CCSP Practice Exam Questions with Answers Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) Certification

ITAR is a Department of State program. Evaluation assurance levels are part of the Common Criteria standard from ISO. Digital rights management tools are used for protecting electronic processing of intellectual property.

The recovery time objective (RTO) measures the amount of time necessary to recover operations to meet the BCDR plan. The recovery service level (RSL) measures the percentage of operations that would be recovered during a BCDR situation. The recovery point objective (RPO) sets and defines the amount of data an organization must have available or accessible to reach the predetermined level of operations necessary during a BCDR situation. SRE is provided as an erroneous response.

Authentication goes a step further than identification by providing a means for proving an entity's identification. Authentication is most commonly done through mechanisms such as passwords. Identification involves ascertaining who the entity is, but without a means of proving it, such as a name or user ID. Authorization occurs after authentication and sets access permissions and other privileges within a system or application for the user. Proofing is not a term that is relevant to the question.

Hardened perimeter devices are more useful at attenuating the risk of external attack.

DoS/DDoS threats and risks are not unique to the public cloud model.

Traditional security controls would not be able to restrict a user from printing something that they have the ability to access and read, but IRM solutions would allow for such a restriction. If a user has permissions to read a file, he can also copy the file or print it under traditional controls, and the ability to modify or write will give the user the ability to delete.

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.

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.

Cloud environments will regularly change virtual machines as patching and versions are changed. Unlike a physical environment, there is little continuity from one period of time to another. It is very unlikely that the same virtual machines would be in use during a repeat audit.

Static application security testing (SAST) is conducted with knowledge of the system, including source code, and is done against offline systems.

Directive 95/46/EC is titled "On the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data."

Many organizations in a traditional data center make heavy use of physical network controls for security. Although this is a perfectly acceptable best practice in a traditional data center, this reliance is not something that will port to a cloud environment. The failure of an organization to properly understand and adapt to the difference in network controls when moving to a cloud will likely leave an application with security holes and vulnerabilities. The use of a remote key management system, monitoring, or certain programming languages would not constitute insufficient due diligence by itself.

Whereas IRM is used to protect a broad range of data, DRM is focused specifically on the protection of consumer media, such as publications, music, movies, and so on. IRM is used to protect general institution data, so financial records, personnel data, and security profiles would all fall under the auspices of IRM.

DLP can be combined with DRM to protect intellectual property; both are designed to deal with data that falls into special categories. SIEMs are used for monitoring event logs, not live data movement. Kerberos is an authentication mechanism. Hypervisors are used for virtualization.

The CSA CCM is an inventory of cloud service security controls that are arranged into separate security domains, not a hierarchy.

This is not a normal configuration and would not likely provide genuine benefit.

A retina scan could be used in conjunction with an RSA token because it is a biometric factor, and thus a different type of factor. An access card, RFID, and USB thumb drive are all items in possession of a user, the same as an RSA token, and as such would not be appropriate.

iSCSI does not natively support encryption, so another technology such as IPsec must be used to encrypt communications.

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.

With international operations, systems ultimately cross many jurisdictional boundaries, and many times, they conflict with each other. The major hurdle to overcome for an organization is the lack of an ultimate international authority to mediate such conflicts, with a likely result of legal efforts in each jurisdiction.

BIOS is the firmware that governs the physical initiation and boot up of a piece of hardware. If it is compromised, an attacker could have access to hosted systems and make configurations changes to expose or disable some security elements on the system.

eDiscovery pertains to information and data that is in the possession, control, and custody of an organization.

Security misconfigurations occur when applications and systems are not properly configured or maintained in a secure manner. This can be caused from a shortcoming in security baselines or configurations, unauthorized changes to system configurations, or a failure to patch and upgrade systems as the vendor releases security patches.

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.

The concept of shares within a cloud environment is used to mitigate and control the request for resource allocations from customers that the environment may not have the current capability to allow. Shares work by prioritizing hosts within a cloud environment through a weighting system that is defined by the cloud provider. When periods of high utilization and allocation are reached, the system automatically uses scoring of each host based on its share value to determine which hosts get access to the limited resources still available. The higher the value a particular host has, the more resources it will be allowed to utilize.

A virtual area network (VLAN) allows the logical separation and isolation of networks and IP spaces to provide enhanced security and controls.

Although the initial phase is called "create," it can also refer to modification. In essence, any time data is considered "new," it is in the create phase. This can come from data that is newly created, data that is imported into a system and is new to that system, or data that is already present and modified into a new form or value. Modifying the metadata does not change the actual data.

