Exam 5: CompTIA Cloud Essentials+

Question 1

A security analyst on the threat-hunting team has developed a list of unneeded, benign services that are currently running as part of the standard OS deployment for workstations. The analyst will provide this list to the operations team to create a policy that will automatically disable the services for all workstations in the organization. Which of the following BEST describes the security analyst's goal?

A) To create a system baseline
B) To reduce the attack surface
C) To optimize system performance
D) To improve malware detection

Answer 1

To optimize system performance

Question 2

A Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) wants to upgrade an organization's security posture by improving proactive activities associated with attacks from internal and external threats. Which of the following is the MOST proactive tool or technique that feeds incident response capabilities?

A) Development of a hypothesis as part of threat hunting
B) Log correlation, monitoring, and automated reporting through a SIEM platform
C) Continuous compliance monitoring using SCAP dashboards
D) Quarterly vulnerability scanning using credentialed scans

Answer 2

Development of a hypothesis as part of threat hunting

Question 3

Which of the following software security best practices would prevent an attacker from being able to run arbitrary SQL commands within a web application? (Choose two.)

A) Parameterized queries
B) Session management
C) Input validation
D) Output encoding
E) Data protection
F) Authentication

Answer 3

Parameterized queries
Input validation

Question 4

A security analyst suspects a malware infection was caused by a user who downloaded malware after clicking http:///a.php in a phishing email. To prevent other computers from being infected by the same malware variation, the analyst should create a rule on the __________.

A) email server that automatically deletes attached executables.
B) IDS to match the malware sample.
C) proxy to block all connections to . proxy to block all connections to .
D) firewall to block connection attempts to dynamic DNS hosts.

Question 5

A security analyst received a SIEM alert regarding high levels of memory consumption for a critical system. After several attempts to remediate the issue, the system went down. A root cause analysis revealed a bad actor forced the application to not reclaim memory. This caused the system to be depleted of resources. Which of the following BEST describes this attack?

A) Injection attack
B) Memory corruption
C) Denial of service
D) Array attack

Question 6

While planning segmentation for an ICS environment, a security engineer determines IT resources will need access to devices within the ICS environment without compromising security. To provide the MOST secure access model in this scenario, the jumpbox should be __________.

A) placed in an isolated network segment, authenticated on the IT side, and forwarded into the ICS network.
B) placed on the ICS network with a static firewall rule that allows IT network resources to authenticate.
C) bridged between the IT and operational technology networks to allow authenticated access.
D) placed on the IT side of the network, authenticated, and tunneled into the ICS environment.

Question 7

A development team uses open-source software and follows an Agile methodology with two-week sprints. Last month, the security team filed a bug for an insecure version of a common library. The DevOps team updated the library on the server, and then the security team rescanned the server to verify it was no longer vulnerable. This month, the security team found the same vulnerability on the server. Which of the following should be done to correct the cause of the vulnerability?

A) Deploy a WAF in front of the application.
B) Implement a software repository management tool.
C) Install a HIPS on the server.
D) Instruct the developers to use input validation in the code.

Question 8

An information security analyst is compiling data from a recent penetration test and reviews the following output: The analyst wants to obtain more information about the web-based services that are running on the target. Which of the following commands would MOST likely provide the needed information?

A) ping -t 10.79.95.173.rdns.datacenters.com
B) telnet 10.79.95.173 443
C) ftpd 10.79.95.173.rdns.datacenters.com 443
D) tracert 10.79.95.173

Question 9

A security analyst is providing a risk assessment for a medical device that will be installed on the corporate network. During the assessment, the analyst discovers the device has an embedded operating system that will be at the end of its life in two years. Due to the criticality of the device, the security committee makes a risk-based policy decision to review and enforce the vendor upgrade before the end of life is reached. Which of the following risk actions has the security committee taken?

A) Risk exception
B) Risk avoidance
C) Risk tolerance
D) Risk acceptance

Question 10

Which of the following would MOST likely be included in the incident response procedure after a security breach of customer PII?

