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

Infrastructure as a Service pools the compute resources for platforms and applications to build upon, including CPU, memory, and storage. Applications are not part of an IaaS offering from the cloud provider.

Cryptographic erasure involves having the data encrypted, typically as a matter of standard operations, and then rendering the data useless and unreadable by destroying the encryption keys for it. It represents a very cheap and immediate way to destroy data, and it works in all environments. With a cloud environment and multitenancy, media destruction or the physical destruction of storage devices, including shredding, would not be possible. Depending on the environment, overwriting may or may not be possible, but cryptographic erasure is the best answer because it is always an available option and is very quick to implement.

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.

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 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 FIPS 140-2 standard pertains to the certification of cryptographic modules and is not a regulatory framework. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are all regulatory frameworks for sensitive or specialized data.

The concept of affected users measures the percentage of users who would be impacted by a successful exploit. Scoring ranges from 0, which would impact no users, to 10, which would impact all users. None of the other options provided is the correct term.

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.

During the share phase, data is allowed to leave the application for consumption by other vendors, systems, or services. At this point, as the data is leaving the security controls of the application, the use of DLP technologies is appropriate to control how the data is used or to force expiration. During the use, create, and store phases, traditional security controls are available and are more appropriate because the data is still internal to the application.

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.

The EU passed Directive 95/46 EC in 1995, which established data privacy as a human right. The other years listed are incorrect.

During the data-in-use state, the information has already been accessed from storage and transmitted to the service, so reliance on a technology such as digital signatures is imperative to ensure security and complement the security methods used during previous states. Data in transit relies on technologies such as TLS to encrypt network transmission of packets for security. Data at rest primarily uses encryption for stored file objects. Archived data would be the same as data at rest.

Within IaaS, where the cloud customer is responsible for everything beyond the physical network, the number of users on a system would not be a factor in billing or service charges. The core cloud services for IaaS are based on the memory, storage, and CPU requirements of the cloud customer. Because the cloud customer with IaaS is responsible for its own images and deployments, these components comprise the basis of its cloud provisioning and measured services billing.

Public clouds, such as AWS and Azure, are massive systems run by major corporations, and they account for a significant share of Internet traffic and services. They are always expanding, offer enormous resources to customers, and are the least likely to run into resource constraints compared to the other deployment models. Private clouds would likely have the resources available for specific uses and could not be assumed to have a large pool of resources available for expansion. A community cloud would have the same issues as a private cloud, being targeted to similar organizations. A hybrid cloud, because it spans multiple clouds, would not fit the bill either, without the use of individual cloud models.

Modifying the metadata does not change the actual data. Although this 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 is modified into a new form or value.

A hybrid cloud model spans two more different hosting configurations or cloud providers. This would enable an organization to continue using its current hosting configuration, while adding additional cloud services to enable disaster recovery capabilities. The other cloud deployment models--public, private, and community--would not be applicable for seeking a disaster recovery configuration where cloud services are to be leveraged for that purpose rather than production service hosting.

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.

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. Especially within a public cloud model, it is not possible or practical for a cloud provider to alter its services for specific customer demands. Resource pooling and virtualization within a cloud environment would be the same for all customers, and would not impact certifications that a cloud provider might be willing to pursue. Regulations would form the basis for certification problems and would be a reason for a cloud provider to pursue specific certifications to meet customer requirements.

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.

Volume storage is allocated via a LUN to a system and then treated the same as any traditional storage. The operating system is responsible for formatting and securing volume storage as well as controlling all access to it. Applications, although they may use volume storage and have permissions to write to it, are not responsible for its formatting and security. Both a hypervisor and the management plane are outside of an individual system and are not responsible for managing the files and storage within that system.

An intrusion detection system (IDS) is implemented to watch network traffic and operations, using predefined criteria or signatures, and alert administrators if anything suspect is found. An intrusion prevention system (IPS) is similar to an IDS but actually takes action against suspect traffic, whereas an IDS just alerts when it finds anything suspect. A firewall works at the network level and only takes into account IP addresses, ports, and protocols; it does not inspect the traffic for patterns or content. A web application firewall (WAF) works at the application layer and provides additional security via proxying, filtering service requests, or blocking based on additional factors such as the client and requests.

Jurisdiction will dictate much of the compliance and audit requirements for a data center. Although all the aspects listed are very important to security, from a strict compliance perspective, jurisdiction is the most important. Personnel access, natural disasters, and utility access are all important operational considerations for selecting a data center location, but they are not related to compliance issues like jurisdiction is.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When a cloud service provider receives an eDiscovery order pertaining to one of their customers, the first action they must take is to notify the customer. This allows the customer to be aware of what was received, as well as to conduct a review to determine if any challenges are necessary or warranted. Taking snapshots of virtual machines, copying data, and escrowing encryption keys are all processes involved in the actual collection of data and should not be performed until the customer has been notified of the request.

