Free Practice Questions for ISC CCSP Exam

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.

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

Security should be included in discussions from the very first phase when defining the scope. Adding security later is likely to incur additional costs in time and money, or will result in an incomplete or inadequate plan.

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.

Structured storage is designed, maintained, and implemented by a cloud service provider as part of a PaaS offering. It is specific to that cloud provider and the way they have opted to implement systems, so special care is required to ensure that applications are not designed in a way that will lock the cloud customer into a specific cloud provider with that dependency. Unstructured storage for auxiliary files would not lock a customer into a specific provider. With volume and object storage, because the cloud customer maintains their own systems with IaaS, moving and replicating to a different cloud provider would be very easy.

It is imperative that applications do checks when each function or portion of the application is accessed to ensure that the user is properly authorized. Without continual checks each time a function is accessed, an attacker could forge requests to access portions of the application where authorization has not been granted. 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. 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.

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.

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

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

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.

An injection attack is where a malicious actor will send 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. This can trick an application into exposing data that is not intended or authorized to be exposed, or it could potentially allow an attacker to gain insight into configurations or security controls. 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 request forgery occurs when an attack forces an authenticated user to send forged requests to an application running under their own access and credentials. Cross-site scripting occurs when an attacker is able to send untrusted data to a user's browser without going through validation processes.

The management plane will have broad administrative access to all host systems throughout an environment; as such, it represents the most pressing security concerns. A compromise of the management plane can directly lead to compromises of any other systems within the environment. Although hypervisors represent a significant security concern to an environment because their compromise would expose any virtual systems hosted within them, the management plane is a better choice in this case because it controls multiple hypervisors. Encryption and object storage both represent lower-level security concerns.

The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) protocol only supports the Extensible Markup Language (XML) data format. Although the other options are all data formats or data structures, they are not supported by SOAP.

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.

The goal with any cloud-hosting setup is for the cloud customer to be able to perform most or all its functions for service provisioning and configuration without any need for support from or interaction with the cloud provider beyond the automated tools provided. To fulfill the tenants of on-demand self-service, required interaction with the cloud provider--either half time, full time, or a commensurate amount of time based on the contract--would be in opposition to a cloud's intended use. As such, these answers are incorrect.