A Type 2 hypervisor differs from a Type 1 hypervisor in that it runs on top of another operating system rather than directly tied into the underlying hardware of the virtual host servers. With this type of implementation, additional security and architecture concerns come into play because the interaction between the operating system and the hypervisor becomes a critical link. The hypervisor no longer has direct interaction and control over the underlying hardware, which means that some performance will be lost due to the operating system in the middle needing its own resources, patching requirements, and operational oversight.

The cloud service integrator is the official role that involves connecting and integrating existing systems and services with a cloud environment. This may involve moving services into a cloud environment, or connecting to external cloud services and capabilities from traditional data center-hosted services.

With cloud providers hosting a number of different customers, it would be impractical for them to pursue additional certifications based on the needs of a specific customer. Cloud environments are built to a common denominator to serve the greatest number of customers, and especially within a public cloud model, it is not possible or practical for a cloud provider to alter their services for specific customer demands.

Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, data custodians are assumed and expected to have full and comprehensive knowledge of the internal design and architecture of their systems. In a cloud environment, especially with PaaS and SaaS, it is impossible for the data custodian to have this knowledge because those systems are controlled by the cloud provider and protected as proprietary knowledge.

iSCSI is a protocol that allows for the transmission and use of SCSI commands and features over a TCP-based network. iSCSI allows systems to use block-level storage that looks and behaves as a SAN would with physical servers, but to leverage the TCP network within a virtualized environment and cloud.

The "store" phase of the cloud data lifecycle, which typically occurs simultaneously with the "create" phase, or immediately thereafter, is the first phase where security controls can be implemented. In most case, the manner in which the data is stored will be based on its classification.

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.

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

A cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attack forces a client that a user has used to authenticate to an application to send forged requests under the user's own credentials to execute commands and requests that the application thinks are coming from a trusted client and user. Although this type of attack cannot be used to steal data directly because the attacker has no way of seeing the results of the commands, it does open other ways to compromise an application. 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 scripting occurs when an attacker is able to send untrusted data to a user's browser without going through validation processes. 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.

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.

DNSSEC is an extension of the normal DNS protocol that enables a system to verify the integrity of a DNS query resolution by signing it from the authoritative source and verifying the signing chain. It is not used for securing data transmissions or exchanges. HTTPS is the most common method for securing web service and data calls within a cloud, and TLS is the current standard for encrypting HTTPS traffic. VPNs are widely used for securing data transmissions and service access.

Multitenancy is the aspect of cloud computing that involves having multiple customers and applications running within the same system and sharing the same resources. Although considerable mechanisms are in place to ensure isolation and separation, the data and applications are ultimately using shared resources. Broad network access refers to the ability to access cloud services from any location or client. Portability refers to the ability to easily move cloud services between different cloud providers, whereas elasticity refers to the capabilities of a cloud environment to add or remove services, as needed, to meet current demand.

The create phase encompasses any time data is created, imported, or modified. With any change in the content or value of data, the classification may also change. It must be continually reevaluated to ensure proper security. During the use, share, and archive phases, the data is not modified in any way, so the original classification is still relevant.

Static masking takes a data set and produces a copy of it, but with sensitive data fields masked. This allows for a full data set from production for testing purposes, but without any sensitive data. Dynamic masking works with a live system and is not used to produce a distinct copy. The terms "replicated" and "development" are not types of masking.

Data loss prevention (DLP) extends the capabilities for data protection beyond the standard and traditional security controls that are offered by operating systems, application containers, and network devices. DLP is not specifically implemented to counter malicious insiders, and would not be particularly effective in doing so, because a malicious insider with legitimate access would have other ways to obtain data. DLP is a set of practices and controls to manage and minimize risk, comply with regulatory requirements, and show due diligence with the protection of data.

SOC Type 1 reports are intended for restricted use, only to be seen by the actual service organization, its current clients, or its auditors. These reports are not intended for wider or public distribution.SAS-70 audit reports have been deprecated and are no longer in use, and both the SOC Type 2 and 3 reports are designed to expand upon the SOC Type 1 reports and are for broader audiences.

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.

The relying party is attached to the application or service that a user is trying to access, and it accepts authentication tokens from the user's own identity provider in order to facilitate authentication and access. The other terms provided are all associated with federated systems, but none is the correct choice in this case.

Representational State Transfer (REST) is a software architectural scheme that applies the components, connectors, and data conduits for many web applications used on the Internet. It uses and relies on the HTTP protocol and supports a variety of data formats. Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) are both standards for exchanging encoded data between two parties, with XML being for more general use and SAML focused on authentication and authorization data. Secure Shell client (SSH) is a secure method for allowing remote login to systems over a network.