A) Human resources
B) Public relations
C) Marketing
D) Internal network operations center

Question 11

Which of the following roles is ultimately responsible for determining the classification levels assigned to specific data sets?

A) Data custodian
B) Data owner
C) Data processor
D) Senior management

Question 12

A security technician is testing a solution that will prevent outside entities from spoofing the company's email domain, which is comptia.org . The testing is successful, and the security technician is prepared to fully implement the solution. Which of the following actions should the technician take to accomplish this task?

A) Add TXT @ "v=spf1 mx include:_spf.comptia.org ?all" to the DNS record. Add TXT @ "v=spf1 mx include:_spf.comptia.org ?all" to the DNS record.
B) Add TXT @ "v=spf1 mx include:_spf.comptia.org ?all" to the email server. to the email server.
C) Add TXT @ "v=spf1 mx include:_spf.comptia.org +all" to the domain controller. TXT @ "v=spf1 mx include:_spf.comptia.org +all" to the domain controller.
D) Add TXT @ "v=spf1 mx include:_spf.comptia.org +all" to the web server. to the web server.

Question 13

A cybersecurity analyst has access to several threat feeds and wants to organize them while simultaneously comparing intelligence against network traffic. Which of the following would BEST accomplish this goal?

A) Continuous integration and deployment
B) Automation and orchestration
C) Static and dynamic analysis
D) Information sharing and analysis

Question 14

A security analyst is trying to determine if a host is active on a network. The analyst first attempts the following: The analyst runs the following command next: Which of the following would explain the difference in results?

A) ICMP is being blocked by a firewall.
B) The routing tables for ping and hping3 were different. The routing tables for ping and hping3 were different.
C) The original ping command needed root permission to execute. The original command needed root permission to execute.
D) hping3 is returning a false positive. is returning a false positive.

Question 15

An information security analyst is reviewing backup data sets as part of a project focused on eliminating archival data sets. Which of the following should be considered FIRST prior to disposing of the electronic data?

A) Sanitization policy
B) Data sovereignty
C) Encryption policy
D) Retention standards

Question 16

A compliance officer of a large organization has reviewed the firm's vendor management program but has discovered there are no controls defined to evaluate third-party risk or hardware source authenticity. The compliance officer wants to gain some level of assurance on a recurring basis regarding the implementation of controls by third parties. Which of the following would BEST satisfy the objectives defined by the compliance officer? (Choose two.)

A) Executing vendor compliance assessments against the organization's security controls
B) Executing NDAs prior to sharing critical data with third parties
C) Soliciting third-party audit reports on an annual basis
D) Maintaining and reviewing the organizational risk assessment on a quarterly basis
E) Completing a business impact assessment for all critical service providers
F) Utilizing DLP capabilities at both the endpoint and perimeter levels

Question 17

A security analyst reviews the following aggregated output from an Nmap scan and the border firewall ACL: Which of the following should the analyst reconfigure to BEST reduce organizational risk while maintaining current functionality?

A) PC1
B) PC2
C) Server1
D) Server2
E) Firewall

Question 18

An information security analyst observes anomalous behavior on the SCADA devices in a power plant. This behavior results in the industrial generators overheating and destabilizing the power supply. Which of the following would BEST identify potential indicators of compromise?

A) Use Burp Suite to capture packets to the SCADA device's IP.
B) Use tcpdump to capture packets from the SCADA device IP.
C) Use Wireshark to capture packets between SCADA devices and the management system.
D) Use Nmap to capture packets from the management system to the SCADA devices.

Question 19

A storage area network (SAN) was inadvertently powered off while power maintenance was being performed in a datacenter. None of the systems should have lost all power during the maintenance. Upon review, it is discovered that a SAN administrator moved a power plug when testing the SAN's fault notification features. Which of the following should be done to prevent this issue from reoccurring?

