Practice Free H12-711_V4.0 HCIA-Security V4.0 Exam Exam Questions Answers With Explanation

The incorrect statements are A and C .

A router works at the network layer and is used to connect different networks. By default, a router separates broadcast domains , because broadcasts are not forwarded from one interface to another. At the same time, each router interface also represents an independent network segment, so routers effectively separate collision domains as well. Therefore, the statement that routers can isolate broadcast domains but not collision domains is incorrect.

A Layer 2 switch works at the data link layer. Each switch port forms a separate collision domain , which is why switches can isolate collision domains. However, by default, all ports in the same VLAN still belong to the same broadcast domain , so switches forward broadcast traffic out all relevant ports. That makes statement B correct and statement D correct.

Statement C is incorrect because routers generally do not forward broadcast packets . Preventing broadcast propagation between networks is one of the key differences between routers and switches. Therefore, the incorrect options are A and C .

On Huawei firewalls, traffic direction is determined according to the priority of security zones . When traffic moves from a low-priority zone to a high-priority zone , that direction is called Inbound . For example, traffic going from the Untrust zone to the Trust zone is considered inbound because Untrust has a lower security priority than Trust.

By contrast, traffic moving from a high-priority zone to a low-priority zone is called Outbound . A common example is internal users in the Trust zone accessing resources on the Internet in the Untrust zone. This zone-priority concept is important because firewall security policies, packet filtering behavior, and session control are all evaluated according to the source zone and destination zone.

Understanding inbound and outbound directions is essential when configuring interzone security policies. Administrators must know whether traffic is flowing from low to high priority or high to low priority in order to apply the correct permit, deny, NAT, and inspection rules. Since the question specifically asks for the direction from a low-priority zone to a high-priority zone, the correct answer is Inbound .

This statement is TRUE . When an administrator logs in to a device through the web UI over HTTPS , the device acts as the HTTPS server and presents a local certificate to the web browser during the TLS handshake. If this certificate is issued by a CA trusted by the browser , the browser can verify the certificate chain, confirm the identity of the device, and establish an encrypted session without certificate warning messages.

This process improves security in two important ways. First, it provides server identity authentication , which helps the administrator confirm that the browser is connected to the legitimate device rather than an impersonated or spoofed host. Second, once the certificate is trusted and the TLS session is established, the communication is encrypted and protected for integrity , which reduces the risk of eavesdropping, tampering, and man-in-the-middle attacks during administrator login.

If a trusted CA certificate is not used, administrators may see browser warnings and may not be able to reliably confirm the server identity. Therefore, configuring a CA-issued certificate for HTTPS management helps prevent malicious attacks and ensures more secure administrator access.

Certificate application

Certificate issuing

Certificate storage

Certificate verification

Certificate usage

Certificate update

Certificate revocation

The PKI lifecycle describes the complete process a digital certificate goes through from creation to termination. The first stage is certificate application , where a user or device generates a key pair and submits a certificate request to the certification authority or registration authority.

After the request is approved, the CA performs certificate issuing , which involves creating and signing the certificate using the CA’s private key. Once issued, the certificate must be securely saved on the device, which is the certificate storage phase. Proper storage ensures that the certificate and the associated private key can be safely used when authentication or encryption is required.

Before using a certificate in communication, systems perform certificate verification . This step checks the certificate chain, validity period, and CA signature to confirm that the certificate is trustworthy. After successful verification, the certificate enters the certificate usage phase, where it is used for encryption, authentication, digital signatures, or secure communications such as HTTPS or IPsec.

During its lifetime, a certificate may require certificate update (renewal) when it approaches expiration. Finally, if the certificate becomes invalid or compromised, certificate revocation is performed to terminate its trust before its expiration date.

Explanation From HCIA-Security documents:

HTTPS protects web-based management by combining encryption with server identity authentication . For the browser to trust the device’s HTTPS service, the device must present a server certificate that can be validated by the browser. That is why administrators often configure the device to use a local certificate (the device’s certificate) that is issued by a trusted CA or whose CA chain has been imported into the browser/OS trust store. When the certificate is trusted, the browser can verify the certificate chain, validity period, and hostname binding, which helps prevent attackers from impersonating the device during login.

If a device uses a self-signed or untrusted certificate, the browser shows warnings and users may click through them, increasing the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks and credential theft. Using a CA-trusted certificate strengthens administrator logins by ensuring the management page you connect to is genuinely the intended device and that the session is encrypted end-to-end.

This statement is FALSE . In Huawei firewall hot standby networking, the heartbeat link is used for important communication between the two devices, such as peer status detection, role negotiation, and hot standby related information exchange. However, the heartbeat interfaces do not have to be directly connected with a cable in all cases.

The two heartbeat interfaces can be connected through an intermediate Layer 2 switch , as long as the link is reliable and can properly carry heartbeat traffic between the two firewalls. What matters most is that the heartbeat communication remains stable, low-delay, and uninterrupted, because failure of the heartbeat link may affect peer monitoring and could trigger unnecessary active/standby switching.