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.

Chillers and cooling systems are internal to a data center and its operations, and as such they are considered an internal redundancy. Power feeds, network circuits, and generators are all external to a data center and provide utility services to them, which makes them an external redundancy.

Security misconfigurations occur when applications and systems are not properly configured or maintained in a secure manner. This can be due to 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. Insecure direct object references occur when code references aspects of the infrastructure, especially internal or private systems, and an attacker can use that knowledge to glean more information about the infrastructure. Unvalidated redirects and forwards occur when an application has functions to forward users to other sites, and these functions are not properly secured to validate the data and redirect requests, allowing spoofing for malware or phishing attacks. Sensitive data exposure occurs when an application does not use sufficient encryption and other security controls to protect sensitive application data.

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.

Forensics refers to the application of scientific methods and protocols to the investigation of crimes. Although forensics has traditionally been applied to well-known criminal proceedings and investigations, the term equally applies to digital investigations and methods. Although the other answers provide similar-sounding terms and ideas, none is the appropriate answer in this case.

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.

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.

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.

With SaaS providing a fully functioning application that is managed and maintained by the cloud provider, cloud customers incur the least amount of support responsibilities themselves of any service category.

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.

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.

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.

Disaster recovery and business continuity are vital concerns with availability. If data is destroyed or compromised, having regular backup systems in place as well as being able to perform disaster recovery in the event of a major or widespread problem allows operations to continue with an acceptable loss of time and data to management. This also ensures that sensitive data is protected and persisted in the event of the loss or corruption of data systems or physical storage systems.

An SLA requires performance monitoring of CPU, memory, storage, and networking. The number of users active on a system would not be part of an SLA specifically, other than in regard to the impact on the other four variables.

Static masking involves taking a data set and replacing sensitive fields and values with non-sensitive or garbage data. This is done to enable testing of an application against data that resembles production data, both in size and format, but without containing anything sensitive. Dynamic masking involves the live and transactional masking of data while an application is using it. Tokenized would refer to tokenization, which is the replacing of sensitive data with a key value that can later be matched back to the original value, and although it could be used as part of the production of test data, it does not refer to the overall process. Replicated is provided as an erroneous answer, as replicated data would be identical in value and would not accomplish the production of a test set.

Elasticity is the name for the benefit of cloud computing where resources can be apportioned as necessary to meet customer demand. Obfuscation is a technique to hide full raw datasets, either from personnel who do not have need to know or for use in testing. Mobility is not a term pertinent to the CBK.

Dynamic masking involves the live replacing of sensitive data fields during transactional use between the data and application layers of a service. Static masking involves creating a full data set with the sensitive data fields masked, but is not done during live transactions like dynamic masking. Active and transactional are offered as similar types of answers but are not types of masking.

The cloud provider’s resellers are a marketing and sales mechanism, not an operational dependency that could affect the security of a cloud customer.

With multitenancy, where different cloud customers all share the same physical systems and networks, data classification becomes even more important to ensure that the appropriate security controls are applied immediately to prevent any potential leakage or exposure to other customers. Portability refers to the ability to move easily from one cloud provider to another. Interoperability refers to the ability to reuse components and services for different uses. Reversibility refers to the ability of the cloud customer to quickly and completely remove all data and services from a cloud provider and to verify the removal.

Options C and B are also correct, but A is more general and incorporates them both. D is incorrect, because sandboxing does not take place in the production environment.

Release management involves planning, coordinating, executing, and validating changes and rollouts to the production environment. Change management is a higher-level component than release management and also involves stakeholder and management approval, rather than specifically focusing the actual release itself. Availability management is focused on making sure system resources, processes, personnel, and toolsets are properly allocated and secured to meet SLA requirements. Problem management is focused on identifying and mitigating known problems and deficiencies before they occur.

SOC 2 deals with the CIA triad. SOC 1 is for financial reporting. SOC 3 is only an attestation by the auditor. There is no SOC 4.

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.

The TLS handshake protocol is what negotiates and establishes the TLS connection between two parties and enables a secure communications channel to then handle data transmissions. The TLS record protocol is the actual secure communications method for transmitting data; it's responsible for the encryption and authentication of packets throughout their transmission between the parties, and in some cases it also performs compression. Negotiation and binding are not protocols under TLS.