A) Ensure both power supplies on the SAN are serviced by separate circuits, so that if one circuit goes down, the other remains powered.
B) Install additional batteries in the SAN power supplies with enough capacity to keep the system powered on during maintenance operations.
C) Ensure power configuration is covered in the datacenter change management policy and have the SAN administrator review this policy.
D) Install a third power supply in the SAN so loss of any power intuit does not result in the SAN completely powering off.

Question 20

During an investigation, a security analyst determines suspicious activity occurred during the night shift over the weekend. Further investigation reveals the activity was initiated from an internal IP going to an external website. Which of the following would be the MOST appropriate recommendation to prevent the activity from happening in the future?

A) An IPS signature modification for the specific IP addresses
B) An IDS signature modification for the specific IP addresses
C) A firewall rule that will block port 80 traffic
D) A firewall rule that will block traffic from the specific IP addresses

Question 21

Because some clients have reported unauthorized activity on their accounts, a security analyst is reviewing network packet captures from the company's API server. A portion of a capture file is shown below: POST /services/v1_0/Public/Members.svc/soap 192.168.1.22 - - api.somesite.com 200 0 1006 1001 0 192.168.1.22 POST /services/v1_0/Public/Members.svc/soap <Password123 [e-mail] 192.168.5.66 - - api.somesite.com 200 0 11558 1712 2024 192.168.4.89 POST /services/v1_0/Public/Members.svc/soap 516.7.446.605 192.168.1.22 - - api.somesite.com 200 0 1003 1011 307 192.168.1.22 "> kmL4krg2CwwWBan5BReGv5Djb7syxXTNKcWFuSjd0161222 4''1=113026046 192.168.5.66 - - api.somesite.com 200 0 1378 1209 48 192.168.4.89 Which of the following MOST likely explains how the clients' accounts were compromised?

A) The clients' authentication tokens were impersonated and replayed.
B) The clients' usernames and passwords were transmitted in cleartext.
C) An XSS scripting attack was carried out on the server.
D) A SQL injection attack was carried out on the server.

Question 22

During a cyber incident, which of the following is the BEST course of action?

A) Switch to using a pre-approved, secure, third-party communication system.
B) Keep the entire company informed to ensure transparency and integrity during the incident.
C) Restrict customer communication until the severity of the breach is confirmed.
D) Limit communications to pre-authorized parties to ensure response efforts remain confidential.

Question 23

The security team at a large corporation is helping the payment-processing team to prepare for a regulatory compliance audit and meet the following objectives: Reduce the number of potential findings by the auditors. Limit the scope of the audit to only devices used by the payment-processing team for activities directly impacted by the regulations. Prevent the external-facing web infrastructure used by other teams from coming into scope. Limit the amount of exposure the company will face if the systems used by the payment-processing team are compromised. Which of the following would be the MOST effective way for the security team to meet these objectives?

A) Limit the permissions to prevent other employees from accessing data owned by the business unit.
B) Segment the servers and systems used by the business unit from the rest of the network.
C) Deploy patches to all servers and workstations across the entire organization.
D) Implement full-disk encryption on the laptops used by employees of the payment-processing team.

Question 24

Which of the following sets of attributes BEST illustrates the characteristics of an insider threat from a security perspective?

A) Unauthorized, unintentional, benign
B) Unauthorized, intentional, malicious
C) Authorized, intentional, malicious
D) Authorized, unintentional, benign

Question 25

A development team is testing a new application release. The team needs to import existing client PHI data records from the production environment to the test environment to test accuracy and functionality. Which of the following would BEST protect the sensitivity of this data while still allowing the team to perform the testing?

A) Deidentification
B) Encoding
C) Encryption
D) Watermarking

Question 26

A security analyst is building a malware analysis lab. The analyst wants to ensure malicious applications are not capable of escaping the virtual machines and pivoting to other networks. To BEST mitigate this risk, the analyst should use __________.