In many practical deployments, direct connection is preferred because it is simpler and can reduce the risk of intermediate device failure. Even so, “preferred” is not the same as “must.” The requirement is for a dependable heartbeat path, not strictly a point-to-point cable connection between the two firewalls.

Therefore, the statement saying the heartbeat interfaces must be directly connected is incorrect, so the correct answer is FALSE .

Explanation From HCIA-Security documents:

In the TCP/IP and OSI reference models, the transport layer is responsible for end-to-end communication between hosts. It provides services such as segmentation, multiplexing through port numbers, and (depending on the protocol) reliability, flow control, and congestion control. The two core transport layer protocols are TCP and UDP.

TCP is connection-oriented and reliable: it establishes a session using the three-way handshake, uses sequence numbers and acknowledgments for retransmission, and supports flow and congestion control to ensure ordered delivery. UDP is connectionless and best-effort: it does not build a session or guarantee delivery, which makes it lightweight and suitable for scenarios such as voice/video streaming and simple query/response services.

By contrast, FTP and DHCP are application layer protocols. FTP provides file transfer services and runs over TCP ports, while DHCP provides dynamic IP address assignment and uses UDP at the transport layer but is itself an application-layer protocol. Therefore, the transport-layer protocols in the options are UDP and TCP.

Explanation From HCIA-Security documents:

IPsec secures user traffic mainly through the ESP or AH mechanisms, delivering a combination of confidentiality and authentication-related protections. Data encryption (A) provides confidentiality so that intercepted packets cannot be read by unauthorized parties. This is typically delivered by ESP using symmetric encryption algorithms negotiated during IKE.

For authentication, IPsec provides data origin authentication (B) , meaning the receiver can confirm that packets were generated by the expected peer (the holder of the correct IPsec SA and keys). Along with that, IPsec performs a data integrity check (D) so that any modification to the protected portion of a packet in transit is detected; integrity is commonly provided using an HMAC or authenticated encryption method.

Finally, IPsec also includes anti-replay (C) protection. By using sequence numbers and a replay window, the receiver can detect and discard duplicated old packets, which prevents attackers from capturing encrypted/authenticated traffic and retransmitting it to disrupt sessions or attempt misuse.

Because IPsec secure transmission depends on encryption plus authentication, integrity, and replay protection working together, all four options are correct.

This statement is correct because it accurately reflects the basic objective of information security. In HCIA-Security, information security is concerned with protecting information assets and the systems that store, process, and transmit them. These assets include hardware devices, software platforms, network resources, and the data itself. The purpose is to prevent unauthorized access, accidental loss, malicious tampering, disclosure, destruction, or interruption of services.

Information security is not limited to confidentiality alone. It also includes maintaining integrity , which means preventing unauthorized modification of data, and availability , which means ensuring that systems and services remain usable and continuous for authorized users. In practical terms, this means using controls such as access management, firewalls, intrusion prevention, antivirus protection, encryption, backup, authentication, and monitoring to reduce both accidental and intentional threats.

The phrase about ensuring proper system running and uninterrupted information services also matches the availability goal of security. Therefore, the statement correctly describes the overall aim of information security and is TRUE .

This statement is TRUE . HTTPS is essentially HTTP running over TLS . While HTTP by itself transmits data in plaintext, HTTPS adds the TLS security layer to protect communication between the client and the server. By introducing TLS, HTTPS provides three important security functions during transmission.

First, it provides identity authentication . The server proves its identity to the client through a digital certificate , helping the client confirm that it is communicating with the legitimate server rather than an attacker. Second, HTTPS provides encryption . After the TLS negotiation process is completed, the transmitted HTTP data is encrypted, preventing attackers from easily reading sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and session data. Third, HTTPS ensures data integrity . TLS includes mechanisms to detect whether transmitted data has been modified during communication.

Because of these features, HTTPS is widely used for secure web access, online transactions, authentication pages, and confidential information exchange. Therefore, the statement that HTTPS introduces the TLS layer based on HTTP to provide authentication, encryption, and integrity protection is correct.

Intrusion Prevention (IPS) detects and blocks attacks primarily by analyzing traffic patterns and payload characteristics against known signatures, protocol anomalies, and behavioral rules. Many common application-layer exploits have recognizable request structures that IPS engines can match.

An injection attack (such as SQL injection or command injection) typically contains suspicious characters, keywords, and abnormal parameter patterns within application requests. IPS signatures can detect these malicious payload characteristics and either block the session or generate alarms. Directory traversal attacks also have distinct patterns, such as attempts to access unauthorized paths using sequences like ../ (or encoded variants). These are classic web-attack signatures commonly covered by IPS rule sets. Buffer overflow attacks often exploit protocol or application parsing weaknesses by sending overly long fields, malformed headers, or abnormal protocol sequences; IPS can detect these through signature matching and protocol anomaly detection.

A Trojan horse , however, is malware residing on an endpoint (often delivered via files, email attachments, downloads, or user execution). While some network security features (like antivirus/URL filtering/sandboxing) may detect Trojan delivery or command-and-control traffic, “Trojan horse” itself is not typically classified as an IPS-detected attack type in this context. Therefore, A, B, and D are correct.