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 unauthenticated 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. None of the other options provided is the correct term.

We don’t use DAM in place of encryption or masking; DAM augments these options without replacing them. We don’t usually think of the database interaction as client-server, so A is the best answer.

With a federated identity system, a user will perform authentication with their home organization, and the application will accept the authentication tokens and user information from the identity provider in order to grant access. The purpose of a federated system is to allow users to authenticate from their home organization. Therefore, using the application or a third-party authentication system would be contrary to the purpose of a federated system because it necessitates the creation of additional accounts. The use of a cloud provider would not be relevant to the operations of a federated system.

The authentication mechanisms and implementations are the responsibility of the cloud provider because they are core components of the application platform and service. Within a SaaS implementation, the cloud customer will provision user access, deploy branding to the application interface (typically), and provide or procure training for its users.

An XML firewall is most commonly deployed in line between the firewall and application server to validate XML code before it reaches the application. An XML firewall is intended to validate XML before it reaches the application. Placing the XML firewall between the presentation and application layers, between the firewall and IPS, or between the application and data layers would not serve the intended purpose.

Object storage uses a flat file system to hold storage objects; it assigns files a key value that is then used to access them, rather than relying on directories or descriptive filenames. Typical storage layouts such as tree, directory, and hierarchical structures are used within volume storage, whereas object storage maintains a flat structure with key values.

Auditing, which can be supported to varying degrees by DLP solutions, is not a core component of them. Data loss prevention (DLP) solutions have core components of discovery and classification, enforcement, and monitoring. Discovery and classification are concerned with determining which data should be applied to the DLP policies, and then determining its classification level. Monitoring is concerned with the actual watching of data and how it's used through its various stages. Enforcement is the actual application of policies determined from the discovery stage and then triggered during the monitoring stage.

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 to see 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. 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. Cross-site scripting occurs when an attacker is able to send untrusted data to a user's browser without going through validation processes.

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 Uptime Institute publishes the most widely known and used standard for data center topologies and tiers. The International Data Center Authority (IDCA) offers the Infinity Paradigm, which takes a macro-level approach to data center design.

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.

Regulated PII pertains to data that is outlined in law and regulations. Violations of the requirements for the protection of regulated PII can carry legal sanctions or penalties. Contractual PII involves required data protection that is determined by the actual service contract between the cloud provider and cloud customer, rather than outlined by law. Violations of the provisions of contractual PII carry potential financial or contractual implications, but not legal sanctions. Legal and jurisdictional are similar terms to regulated, but neither is the official term used.

Data loss prevention (DLP) solutions allow for control of data outside of the application or original system. They can enforce granular control such as printing, copying, and being read by others, as well as forcing expiration of access. Intrusion detection system (IDS) and intrusion prevention system (IPS) solutions are used for detecting and blocking suspicious and malicious traffic, respectively, whereas a web application firewall (WAF) is used for enforcing security or other controls on web-based applications.

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. 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. HTML is used for authoring web pages for consumption by web browsers

Interoperability is the ease with which one can move or reuse components of an application or service. This is maximized when services are designed without specific dependencies on underlying platforms, operating systems, locations, or cloud providers.

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

With multiple tenants within the same hosting environment, any failure to properly classify data may lead to potential exposure to other customers and applications within the same environment.

Because IPsec is implemented at the system or network level, it is the responsibility of the systems staff. IPsec removes the responsibility from developers, whereas other technologies such as TLS would be implemented by developers.

The main problem when it comes to data discovery is the quality of the data that analysis is being performed against. Data that is malformed, incorrectly stored or labeled, or incomplete makes it very difficult to use analytical tools against.

With a typical BCDR solution, an organization would need some number of staff to quickly travel to the location of the BCDR site to configure systems and applications for recovery. With a cloud environment, everything is done over broad network access, with no need (or even possibility) to travel to a remote site at any time.

Authentication is the process of proving whether the identity presented by a user is true and valid. This can be done through common mechanisms such as user ID and password combinations or with more secure methods such as multifactor authentication.

SOC Type 1 reports are considered "restricted use" reports. They are intended for management and stakeholders of an organization, clients of the service organization, and auditors of the organization. They are not intended for release beyond those audiences.

To implement DNSSEC, no additional changes are needed to applications or their code because the integrity checks are all performed at the system level.

The SOC Type 2 audits include five principles: security, privacy, processing integrity, availability, and confidentiality.

The loss of staffing would not be a reason to declare a BCDR situation because it does not impact production operations or equipment, and the same staff would be needed for a BCDR situation.