A) an 802.11ac wireless bridge to create an air gap.
B) a managed switch to segment the lab into a separate VLAN.
C) a firewall to isolate the lab network from all other networks.
D) an unmanaged switch to segment the environments from one another.

Question 27

A security analyst is reviewing the following log from an email security service. Which of the following BEST describes the reason why the email was blocked?

A) The To address is invalid.
B) The email originated from the www.spamfilter.org URL.
C) The IP address and the remote server name are the same.
D) The IP address was blacklisted.
E) The From address is invalid.

Question 28

A monthly job to install approved vendor software updates and hot fixes recently stopped working. The security team performed a vulnerability scan, which identified several hosts as having some critical OS vulnerabilities, as referenced in the common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) database. Which of the following should the security team do NEXT to resolve the critical findings in the most effective manner? (Choose two.)

A) Patch the required hosts with the correct updates and hot fixes, and rescan them for vulnerabilities.
B) Remove the servers reported to have high and medium vulnerabilities.
C) Tag the computers with critical findings as a business risk acceptance.
D) Manually patch the computers on the network, as recommended on the CVE website.
E) Harden the hosts on the network, as recommended by the NIST framework.
F) Resolve the monthly job issues and test them before applying them to the production network.

Question 29

As part of an exercise set up by the information security officer, the IT staff must move some of the network systems to an off-site facility and redeploy them for testing. All staff members must ensure their respective systems can power back up and match their gold image. If they find any inconsistencies, they must formally document the information. Which of the following BEST describes this test?

A) Walk through
B) Full interruption
C) Simulation
D) Parallel

Question 30

An incident responder successfully acquired application binaries off a mobile device for later forensic analysis. Which of the following should the analyst do NEXT?

A) Decompile each binary to derive the source code.
B) Perform a factory reset on the affected mobile device.
C) Compute SHA-256 hashes for each binary.
D) Encrypt the binaries using an authenticated AES-256 mode of operation.
E) Inspect the permissions manifests within each application.

Question 31

Bootloader malware was recently discovered on several company workstations. All the workstations run Windows and are current models with UEFI capability. Which of the following UEFI settings is the MOST likely cause of the infections?

A) Compatibility mode
B) Secure boot mode
C) Native mode
D) Fast boot mode

Question 32

For machine learning to be applied effectively toward security analysis automation, it requires __________.

A) relevant training data.
B) a threat feed API.
C) a multicore, multiprocessor system.
D) anomalous traffic signatures.

Question 33

A Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is concerned the development team, which consists of contractors, has too much access to customer data. Developers use personal workstations, giving the company little to no visibility into the development activities. Which of the following would be BEST to implement to alleviate the CISO's concern?

A) DLP
B) Encryption
C) Test data
D) NDA

Question 34

A security analyst has received information from a third-party intelligence-sharing resource that indicates employee accounts were breached. Which of the following is the NEXT step the analyst should take to address the issue?

A) Audit access permissions for all employees to ensure least privilege.
B) Force a password reset for the impacted employees and revoke any tokens.
C) Configure SSO to prevent passwords from going outside the local network.
D) Set up privileged access management to ensure auditing is enabled.

Question 35

A network attack that is exploiting a vulnerability in the SNMP is detected. Which of the following should the cybersecurity analyst do FIRST?

A) Apply the required patches to remediate the vulnerability.
B) Escalate the incident to senior management for guidance.
C) Disable all privileged user accounts on the network.
D) Temporarily block the attacking IP address.

Question 36

Which of the following BEST describes the process by which code is developed, tested, and deployed in small batches?

A) Agile
B) Waterfall
C) SDLC
D) Dynamic code analysis

Question 37

A product manager is working with an analyst to design a new application that will perform as a data analytics platform and will be accessible via a web browser. The product manager suggests using a PaaS provider to host the application. Which of the following is a security concern when using a PaaS solution?

