CCSP Certified Cloud Security Professional Questions and Answers

GitHub is an open source tool that developers leverage for code collaboration, branching, and versioning.

Dynamic resource scheduling (DRS) is used within all clustering systems as the method for clusters to provide high availability, scaling, management, and workload distribution and balancing of jobs and processes. From a physical infrastructure perspective, DRS is used to balance compute loads between physical hosts in a cloud to maintain the desired thresholds and limits on the physical hosts.

With the distributed nature of cloud environments, the foremost challenge for data discovery is awareness of the location of data and keeping track of it during the constant motion of cloud storage systems.

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

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.

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

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.

Resource pooling serves as the biggest challenge to using DLP solutions to protect data at rest because data is spread across large systems, which are also shared by many different clients. With the data always moving and being distributed, additional challenges for protection are created versus a physical and isolated storage system. Portability is the ability to easily move between different cloud providers, and interoperability is focused on the ability to reuse components or services. Reversibility pertains to the ability of a cloud customer to easily and completely remove their data and services from a cloud provider.

Volume storage works as a virtual hard drive that is attached to a virtual machine. The operating system sees the volume the same as how a traditional drive on a physical server would be seen.

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.

The primary purpose of the gap analysis is to begin the benchmarking process against risk and security standards and frameworks.

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.

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.

Explanation

Incident management is focused on limiting the impact of disruptions to an organization's services or operations, as well as returning their state to full operational status as soon as possible. Problem management is focused on identifying and mitigating known problems and deficiencies before they occur. Deployment management is a subcomponent of change management and is where the actual code or configuration change is put into place. Change management involves the processes and procedures that allow an organization to make changes to its IT systems and services in a controlled manner.

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.

Print spooling is not a metric for system performance; all the rest are.

The United States has a myriad of regulations focused on specific types of data, such as healthcare and financial, but lacks an overall comprehensive privacy law on the national level. The European Union, the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and Russia all have national privacy protections and regulations for the handling the PII data of their citizens.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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 determined level of operations necessary during a BCDR situation. The recovery time objective (RTO) measures the amount of time necessary to recover operations to meet the BCDR plan. SRE is provided as an erroneous response.

The official categories of cloud risk ratings are Minimal, Low, Moderate, High, and Critical.

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is an attack where a malicious actor is able to send untrusted data to a user's browser without going through any validation or sanitization processes, or where the code is not properly escaped from processing by the browser. The code is then executed on the user's browser with the user's own access and permissions, allowing an attacker to redirect their web traffic, steal data from their session, or potentially access information on the user's own computer that their browser has the ability to access.

Cryptographic erasure is a secure method to destroy data by destroying the keys that were used to encrypt it. This method is universally available for volume storage on IaaS and is also extremely quick. Shredding, degaussing, and demagnetizing are all physically destructive methods that would not be permitted within a cloud environment using shared resources.

GitHub is a software development platform that serves as a code repository and versioning system. It is solely used for software development and would not be appropriate for applying baselines to systems. Puppet is an open-source configuration management tool that runs on many platforms and can be used to apply and maintain baselines. The Software Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) was developed by Microsoft for managing systems across large groups of servers. Chef is also a system for maintaining large groups of systems throughout an enterprise.

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.

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.

A UPS can provide line conditioning, adjusting power so that it is optimized for the devices it serves and smoothing any power fluctuations; it does not offer any of the other listed functions.

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.

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

In order for any archiving system to be deemed useful and compliant, regular tests must be performed to ensure the data can still be recovered and accessible, should it ever be needed, for the duration of the retention requirements.

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.

The more systems that be included in the baseline, the more cost-effective and scalable the baseline is. The baseline does not deal with breaches or version control; those are the provinces of the security office and CMB, respectively. Regulatory compliance might (and usually will) go beyond the baseline and involve systems, processes, and personnel that are not subject to the baseline.

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

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.

The Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is the most widely used method for encoding and sending attributes and other information from an identity provider to a relying party.WS-Federation, which is used by Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), is the second most used method for sending information to a relying party, but it is not a better choice than SAML. XML is similar to SAML in the way it encodes and labels data, but it does not have all of the required extensions that SAML does. HTML is not used within federated systems at all.

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.

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.

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.

Whereas a contract spells out general terms and costs for services, the SLA is where the real meat of the business relationship and concrete requirements come into play. The SLA spells out in clear terms the minimum requirements for uptime, availability, processes, customer service and support, security controls and requirements, auditing and reporting, and potentially many other areas that define the business relationship and the success of it.

The data retention policy covers the duration, format, technologies, protection, and accessibility of archives, but does not address the specific costs of its implementation and maintenance.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The value of data itself has nothing to do with it being considered a part of contractual

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

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

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

Power distribution units are internal to a data center and supply power to internal components such as racks, appliances, and cooling systems. As such, they are considered an internal redundancy.

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

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.

When leasing space in a data center, an organization can avoid the enormous startup and building costs associated with a data center, and can instead leverage economies of scale by grouping with other organizations and sharing costs.

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.

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) automatically configures network settings for a host so that these settings do not need to be configured on the host statically. Given the rapid and programmatic provisioning of resources within a cloud environment, this capability is crucial to cloud operations. Both DNS and its security-integrity extension DNSSEC provide name resolution to IP addresses, but neither is used for the configuration of network settings on a host. DCOM refers to the Distributed Component Object Model, which was developed by Microsoft as a means to request services across a network, and is not used for network configurations at all.

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.

ExplanationCross-site scripting (XSS) is an attack where a malicious actor is able to send untrusted data to a user's browser without going through any validation or sanitization processes, or perhaps the code is not properly escaped from processing by the browser. The code is then executed on the user's browser with their own access and permissions, allowing the attacker to redirect the user's web traffic, steal data from their session, or potentially access information on the user's own computer that their browser has the ability to access. 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 request forgery occurs when an attack forces an authenticated user to send forged requests to an application running under their own access and credentials.

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.

Public clouds offer services to anyone, regardless of affiliation, and are the most likely to offer free services to users. Examples of public clouds with free services include iCloud, Dropbox, and OneDrive. Private cloud models are designed for specific customers and for their needs, and would not offer services to the public at large, for free or otherwise. A community cloud is specific to a group of similar organizations and would not offer free or widely available public services. A hybrid cloud model would not fit the specifics of the question.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Under the SOC guidelines, when any of the four principles other than security are being audited, which includes availability, confidentiality, processing integrity, and privacy, the security principle must also be included with the audit.

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

A bastion is a system that is exposed to the public Internet to perform a specific function, but it is highly restricted and secured to just that function. Any nonessential services and access are removed from the bastion so that security countermeasures and monitoring can be focused just on the bastion's specific duties. A honeypot is a system designed to look like a production system to entice attackers, but it does not contain any real data. It is used for learning about types of attacks and enabling countermeasures for them. A firewall is used within a network to limit access between IP addresses and ports. A proxy server provides additional security to and rulesets for network traffic that is allowed to pass through it to a service destination.