CISSP Practice Questions - All CISSP Domains 120Q - 2022 #3 (1 of 2 / Anthony Today) Flashcards
What topology would accurately describe Ethernet?
A. A ring
B. A star
C. A mesh
D. A bus
D. A bus
Explanation:
Don’t confuse physical representation of a network (inter-connection of devices) and the way they communicate. On an Ethernet network, devices can all communicate on the same bus simultaneously, and the Ethernet protocol manages the collisions by requesting the participants to reiterate their communication after a random time buffer.
Which of the following activities is not a consideration during data classification?
A. Who can access the data
B. What the impact would be if the data was lost or breached
C. How much the data cost to create
D. What protection regulations may be required for the data
C. How much the data cost to create
Explanation:
Who can access the data and what regulatory or compliance requirements cover the data are important considerations, but do not address the question. However, the cost of the data is not directly included in the classification process. Instead, the impact to the organization if the data were exposed or breached is considered.
What software development model would be represented in a clearly defined sequence of activities, with no changes to the requirements until the product is being tested?
A. Waterfall
B. Agile
C. Lean
D. Spiral
A. Waterfall
Explanation:
The scenario described here is the waterfall approach because it lays out the development process in a rigid environment where requirements don’t change. Less and less environments are suitable for such development processes.
What software development model would be represented with multiple loops, representing daily activities as well as larger deliveries?
A. Waterfall
B. Agile
C. Lean
D. Spiral
B. Agile
Explanation:
The waterfall approach does not iterate through the entire process repeatedly but rather only allows movement backward and forward one stage. A spiral model of software development. In this approach, developers use multiple iterations of a waterfall-style software development process. The agile approach to software development focuses on iterative improvement, and is composed of daily development activities, which are themselves part of sprints that can cover 15 to 30 days of work. Finally, Lean is a process improvement methodology and not a software development model.
Lembele is a mid-sized business focusing on building automation systems. They host a panel of local file servers in their on-premises data center that store customer proposals, building plans, product information, and other data that is critical to their business operations. Christelle works in the Lembele IT department and is responsible, amongst others, for designing and implementing the organization’s backup strategy. She currently conducts full backups every Sunday evening at 8 p.m. and differential backups on Monday through Friday at noon. Lembele experienced a server failure at 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Christelle rebuilds the server and wants to restore data from the backups. What backup should Christelle apply to the server first?
A. Sunday’s full backup
B. Monday’s differential backup
C. Tuesday’s differential backup
D. Wednesday’s differential backup
A. Sunday’s full backup
Explanation:
Given the description of the situation, the first restoration should Sunday’s full backup, follow-up by the latest backup (Tuesday’s).
What type of motion detector senses alterations in the electromagnetic fields in monitored areas?
A. Infrared
B. Wave Pattern
C. Capacitance
D. Photoelectric
C. Capacitance
Explanation:
From the listed option, the capacitance motion detectors monitor the electromagnetic field in a monitored area, sensing disturbances that correspond to motion.
You work as a contract to the US government on a defense project, and deal with secret data. You would like to reuse the equipment from a decommissioned infrastructure that used to host top secret data, but you have been informed that internal policies prevent you from doing so. What can’t you request a degaussing of these equipment instead of building a business case to invest in a new infrastructure?
A. Data permanence may be an issue
B. Data remanence is a concern
C. Degaussing equipment may cause sensible damage to hardware
D. Data from tapes cant be erased by degaussing
B. Data remanence is a concern
Explanation:
The biggest issue highlighted here is the risk of data remanence on the equipment, specifically because the previous project dealt with top secret data. Although from a pure financial perspective the investment in a new infrastructure may be more costly, running the risk of unauthorized access to top secret data bears a higher risk.
Eric is troubleshooting an issue with his organization’s SIEM reporting. He has been told that the servers have recently been rebooted, but he notices that there are inconsistencies in the log timestamps. Which protocol could help to address this issue?
A. SSH
B. FTP
C. TLS
D. NTP
D. NTP
Explanation:
Transport Layer Security (TLS) is an encryption process used to protect information in transit over a network. The Secure Shell (SSH) protocol provides encrypted administrative connections to servers. The Network Time Protocol (NTP) allows the synchronization of system clocks with a standardized time source. Finally, the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is used for data exchange.