A) The use of infrastructure-as-code capabilities leads to an increased attack surface.
B) Patching the underlying application server becomes the responsibility of the client.
C) The application is unable to use encryption at the database level.
D) Insecure application programming interfaces can lead to data compromise.

Question 38

A security analyst is reviewing a web application. If an unauthenticated user tries to access a page in the application, the user is redirected to the login page. After successful authentication, the user is then redirected back to the original page. Some users have reported receiving phishing emails with a link that takes them to the application login page but then redirects to a fake login page after successful authentication. Which of the following will remediate this software vulnerability?

A) Enforce unique session IDs for the application.
B) Deploy a WAF in front of the web application.
C) Check for and enforce the proper domain for the redirect.
D) Use a parameterized query to check the credentials.
E) Implement email filtering with anti-phishing protection.

Question 39

During routine monitoring, a security analyst discovers several suspicious websites that are communicating with a local host. The analyst queries for IP 192.168.50.2 for a 24-hour period: To further investigate, the analyst should request PCAP for SRC 192.168.50.2 and __________.

A) DST 138.10.2.5.
B) DST 138.10.25.5.
C) DST 172.10.3.5.
D) DST 172.10.45.5.
E) DST 175.35.20.5.

Question 40

A security analyst needs to reduce the overall attack surface. Which of the following infrastructure changes should the analyst recommend?

A) Implement a honeypot.
B) Air gap sensitive systems.
C) Increase the network segmentation.
D) Implement a cloud-based architecture.

Question 41

While analyzing logs from a WAF, a cybersecurity analyst finds the following: "GET /form.php?id=463225%2b%2575%256e%2569%256f%256e%2b%2573%2574%2box3133333731,1223,1224&name=&state=IL" Which of the following BEST describes what the analyst has found?

A) This is an encrypted GET HTTP request
B) A packet is being used to bypass the WAF
C) This is an encrypted packet
D) This is an encoded WAF bypass

Question 42

Which of the following BEST articulates the benefit of leveraging SCAP in an organization's cybersecurity analysis toolset?

A) It automatically performs remedial configuration changes to enterprise security services
B) It enables standard checklist and vulnerability analysis expressions for automation
C) It establishes a continuous integration environment for software development operations
D) It provides validation of suspected system vulnerabilities through workflow orchestration

Question 43

Which of the following would a security engineer recommend to BEST protect sensitive system data from being accessed on mobile devices?

A) Use a UEFI boot password
B) Implement a self-encrypted disk
C) Configure filesystem encryption
D) Enable Secure Boot using TPM

Question 44

A company's marketing emails are either being found in a spam folder or not being delivered at all. The security analyst investigates the issue and discovers the emails in question are being sent on behalf of the company by a third party, mail.marketing.com. Below is the existing SPF record: v=spf1 a mx -all Which of the following updates to the SPF record will work BEST to prevent the emails from being marked as spam or blocked?

A) v=spf1 a mx redirect:mail.marketing.com ?all
B) v=spf1 a mx include:mail.marketing.com -all
C) v=spf1 a mx +all
D) v=spf1 a mx include:mail.marketing.com ~all

Question 45

After a breach involving the exfiltration of a large amount of sensitive data, a security analyst is reviewing the following firewall logs to determine how the breach occurred: Which of the following IP addresses does the analyst need to investigate further?

A) 192.168.1.1
B) 192.168.1.10
C) 192.168.1.12
D) 192.168.1.193

Question 46

A hybrid control is one that:

A) is implemented differently on individual systems
B) is implemented at the enterprise and system levels
C) has operational and technical components
D) authenticates using passwords and hardware tokens

Question 47

An organization that handles sensitive financial information wants to perform tokenization of data to enable the execution of recurring transactions. The organization is most interested in a secure, built-in device to support its solution. Which of the following would MOST likely be required to perform the desired function?

