Free Practice Questions for WGU Managing-Cloud-Security Exam

Before transmitting sensitive financial data to the cloud, the best defense against interception threats like packet capture and man-in-the-middle attacks is encryption. Encryption protects data in transit by converting plain text into cipher text, which can only be deciphered with the correct keys.

Hashing provides integrity verification but does not secure confidentiality. Change tracking monitors modifications but does not prevent interception. Metadata labeling adds context but does not protect against on-path attackers.

Using strong encryption protocols (e.g., TLS) ensures that even if traffic is intercepted, the attacker cannot read the data. Encryption also aligns with compliance requirements such as PCI DSS, which mandates encryption for financial data during transmission. By encrypting before upload, the user ensures end-to-end confidentiality across potentially insecure networks.

Outside the United States, ISAE 3402 (International Standard on Assurance Engagements 3402) is the standard used for audits equivalent to SOC reports. It ensures that service organizations demonstrate adequate internal controls over financial reporting and operational processes.

SSAE 18 is the U.S. standard governing SOC audits. ISRE 2400 and SSARS 25 focus on accounting and review services, not assurance over service organizations.

ISAE 3402 provides assurance to international customers that cloud providers or service organizations meet rigorous standards for security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. This builds global trust and interoperability in compliance frameworks.

Offsite backups are an effective countermeasure against vendor lock-in and lock-out risks. Managing Cloud principles explain that maintaining copies of data outside a single cloud provider reduces dependency and ensures continued access if services become unavailable.

Offsite backups enable organizations to migrate data, recover from provider outages, or exit a provider relationship without losing critical information. This control supports business continuity, portability, and resilience.

Video surveillance addresses physical security, disk redundancy improves availability within the same provider, and training programs improve awareness but do not reduce dependency. Therefore, offsite backups are the correct security control.

Escalation of privilege occurs when an authorized user gains higher access rights than originally granted, without proper authorization. Managing Cloud principles describe this threat as particularly dangerous because it involves legitimate credentials being abused rather than external attackers breaching the system.

In cloud environments, privilege escalation may occur due to misconfigured access controls, vulnerable applications, or excessive permissions. Once elevated access is obtained, a user can modify configurations, access sensitive data, or disrupt services beyond their intended role. This directly violates the principle of least privilege and increases the impact of insider threats.

The other options do not describe this scenario. Man-in-the-middle attacks intercept communications, role assumption is a legitimate access mechanism when properly authorized, and segregation of duties is a control designed to prevent abuse. Therefore, escalation of privilege is the correct answer.

A core goal of OS baseline compliance and monitoring is to ensure that virtual images and operating systems adhere to approved baseline configuration requirements. Managing Cloud documentation explains that baseline configurations define secure settings for operating systems, including disabled services, patch levels, access controls, and logging configurations.

Compliance monitoring continuously verifies that systems remain aligned with these baselines over time. This helps detect unauthorized changes, configuration drift, or misconfigurations that could introduce vulnerabilities. Ensuring that virtual images meet baseline standards before deployment also reduces risk across scaled cloud environments.

The other options relate to availability, network isolation, or data separation, which are addressed by different controls. Therefore, ensuring baseline configuration compliance is the primary goal of OS baseline monitoring.

A rollback is the safeguard that restores a system to its previous, stable state when a new code release introduces issues. In DevOps workflows, rollbacks provide a rapid recovery mechanism, reducing downtime and minimizing customer impact.

Staging, code review, and testing are preventive controls that reduce the likelihood of defects reaching production, but once a bug has already been deployed, rollback is the corrective control.

Rollback strategies often rely on version control systems, container orchestration, or infrastructure-as-code automation to quickly revert to earlier configurations. This practice is essential for maintaining reliability and availability, especially in cloud environments with continuous deployment pipelines.

The jurisdiction of the cloud provider and users is a primary consideration when analyzing legal and privacy implications of cloud technologies. Managing Cloud guidance explains that data is subject to the laws and regulations of the jurisdiction in which it is stored, processed, or accessed.

Different countries impose varying legal requirements for data privacy, disclosure, and access by authorities. Understanding jurisdiction helps organizations evaluate compliance obligations, cross-border data transfer restrictions, and potential risks related to government access or conflicting regulations.

While encryption, contract configuration, and service level agreements are important, they do not override jurisdictional legal authority. Therefore, jurisdiction is the most critical factor in legal and privacy analysis.

This concern is addressed by considering portability and interoperability options. Managing Cloud guidance explains that organizations must plan for provider exit scenarios to avoid dependency risks.

Portability ensures data and workloads can be moved to another provider or on-premises environment, while interoperability supports compatibility across platforms. This may include standardized data formats, documented APIs, and offsite backups.

Multiple zones address outages, not provider bankruptcy. Contract revisions help legally but do not guarantee recovery. Therefore, portability and interoperability are the correct focus.

Cloud providers typically manage multi-tenant infrastructure, where physical hardware is shared among customers. Therefore, drives are not destroyed for each customer unless explicitly required in the contract. If the customer’s agreement specifies dedicated hardware disposal, then the provider must comply by physically destroying the drives.

Cryptographic erasure and degaussing are valid sanitization methods, but they may not meet the specific contractual requirement of physical destruction. Insurance clauses are unrelated to disposal.

This question underscores the importance of negotiating contractual terms in cloud agreements. Customers handling highly sensitive or regulated data may require physical destruction, while others may accept logical erasure. Clear agreements ensure both compliance and alignment of security responsibilities.

Data masking is a privacy-preserving technique that replaces sensitive fields with obfuscated or partial values while retaining usability. For example, displaying only the last four digits of a Social Security Number or credit card number. This allows a representative to verify identity without accessing the full data set.

Hashing and encryption protect data at rest or in transit, but they do not allow selective partial display. Tokenization substitutes sensitive data with unique tokens but is typically used for storage and processing rather than interactive verification. Masking, on the other hand, is specifically designed for scenarios where a user must work with limited but recognizable data.

By using masking, organizations enforce the principle of least privilege, reduce exposure of sensitive information, and align with privacy standards such as PCI DSS and GDPR.