The company that Ludovic works for is reviewing the security of their company issued cell phones. They issue 4G capable smartphones running Android and iOS and use a mobile device management solution to deploy company software to the phones. Ludovic is concerned about the company data that would still be on the phone in the case it would be lost or stolen. The mobile device management software also allows the company to remotely wipe the phones if they are lost. What could be a situation that would cause a remote wipe of a mobile phone to fail?
A. The phone has a passcode on it
B. The phone cannot contact a network
C. The provider has not unlocked the phone
D. The phone is in use
B. The phone cannot contact a network
Explanation:
Remote wipe solutions are designed to wipe data from the phone regardless of whether it is in use or has a passcode. Providers unlock phones for use on other cellular networks rather than for wiping or other feature support. Remote wipe tools are a useful solution, but they only work if the phone can access either a cellular or Wi-Fi network.
When Benoit verifies an individual’s identity and adds a unique identifier like a user ID to an identity system, what process has occurred?
A. Identity Proofing
B. Registration
C. Directory management
D. Session mangement
A. Identity Proofing
Explanation:
Proofing occurs when the user provides information to prove who they are. Directories are managed to maintain lists of users, services, and other items. Session management tracks application and user sessions. Registration is the process of adding a user to an identity management system. This includes creating their unique identifier and adding any attribute information that is associated with their identity.
What term is not used to describe a privileged mode of system operation?
A. User mode
B. Kernel mode
C. Supervisory mode
D. System mode
A. User mode
Explanation:
User mode is an unprivileged mode. Kernel mode, supervisory mode, and system mode are all terms used to describe privileged modes of system operation.
You prepare a business continuity plan for your organization. What value should you try to minimize?
A. AV
B. SSL
C. RTO
D. MTO
C. RTO
Explanation:
The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the amount of time needed to restore normal business operations, and is the factor that you should try to minimize. AV is the asset value, SSL is a communication protocol, and Maximum Tolerable Outage is the maximum time a business can run with its services down.
Your organization just established a new information security policy, and you recommend updating the password policy by including stronger password requirements. Which requirement would provide stronger resilience against brute-force attacks?
A. Change maximum age from 1 year to 180 days
B. Increase the minimum password length from 8 characters to 16 characters
C. Increase the password complexity so that at least three character classes are required
D. Retain a password history of at least four passwords to prevent reuse
B. Increase the minimum password length from 8 characters to 16 characters
Explanation:
The longer the password the less efficient are brute-force attacks. Thus, a single character increase in a password increases the complexity by 26 variants. All requirements listed here increase the complexity, but the password length has the greatest impact.
You are sitting in a meeting with your colleagues, and the core of the discussion is related to the responsibilities about the data collected by the firm. Which individual bears the ultimate responsibility for data protection tasks?
A. Data owner
B. Data custodian
C. User
D. Auditor
A. Data owner
Explanation:
The data owner typically delegates some tasks to one or more data custodians, but the data owner, usually a senior manager, bears the ultimate responsibility for data protection tasks.
You are troubleshooting an issue after having been reported that users are experiencing network and system slowness. As part of the early steps that you take, you try to identify the scope of the issue. You have a list of the servers in your infrastructure and try to determine patterns and commonalities based on the users feedback you received. You believe that some of the servers have been compromised and are creating troubles on the network. Which information would allow you to determine the servers affecting the network?
A. Netflow records
B. IDS logs
C. Authentications logs
D. RFC logs
A. Netflow records
Explanation:
Netflow records contain an entry for every network communication session that took place on a network and can enable you to shortlist the servers that affect your network performances. RFC logs and authentication logs would not have records of any network traffic. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) logs may contain a relevant record but would not have all communications.
What type of key does WEP use to encrypt wireless communications with the aim to prevent eavesdropping?
A. An asymmetric key
B. Unique key sets for each host
C. A predefined shared static key
D. Unique asymmetric keys for each host
C. A predefined shared static key
Explanation:
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is based on symmetric encryption, and leverages a static key being shared among the actors of the communication. WEP is considered as a weak encryption practice, and studies show that little effort is required to intercept the communications.