Huawei firewalls are stateful devices. This means they do not evaluate every packet only by static rules; instead, they track communications as sessions and then handle subsequent packets based on the session state. When the first packet of a flow arrives, the firewall matches it against the security policy, performs checks (and NAT if configured), and if allowed, it creates a session entry in the session table. That entry records key information such as source/destination IP addresses, protocol, ports or identifiers, zones, NAT translation information, timeout values, and the current state.

After the session is created, later packets of the same TCP/UDP flow, or related ICMP traffic, are forwarded efficiently by querying the session table first. If a matching session exists and the state is valid, the firewall applies the corresponding actions (permit/deny, NAT mapping, logging, QoS, inspection) without repeating the full policy lookup each time. If no session matches, the firewall treats the packet as a new flow and re-evaluates it against policies. Therefore, the statement is true.

On a firewall that includes antivirus inspection, the device can take different response actions after it detects malware in traffic (for example, in file transfers, email attachments, or web downloads). Block is a standard antivirus action: the firewall stops the session or drops the infected content to prevent the malicious file from reaching the destination host. Alert (alarm/log) is also a common response action: the firewall generates an event, log, or alarm so administrators can investigate the source, destination, file type, signature name, and policy that triggered the detection.

Some firewall antivirus engines also support content-handling actions such as deleting an attachment (or stripping the infected file/attachment) while allowing the rest of the session to proceed, depending on the protocol and security profile. This is typically used in scenarios like email or file-based protocols where removing the infected payload is feasible.

Declare is not a normal antivirus response action on firewalls; it does not describe a meaningful enforcement or notification behavior. Therefore, the valid antivirus response actions here are Block, Alert, and Delete attachment.

In IPsec ESP transport mode , the authentication process protects most of the ESP packet except the outer IP header and the authentication data field itself. Specifically, the authentication calculation covers the ESP header, the encrypted payload (such as the TCP header and application data), and the ESP trailer . The IP header is not included , because it may change during packet transmission, and the ESP authentication data field is also excluded because it stores the result of the authentication calculation.

Looking at the packet structure in the figure, the order is: IP Header ? ESP Header ? TCP Header ? Data ? ESP Tail ? ESP Auth Data . The correct authentication range therefore begins at the ESP header and ends at the ESP tail , but it does not include the IP header or the ESP authentication data.

In the diagram, option 3 represents the range starting from the ESP header and ending at the ESP tail , which matches the actual authentication coverage of ESP in transport mode. Therefore, the correct answer is 3 .

By default, a firewall’s security policy is mainly used to control unicast traffic between security zones. Unicast packets are the normal one-to-one communication packets exchanged between a single source host and a single destination host. Because most user service traffic, such as web access, file transfer, remote login, and application communication, is carried in unicast form, firewall security policies are primarily designed to inspect and control this type of traffic.

Broadcast packets are typically used for local network discovery or service announcements within the same broadcast domain, and they are not the standard focus of interzone security policy control. Multicast traffic is one-to-many communication and usually requires additional multicast-specific handling or routing mechanisms rather than ordinary default security policy treatment. Anycast is a special addressing and routing method rather than the usual packet-control category emphasized in firewall default policy behavior.

In Huawei firewall policy design, when administrators configure permit or deny rules between zones, those rules are generally intended to manage unicast service traffic . Therefore, among the options listed, the packet type controlled by a firewall’s security policy by default is Unicast .

Explanation From HCIA-Security documents:

All four statements describe standard PKI roles and structure. A PKI entity is any certificate holder or relying participant that uses PKI services, which includes people, organizations, network devices, servers, and even application processes, so A is correct. PKI trust is commonly built using a CA hierarchy, where the root CA anchors trust and subordinate CAs issue certificates under the root’s authority, so B is correct. The CA is the core trusted component that signs (issues) certificates and manages their lifecycle activities such as renewal, suspension or revocation publication, and certificate status services, so C is correct. In many enterprise implementations, the PKI system is presented as three major roles: entities that request/use certificates, the RA that performs identity verification and approval of requests, and the CA that issues certificates based on validated requests, so D is also correct.

Explanation From HCIA-Security documents:

In ESP transport mode, the authentication function provides data integrity and origin authentication for specific parts of the IP packet. The authentication calculation covers the ESP header, TCP/UDP header, user data, and ESP tail (including padding, Pad Length, and Next Header fields) . However, it does not include the outer IP header, because some IP header fields (such as TTL) may change during packet forwarding. It also does not include the ESP Authentication Data field itself, since that field stores the integrity check value result of the calculation.

In the diagram, range 3 correctly represents the portion starting from the ESP header up to the ESP tail, excluding the IP header and excluding the ESP Authentication Data field.

Range 1 only covers part of the payload, range 2 does not include the ESP header, and range 4 incorrectly includes the IP header. Therefore, option 3 accurately describes the authentication scope of ESP in transport mode.