A) TPM
B) eFuse
C) FPGA
D) HSM
E) UEFI

Question 48

An organization is moving its infrastructure to the cloud in an effort to meet the budget and reduce staffing requirements. The organization has three environments: development, testing, and production. These environments have interdependencies but must remain relatively segmented. Which of the following methods would BEST secure the company's infrastructure and be the simplest to manage and maintain?

A) Create three separate cloud accounts for each environment. Configure account peering and security rules to allow access to and from each environment.
B) Create one cloud account with one VPC for all environments. Purchase a virtual firewall and create granular security rules.
C) Create one cloud account and three separate VPCs for each environment. Create security rules to allow access to and from each environment.
D) Create three separate cloud accounts for each environment and a single core account for network services. Route all traffic through the core account.

Question 49

A security analyst wants to identify which vulnerabilities a potential attacker might initially exploit if the network is compromised. Which of the following would provide the BEST results?

A) Baseline configuration assessment
B) Uncredentialed scan
C) Network ping sweep
D) External penetration test

Question 50

A security analyst is reviewing the following web server log: GET %2f..%2f..%2f.. %2f.. %2f.. %2f.. %2f../etc/passwd Which of the following BEST describes the issue?

A) Directory traversal exploit
B) Cross-site scripting
C) SQL injection
D) Cross-site request forgery

Question 51

When attempting to do a stealth scan against a system that does not respond to ping, which of the following Nmap commands BEST accomplishes that goal?

A) nmap -sA -O -noping
B) nmap -sT -O -P0
C) nmap -sS -O -P0
D) nmap -sQ -O -P0

Question 52

A development team signed a contract that requires access to an on-premises physical server. Access must be restricted to authorized users only and cannot be connected to the Internet. Which of the following solutions would meet this requirement?

A) Establish a hosted SSO.
B) Implement a CASB.
C) Virtualize the server.
D) Air gap the server.

Question 53

Which of the following will allow different cloud instances to share various types of data with a minimal amount of complexity?

A) Reverse engineering
B) Application log collectors
C) Workflow orchestration
D) API integration
E) Scripting

Question 54

An organization has not had an incident for several months. The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) wants to move to a more proactive stance for security investigations. Which of the following would BEST meet that goal?

A) Root-cause analysis
B) Active response
C) Advanced antivirus
D) Information-sharing community
E) Threat hunting

Question 55

A security analyst discovers a vulnerability on an unpatched web server that is used for testing machine learning on Big Data sets. Exploitation of the vulnerability could cost the organization $1.5 million in lost productivity. The server is located on an isolated network segment that has a 5% chance of being compromised. Which of the following is the value of this risk?

A) $75,000
B) $300,000
C) $1.425 million
D) $1.5 million

Question 56

A pharmaceutical company's marketing team wants to send out notifications about new products to alert users of recalls and newly discovered adverse drug reactions. The team plans to use the names and mailing addresses that users have provided. Which of the following data privacy standards does this violate?

A) Purpose limitation
B) Sovereignty
C) Data minimization
D) Retention

Question 57

A cybersecurity analyst is supporting an incident response effort via threat intelligence. Which of the following is the analyst MOST likely executing?

A) Requirements analysis and collection planning
B) Containment and eradication
C) Recovery and post-incident review
D) Indicator enrichment and research pivoting

Question 58

A security analyst is conducting a post-incident log analysis to determine which indicators can be used to detect further occurrences of a data exfiltration incident. The analyst determines backups were not performed during this time and reviews the following: Which of the following should the analyst review to find out how the data was exfiltrated?

A) Monday's logs
B) Tuesday's logs
C) Wednesday's logs
D) Thursday's logs

Question 59

An analyst is investigating an anomalous event reported by the SOC. After reviewing the system logs, the analyst identifies an unexpected addition of a user with root-level privileges on the endpoint. Which of the following data sources will BEST help the analyst to determine whether this event constitutes an incident?