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.

Integrity is focused on the trustworthiness of data as well as the prevention of unauthorized modification or tampering of it. A prime consideration for maintaining integrity is an emphasis on the change management and configuration management aspects of operations, so that all modifications are predictable, tracked, logged, and verified, whether they are performed by actual human users or systems processes and scripts.

Sandboxing involves segregating and isolating information or processes from others within the same system or application, typically for security concerns. This is generally used for data isolation (for example, keeping different communities and populations of users isolated from other similar data).

Firewalls take into account source IP, destination IP, the port the traffic is using, as well as the network protocol (UDP/TCP). Whether or not the traffic is encrypted is not something a firewall is concerned with.

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

DNSSEC is a security extension to the regular DNS protocol and services that allows for the validation of the integrity of DNS lookups. It does not address confidentiality or availability at all. It allows for a DNS client to perform DNS lookups and validate both their origin and authority via the cryptographic signature that accompanies the DNS response.

KPIs fall under the "business" aspect of QoS, along with monitoring and measuring of events and business processes. Services, security, and applications are all core components and concepts of the "IT" aspect of QoS.

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. Availability management is focused on making sure system resources, processes, personnel, and toolsets are properly allocated and secured to meet SLA requirements. Configuration management tracks and maintains detailed information about all IT components within an organization.

Either the cloud customer or the cloud provider could receive an eDiscovery order, and in almost all circumstances they would need to work together to ensure compliance.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) are used to provide administrative personnel with secure communication channels through security systems and into trust zones. They allow staff who perform system administration tasks to have access to ports and systems that are not allowed from the public Internet. IPSec is an encryption protocol for point-to-point communications at the network level, and may be used within a trust zone but not to give access into a trust zone. TLS enables encryption of communications between systems and services and would likely be used to secure the VPN communications, but it does not represent the overall concept being asked for in the question. SSH allows for secure shell access to systems, but not for general access into trust zones.

The change management process involves the creation of the official Request for Change (RFC) ticket, which is used to document the change, obtain the required approvals from management and stakeholders, and track the change to completion. Release management is a subcomponent of change management, where the actual code or configuration change is put into place. Deployment management is similar to release management, but it's where changes are actually implemented on systems. Problem management is focused on the identification and mitigation of known problems and deficiencies before they are able to occur.

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.

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. Configuration management tracks and maintains detailed information about all IT components within an organization. Problem management is focused on identifying and mitigating known problems and deficiencies before they occur.

A data custodian is responsible for the safe custody, transport, and storage of data, and the implementation of business roles.

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

The data owner is usually considered the cloud customer in a cloud configuration; the data in question is the customer’s information, being processed in the cloud. The cloud provider is only leasing services and hardware to the customer. The cloud access security broker (CASB) only handles access control on behalf of the cloud customer, and is not in direct contact with the production data.

The hypervisor level, as a backend cloud infrastructure component, is not a unit where limits may be applied to control resource utilization. Limits can be placed at the service, virtual machine, and cloud customer levels within a cloud environment.

Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

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

Cryptographic keys should not be stored along with the data they secure, regardless of key length. We don’t split crypto keys or generate redundant keys (doing so would violate the principle of secrecy necessary for keys to serve their purpose).

IPSec is a protocol for encrypting and authenticating packets during transmission between two parties and can involve any type of device, application, or service. The protocol performs both the authentication and negotiation of security policies between the two parties at the start of the connection and then maintains these policies throughout the lifetime of the connection. TLS operates at the application layer, not the network layer, and is widely used to secure communications between two parties. SSL is similar to TLS but has been deprecated. Although a VPN allows a secure channel for communications into a private network from an outside location, it's not a protocol.

The physical security of crypto keys is of some concern, but guards or vaults are not always necessary. Two-person integrity might be a good practice for protecting keys. The best answer to this question is option A, because it is always true, whereas the remaining options depend on circumstances.

Data discovery is a term used to describe the process of identifying information according to specific traits or categories. The rest are all methods for obscuring data.

All the answers are true, but B is the most complete.

In order to implement tokenization, there will need to be two databases: the database containing the raw, original data, and the token database containing tokens that map to original data. Having two-factor authentication is nice, but certainly not required. Encryption keys are not necessary for tokenization. Two-person integrity does not have anything to do with tokenization.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets stringent requirements in the United States for the protection of healthcare records.

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.

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

A host intrusion detection system (HIDS) monitors network traffic as well as critical system files and configurations.

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.

SAS-70 reports were replaced in 2011 with the SSAE-16 reports throughout the industry.