Platform as a Service would allow software developers to quickly and easily deploy their applications among different hosting providers for testing and validation in order to determine the best option. Although IaaS would also be appropriate for hosting applications, it would require too much configuration of application servers and libraries in order to test code. Conversely, PaaS would provide a ready-to-use environment from the onset. DaaS would not be appropriate in any way for software developers to use to deploy applications. IaaS would not be appropriate in this scenario because it would require the developers to also deploy and maintain the operating system images or to contract with another firm to do so. SaaS, being a fully functional software platform, would not be appropriate for deploying applications into.

Hex GBL is a reference to a computer part in Terry Pratchett’s fictional Discworld universe. The rest are not.

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.

Baselines are a set of configurations and policies applied to all new systems or services, and they serve as the basis for deploying any other services on top of them. Although standards often form the basis for baselines, the term is applicable in this case. Hardening is the process of securing a system, often through the application of baselines. Leveling is an extraneous but similar term to baselining.

When leasing space in a data center versus utilizing cloud services, a customer has a much greater control over its systems and services, from both the hardware/software perspective and the operational management perspective. Costs, regulations, and security are all prime considerations regardless of the hosting type selected. Although regulations will be the same in either hosting solution, in most instances, costs and security will be greater factors with leased space.

Cloud services make exclusive use of virtualization, and systems change over time, including the addition, subtraction, and reimaging of virtual machines. It is extremely unlikely that the exact same virtual machines and images used in a previous audit would still be in use or even available for a later audit, making the tracking of changes over time extremely difficult, or even impossible. Elasticity refers to the ability to add and remove resources from a system or service to meet current demand, and although it plays a factor in making the tracking of virtual machines very difficult over time, it is not the best answer in this case. Resource pooling pertains to a cloud environment sharing a large amount of resources between different customers and services. Portability refers to the ability to move systems or services easily between different cloud providers.

ISO/IEC 27050 strives to establish an internationally accepted standard for eDiscovery processes and best practices. It encompasses all steps of the eDiscovery process, including the identification, preservation, collection, processing, review, analysis, and the final production of the requested data archive. ISO/IEC 27001 is a general security specification for an information security management system. ISO/IEC 27002 gives best practice recommendations for information security management. ISO/IEC 27040 is focused on the security of storage systems.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) regulates the financial and accounting practices used by organizations in order to protect shareholders from improper practices and accounting errors.The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) pertains to the protection of patient medical records and privacy. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) focuses on the use of PII within financial institutions. The Safe Harbor program was designed by the US government as a way for American companies to comply with European Union privacy laws.

The infrastructure service capability gives the cloud customer substantial control in provisioning and configuring resources, including processing, storage, and network resources.

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.

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.

With data anonymization, data is manipulated in such a way so as to prevent the identification of an individual through various data objects, and is often used in conjunction with other concepts such as masking.

The software service capability gives the cloud customer a fully established application, where only minimal user configuration options are allowed.

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

Puppet is a commonly used tool for maintaining system configurations based on policies, and done so from a centralized authority.

Affected users refers to the percentage of users who would be impacted by a successful exploit. Scoring ranges from 0, which means no users are impacted, to 10, which means all users are impacted.

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.

Any application can be a possible target of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. From the application side, the developers should minimize how many operations are performed for non-authenticated users. This will keep the application running as quickly as possible and using the least amount of system resources to help minimize the impact of any such attacks.

While the main focus of confidentiality revolves around technological requirements or particular security methods, an important and often overlooked aspect of safeguarding data confidentiality is appropriate and comprehensive training for those with access to it. Training should be focused on the safe handling of sensitive information overall, including best practices for network activities as well as physical security of the devices or workstations used to access the application.

Reproducibility is the measure of how easy it is to reproduce and successful use an exploit. Scoring within the DREAD model ranges from 0, signifying a nearly impossibly exploit, up to 10, which signifies something that anyone from a simple function call could exploit, such as a URL.

Signed into law and effective starting on September 1, 2015, Russian Law 526-FZ establishes that any collecting, storing, or processing of personal information or data on Russian citizens must be done from systems and databases that are physically located with the Russian Federation.

The main goal of confidentiality is to ensure that sensitive information is not made available or leaked to parties that should not have access to it, while at the same time ensuring that those with appropriate need and authorization to access it can do so in a manner commensurate with their needs and confidentiality requirements.