosting system. None of these statements describes a Type 1 hypervisor.

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) encapsulates its information in what is known as a SOAP envelope. It then leverages common communications protocols for transmission. Object is a type of cloud storage, but also a commonly used term with certain types of programming languages. Packet and payload are terms that sound similar to envelope but are not correct in this case.

In order to ensure compliance with regulations, it is important for an organization to regularly test the restorability of archived data. As technologies change and older systems are deprecated, the risk rises for an organization to lose the ability to restore data from the format in which it is stored. With the destroy, store, and share phases, the currently used technologies will be sufficient for an organization's needs in an ongoing basis, so the risk that is elevated with archived data is not present.

The cloud service integrator role is responsible for connecting and integrating existing services and applications with cloud-based services.A cloud service administrator is responsible for testing, monitoring, and securing cloud services, as well as providing usage reporting and dealing with service problems. The cloud service user is someone who consumes cloud services. The cloud service business manager is responsible for overseeing the billing, auditing, and purchasing of cloud services.

Regardless of the particular cloud service used, physical security of hardware and facilities is always the sole responsibility of the cloud provider. The cloud provider may release information about their physical security policies and procedures to ensure any particular requirements of potential customers will meet their regulatory obligations. Personal security of developers and regulatory compliance are always the responsibility of the cloud customer. Responsibility for operating systems, and the auditing of them, will differ based on the cloud service category used.

No matter what form they come in, "services" are obtained or purchased by a cloud customer from a cloud service provider. Services can come in many forms--virtual machines, network configurations, hosting setups, and software access, just to name a few. Hosting and servers--or, with a cloud, more appropriately virtual machines--are just two examples of "services" that a customer would purchase from a cloud provider. "Customers" would never be a service that's purchased.

Measured service is the aspect of cloud computing that pertains to cloud services and resources being billed in a metered way, based only on the level of consumption and duration of the cloud customer. Although they sound similar to the correct answer, none of the other choices is the actual cloud terminology.

Data that falls under the purview of an eDiscovery request is that which is in the possession, custody, or control of the organization. Although this is an easy concept in a traditional data center, it can be difficult to distinguish who actually possesses and controls the data in a cloud environment due to multitenancy and resource pooling. Although these options provide similar-sounding terms, they are ultimately incorrect.

A reservation guarantees to a cloud customer that they will have access to a minimal level of resources to run their systems, which will help mitigate against DoS attacks or systems that consume high levels of resources. A limit refers to the enforcement of a maximum level of resources that can be consumed by or allocated to a cloud customer, service, or system. Both guarantee and assurance are terms that sound similar to reservation, but they are not correct choices.

Firewalls work at the network level and control traffic based on the source, destination, protocol, and ports. Whether or not the traffic is encrypted is not a factor with firewalls and their decisions about routing traffic. Firewalls work primarily with IP addresses, ports, and protocols.

With the entire software platform being controlled by the cloud provider, the standardization of configurations and versioning is done automatically for the cloud customer. This alleviates the customer's need to track upgrades and releases for its own systems and development; instead, the onus is on the cloud provider. Although licensing is the responsibility of the cloud customer within SaaS, it does not have an impact on compliance requirements. Within SaaS, development and maintenance of the system are solely the responsibility of the cloud provider.

Object storage is typically used to house virtual machine images because it is independent from other systems and is focused solely on storage. It is also the most appropriate for handling large individual files. Volume storage, because it is allocated to a specific host, would not be appropriate for the storing of virtual images. Structured and unstructured are storage types specific to PaaS and would not be used for storing items used throughout a cloud environment.

Integrity refers to the trustworthiness of data and whether its format and values are true and have not been corrupted or otherwise altered through unauthorized means. Confidentiality refers to keeping data from being access or viewed by unauthorized parties. Accessibility means that data is available and ready when needed by a user or service. Validity can mean a variety of things that are somewhat similar to integrity, but it's not the most appropriate answer in this case.