The recovery time objective (RTO) is a measure of the amount of time it would take to recover operations in the event of a disaster to the point where management's objectives are met for BCDR.

Portability is the ease with which a service or application can be moved between different cloud providers. Maintaining portability gives an organization great flexibility between cloud providers and the ability to shop for better deals or offerings.

Any time a major functional change of an application occurs, a new BCDR test should be done to ensure the overall strategy and process are still applicable and appropriate.

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.

Forensics is the application of scientific and methodical processes to identify, collect, preserve, analyze, and summarize/report digital information and evidence.

With multitenancy, eDiscovery becomes more complicated because the data collection involves extra steps to ensure that only those customers or systems that are within scope are turned over to the requesting authority.

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.

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.

Data loss prevention (DLP) can be applied to data that is leaving the security enclave to continue to enforce access restrictions and policies on other clients and systems.

The cloud service manager is responsible for the delivery of cloud services, the provisioning of cloud services, and the overall management of cloud services.

The contract should include requirements for notification by the cloud provider to the cloud customer upon the receipt of such an order. This serves a few important purposes. First, it keeps communication and trust open between the cloud provider and cloud customers. Second, and more importantly, it allows the cloud customer to potentially challenge the order if they feel they have the grounds or desire to do so.

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.

Software-defined networking separates the administration of network filtering and network forwarding to allow for distributed administration.

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

Generators are considered an external redundancy to a data center. Power distribution units (PDUs), storage systems, and power feeds to racks are all internal to a data center, and as such they are considered internal redundancies.

A reservation is a minimum resource that is guaranteed to a customer within a cloud environment. Within a cloud, a reservation can pertain to the two main aspects of computing: memory and processor. With a reservation in place, the cloud provider guarantees that a cloud customer will always have at minimum the necessary resources available to power on and operate any of their services.

Once a storage LUN is allocated to a virtual machine, the operating system of that virtual machine will format, manage, and control the file system and security of the data on that LUN.

Many web applications offer redirect or forward pages that send users to different, external sites. If these pages are not properly secured and validated, attackers can use the application to forward users off to sites for phishing or malware attempts. These attempts can often be more successful than direct phishing attempts because users will trust the site or application that sent them there, and they will assume it has been properly validated and approved by the trusted application's owners or operators. Security misconfiguration occurs when applications and systems are not properly configured for security--often a result of misapplied or inadequate baselines. Insecure direct object references occur when code references aspects of the infrastructure, especially internal or private systems, and an attacker can use that knowledge to glean more information about the infrastructure. Sensitive data exposure occurs when an application does not use sufficient encryption and other security controls to protect sensitive application data.

Federation pertains to authenticating systems between different organizations.

Rapid elasticity allows a cloud environment to automatically add or remove resources to or from a system or application based on its current demands. Whereas a traditional data center model would require standby hardware and substantial effort to add resources in response to load increases, a cloud environment can easily and rapidly expand to meet resources demands, so long as the application is properly implemented for it.

When a key management system is outside of the cloud environment hosting the application, availability is a primary concern because any access issues with the encryption keys will render the entire application unusable.

Regulated PII involves those requirements put forth by specific laws or regulations, and unlike contractual PII, where a violation can lead to contractual penalties, a violation of regulated PII can lead to fines or even criminal charges in some jurisdictions. PII regulations can depend on either the jurisdiction that applies to the hosting location or application or specific legislation based on the industry or type of data used.

The cloud service broker is responsible for obtaining new customers, analyzing the marketplace, and securing contracts and agreements.

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

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 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 static masking, a separate and distinct copy of the data set is created with masking in place. This is typically done through a script or other process that takes a standard data set, processes it to mask the appropriate and predefined fields, and then outputs the data set as a new one with the completed masking done.

The guidelines from ASHRAE establish 40-60 percent relative humidity as optimal for a data center.

Contractual PII has specific requirements for the handling of sensitive and personal information, as defined at a contractual level. These specific requirements will typically document the required handling procedures and policies to deal with PII. They may be in specific security controls and configurations, required policies or procedures, or limitations on who may gain authorized access to data and systems.

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.

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.

One approach that many cloud providers opt to take is to undergo a SOC 2 audit and make the report available to cloud customers and potential cloud customers as a way of providing security confidence without having to open their systems or sensitive information to the masses.

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.

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

Deletion merely removes the pointers to data on a system; it does nothing to actually remove and sanitize the data. As such, the data remains in a recoverable state, and more secure methods are needed to ensure it has been destroyed and is not recoverable by another party.