Before releasing a new software version to production you follow the software development lifecycle requirements that mandate you to run a vulnerability scanning test. You are running the Nitko tool against the web server where you plan to deploy the software and a flag about the directory name /test. What is the reason?
A. The /test directory allows administrative access to PHP
B. It is used to store sensitive data
C. Test directories often contain scripts that can be misused
D. It indicates a potential compromise
C. Test directories often contain scripts that can be misused
Explanation:
In general, test directories, or temp folders include scripts that were left over from the setup and may have poor protections. The tool flag directories that could contain data that may be misused. Although test directories are not commonly used to store sensitive data, there is a higher likelihood that they contain data that doesn’t need to be there once in production.
Cyber security professionals have access to a panel of tools such as OpenVAS, Nessus and SAINT. What are these types of tools?
A. Port Scanners
B. Patch management suites
C. Port mappers
D. Vulnerability Scanners
A. Port Scanners
Explanation:
The common feature of these tools is port scanning. While some have some more advanced functionalities, port scanning is what they are all capable of.
Your organization handles three types of data: information that it uses internally to conduct business, information that it shares with customers, and trade secret information that offers the organization significant competitive advantages. The information shared with clients is used and stored on web servers. The internal business data and the trade secret information are stored on internal file servers and employee workstations. Your organization is not a military affiliated department, and does not carry any defense related duties. What data classification model would be applied in this case?
A. Unclassified, confidential, top secret
B. Public, sensitive, private
C. Public, sensitive, proprietary
D. Public, confidential, private
C. Public, sensitive, proprietary
Explanation:
Given the scenario described, the classification model should be composed of the public, sensitive, proprietary categories. Confidential is a military classification, therefore, proprietary classification is generally preferred over a private classification.
Users from your organization reported slowness of the systems earlier today, but the situation seems back to normal. For the reason that no specific action was taken by your team, you want to investigate this unexplained situation and get to the root cause. Based on the information already gathered, a large volume of encrypted communication left your organization. What would be the best approach to clarify what happened and shed some light on the root cause of this incident?
A. Packet Captures
B. Netflow data
C. Intrusion detection system logs
D. Centralized authentication records
B. Netflow data
Explanation:
Analyzing Netflow data includes the source, destination, and size of all communication, which enables the shortlisting of the involved hosts. This option provides you the most information, while all the others will give you only isolated data points that won’t be necessarily linked together.
Software threat modeling aims, amongst others, to identify threats. Which of the following is not a goal of software threat modeling?
A. Reducing the number of security-related design flaws
B. To reduce the number of security-related coding flaws
C. Lower the severity of non-security related flaws
D. Limit the number of threat vectors
D. Limit the number of threat vectors
Explanation:
In its essence, software threat modeling is designed to reduce the number of security-related design, coding flaws and the severity of other flaws. Because it is commonly agreed that threats are external to the organization, developers have no control over the threat environment.
You are well rounded with sanitization methods of backup tapes using magnetic bands. However, what is the best method to sanitize a solid-state drive (SSD)?
A. Clearing
B. Zero Fill
C. Disintegration
D. Degaussing
C. Disintegration
Explanation:
Clearing and degaussing are not effective techniques to sanitize an SSD, and zero filling will for sure impact the performance of the SSD in the long run. Thus, the best method is the disintegration of the SSD.
Your company is handling data from clients in Germany and Saudi Arabia. Which of the following is not one of the European Union’s General Data Protection Rule principles?
A. Information must be processed fairly
B. Information has to be deleted within one year of acquisition
C. Information shall be maintained securely
D. It is preferred to have accurate information
B. Information has to be deleted within one year of acquisition
Explanation:
GDPR came into action in May 2018, and mandated a certain number of requirements, whereof the data must be processed fairly, maintained securely, and remain accurate. However, GDPR does not mandate the deletion of information after one year.
What software development life-cycle model can be represented as a series of sequential steps that include feedback loops?
A. Spiral
B. Agile
C. Boehm
D. Waterfall
D. Waterfall
Explanation:
From the list of options, the waterfall model could be the only correct answer. In fact, the key characteristic of this model is a series of sequential steps, which include a feedback loop. These feedback loops enable the process to connect with the prior step when necessary.