A) Patching logs
B) Threat feed
C) Backup logs
D) Change requests
E) Data classification matrix

Question 60

A user receives a potentially malicious email that contains spelling errors and a PDF document. A security analyst reviews the email and decides to download the attachment to a Linux sandbox for review. Which of the following commands would MOST likely indicate if the email is malicious?

A) sha256sum ~/Desktop/file.pdf
B) file ~/Desktop/file.pdf
C) strings ~/Desktop/file.pdf | grep "D) cat < ~/Desktop/file.pdf | grep -i .exe

Question 61

An analyst has been asked to provide feedback regarding the controls required by a revised regulatory framework. At this time, the analyst only needs to focus on the technical controls. Which of the following should the analyst provide an assessment of?

A) Tokenization of sensitive data
B) Establishment of data classifications
C) Reporting on data retention and purging activities
D) Formal identification of data ownership
E) Execution of NDAs

Question 62

During an incident, a cybersecurity analyst found several entries in the web server logs that are related to an IP with a bad reputation. Which of the following would cause the analyst to further review the incident?

A) BadReputationIp - - [2019-04-12 10:43Z] "GET /etc/passwd" 403 1023
B) BadReputationIp - - [2019-04-12 10:43Z] "GET /index.html?src=../.ssh/id_rsa" 401 17044
C) BadReputationIp - - [2019-04-12 10:43Z] "GET /a.php?src=/etc/passwd" 403 11056
D) BadReputationIp - - [2019-04-12 10:43Z] "GET /a.php?src=../../.ssh/id_rsa" 200 15036
E) BadReputationIp - - [2019-04-12 10:43Z] "GET /favicon.ico?src=../usr/share/icons" 200 19064

Question 63

A developer wrote a script to make names and other PII data unidentifiable before loading a database export into the testing system. Which of the following describes the type of control that is being used?

A) Data encoding
B) Data masking
C) Data loss prevention
D) Data classification

Question 64

A security analyst discovered a specific series of IP addresses that are targeting an organization. None of the attacks have been successful. Which of the following should the security analyst perform NEXT?

A) Begin blocking all IP addresses within that subnet
B) Determine the attack vector and total attack surface
C) Begin a kill chain analysis to determine the impact
D) Conduct threat research on the IP addresses

Question 65

As part of a review of incident response plans, which of the following is MOST important for an organization to understand when establishing the breach notification period?

A) Organizational policies
B) Vendor requirements and contracts
C) Service-level agreements
D) Legal requirements

Question 66

A cybersecurity analyst needs to rearchitect the network using a firewall and a VPN server to achieve the highest level of security. To BEST complete this task, the analyst should place the:

A) firewall behind the VPN server
B) VPN server parallel to the firewall
C) VPN server behind the firewall
D) VPN on the firewall

Question 67

A security analyst is investigating a compromised Linux server. The analyst issues the ps command and receives the following output: Which of the following commands should the administrator run NEXT to further analyze the compromised system?

A) strace /proc/1301
B) rpm -V openssh-server
C) /bin/ls -l /proc/1301/exe
D) kill -9 1301

Question 68

A threat feed notes malicious actors have been infiltrating companies and exfiltrating data to a specific set of domains. Management at an organization wants to know if it is a victim. Which of the following should the security analyst recommend to identify this behavior without alerting any potential malicious actors?

A) Create an IPS rule to block these domains and trigger an alert within the SIEM tool when these domains are requested.
B) Add the domains to a DNS sinkhole and create an alert in the SIEM tool when the domains are queried
C) Look up the IP addresses for these domains and search firewall logs for any traffic being sent to those IPs over port 443
D) Query DNS logs with a SIEM tool for any hosts requesting the malicious domains and create alerts based on this information

Question 69

An analyst performs a routine scan of a host using Nmap and receives the following output: Which of the following should the analyst investigate FIRST?

A) Port 21
B) Port 22
C) Port 23
D) Port 80

Question 70

Which of the following attacks can be prevented by using output encoding?

A) Server-side request forgery
B) Cross-site scripting
C) SQL injection
D) Command injection
E) Cross-site request forgery
F) Directory traversal

Question 71

A security analyst recently discovered two unauthorized hosts on the campus's wireless network segment from a man-in-the-middle attack. The security analyst also verified that privileges were not escalated, and the two devices did not gain access to other network devices. Which of the following would BEST mitigate and improve the security posture of the wireless network for this type of attack?

A) Enable MAC filtering on the wireless router and suggest a stronger encryption for the wireless network
B) Change the SSID, strengthen the passcode, and implement MAC filtering on the wireless router
C) Enable MAC filtering on the wireless router and create a whitelist that allows devices on the network
D) Conduct a wireless survey to determine if the wireless strength needs to be reduced

Question 72

Which of the following is the MOST important objective of a post-incident review?

A) Capture lessons learned and improve incident response processes
B) Develop a process for containment and continue improvement efforts
C) Identify new technologies and strategies to remediate
D) Identify a new management strategy

Question 73

A security manager has asked an analyst to provide feedback on the results of a penetration test. After reviewing the results, the manager requests information regarding the possible exploitation of vulnerabilities. Which of the following information data points would be MOST useful for the analyst to provide to the security manager, who would then communicate the risk factors to senior management? (Choose two.)

A) Probability
B) Adversary capability
C) Attack vector
D) Impact
E) Classification
F) Indicators of compromise

Question 74

While preparing for an audit of information security controls in the environment, an analyst outlines a framework control that has the following requirements: All sensitive data must be classified. All sensitive data must be purged on a quarterly basis. Certificates of disposal must remain on file for at least three years. This framework control is MOST likely classified as:

A) prescriptive
B) risk-based
C) preventive
D) corrective

Question 75

A web-based front end for a business intelligence application uses pass-through authentication to authenticate users. The application then uses a service account to perform queries and look up data in a database. A security analyst discovers employees are accessing data sets they have not been authorized to use. Which of the following will fix the cause of the issue?

A) Change the security model to force the users to access the database as themselves
B) Parameterize queries to prevent unauthorized SQL queries against the database
C) Configure database security logging using syslog or a SIEM
D) Enforce unique session IDs so users do not get a reused session ID

Question 76

As part of an organization's information security governance process, a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is working with the compliance officer to update policies to include statements related to new regulatory and legal requirements. Which of the following should be done to BEST ensure all employees are appropriately aware of changes to the policies?

A) Conduct a risk assessment based on the controls defined in the newly revised policies
B) Require all employees to attend updated security awareness training and sign an acknowledgement
C) Post the policies on the organization's intranet and provide copies of any revised policies to all active vendors
D) Distribute revised copies of policies to employees and obtain a signed acknowledgement from them

Question 77

A security analyst is reviewing the following log entries to identify anomalous activity: Which of the following attack types is occurring?

A) Directory traversal
B) SQL injection
C) Buffer overflow
D) Cross-site scripting

Question 78

Clients are unable to access a company's API to obtain pricing data. An analyst discovers sources other than clients are scraping the API for data, which is causing the servers to exceed available resources. Which of the following would be BEST to protect the availability of the APIs?

A) IP whitelisting
B) Certificate-based authentication
C) Virtual private network
D) Web application firewall

Question 79

A company wants to establish a threat-hunting team. Which of the following BEST describes the rationale for integrating intelligence into hunt operations?

A) It enables the team to prioritize the focus areas and tactics within the company's environment
B) It provides criticality analyses for key enterprise servers and services
C) It allows analysts to receive routine updates on newly discovered software vulnerabilities
D) It supports rapid response and recovery during and following an incident

Question 80

A security analyst discovers accounts in sensitive SaaS-based systems are not being removed in a timely manner when an employee leaves the organization. To BEST resolve the issue, the organization should implement:

A) federated authentication
B) role-based access control
C) manual account reviews
D) multifactor authentication