CCSP Sample Questions Answers

The biggest challenge for properly using any programmatic tools in data discovery is the actual quality of the data, including the data being uniform and well structured, labels being properly applied, and other similar facets. Without data being organized in such a manner, it is extremely difficult for programmatic tools to automatically synthesize and make determinations from it. The overall quantity of data, as well as the number of sources, does not pose an enormous challenge for data discovery programs, other than requiring a longer time to process the data. The language of the data itself should not matter to a program that is designed to process it, as long as the data is well formed and consistent.

The concept of affected users measures the percentage of users who would be impacted by a successful exploit. Scoring ranges from 0, which would impact no users, to 10, which would impact all users. None of the other options provided is the correct term.

In order to implement tokenization, there will need to be two databases: the database containing the raw, original data, and the token database containing tokens that map to original data. Having two-factor authentication is nice, but certainly not required. Encryption keys are not necessary for tokenization. Two-person integrity does not have anything to do with tokenization.

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.

With Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), the cloud customer is responsible for deploying and maintaining its own systems and virtual machines. Therefore, the customer is solely responsible for patching and any other security updates it finds necessary. With Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Desktop as a Service (DaaS), the cloud provider maintains the infrastructure components and is responsible for maintaining and patching them.

Continuity management (or business continuity management) is focused on planning for the successful restoration of systems or services after an unexpected outage, incident, or disaster. Problem management is focused on identifying and mitigating known problems and deficiencies before they occur. Availability management is focused on making sure system resources, processes, personnel, and toolsets are properly allocated and secured to meet SLA requirements. Configuration management tracks and maintains detailed information about all IT components within an organization.

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.

The cloud provider’s resellers are a marketing and sales mechanism, not an operational dependency that could affect the security of a cloud customer.

All deviations from the baseline should be documented, including details of the investigation and outcome. We do not enforce or encourage deviations. Presumably, we would already be aware of the deviation, so “revealing” is not a reasonable answer.

With multitenancy, where different cloud customers all share the same physical systems and networks, data classification becomes even more important to ensure that the appropriate security controls are applied immediately to prevent any potential leakage or exposure to other customers. Portability refers to the ability to move easily from one cloud provider to another. Interoperability refers to the ability to reuse components and services for different uses. Reversibility refers to the ability of the cloud customer to quickly and completely remove all data and services from a cloud provider and to verify the removal.

Structured storage involves organized and categorized data, which most closely resembles and operates like a database system would.

FIPS 140-2 is a United States certification standard for cryptographic modules, and it provides guidance and requirements for their use based on the requirements of the data classification. However, these are not actual regulatory requirements. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) are all major regulatory frameworks either by law or specific to an industry.

Defining the scope of the plan is the very first step in the overall process. Security should be included from the very earliest stages and throughout the entire process. Bringing in security at a later stage can lead to additional costs and time delays to compensate for gaps in planning. Risk assessment, requirements gathering, and analysis are all later steps in the process, and adding in security at any of those points can potentially cause increased costs and time delays.

Static masking involves taking a data set and replacing sensitive fields and values with non-sensitive or garbage data. This is done to enable testing of an application against data that resembles production data, both in size and format, but without containing anything sensitive. Dynamic masking involves the live and transactional masking of data while an application is using it. Tokenized would refer to tokenization, which is the replacing of sensitive data with a key value that can later be matched back to the original value, and although it could be used as part of the production of test data, it does not refer to the overall process. Replicated is provided as an erroneous answer, as replicated data would be identical in value and would not accomplish the production of a test set.

We should do all of these except for requiring multifactor authentication, which is pointless in key management.

The correct sequence for a BCDR plan is to define the scope, gather requirements based on the scope, assess overall risk, and implement the plan. The other sequences provided are not in the correct order.

Upon successful authentication, the identity provider sends an assertion with appropriate attributes to the relying party to grant access and assign appropriate roles to the user. The other terms provided are similar sounding to the correct term but are not actual components of a federated system.

The hypervisor level, as a backend cloud infrastructure component, is not a unit where limits may be applied to control resource utilization. Limits can be placed at the service, virtual machine, and cloud customer levels within a cloud environment.

Penetration testing involves using the same strategies and toolsets that hackers would use against a system to discovery potential vulnerabilities. Although the term malicious captures much of the intent of penetration testing from the perspective of an attacker, it is not the best answer. Static and dynamic are two types of system testing--where static is done offline and with knowledge of the system, and dynamic is done on a live system without any previous knowledge is associated--but neither describes the type of testing being asked for in the question.

Background checks are controls for attenuating potential threats from internal actors; external threats aren’t likely to submit to background checks.

The TLS handshake protocol is what negotiates and establishes the TLS connection between two parties and enables a secure communications channel to then handle data transmissions. The TLS record protocol is the actual secure communications method for transmitting data; it's responsible for the encryption and authentication of packets throughout their transmission between the parties, and in some cases it also performs compression. Negotiation and binding are not protocols under TLS.

Multifactor authentication systems are composed of something the user knows, has, and/or is, not something the user sends. Multifactor authentication commonly uses something that a user knows, has, and/or is (such as biometrics or features).

Options A and C are also correct, but included in B, making B the best choice. D is incorrect, because we don’t want unauthorized users gaining access.

The customer does not administer on behalf of the provider. All the rest are possible options.

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

Object storage runs on its own independent systems, which have their own redundancy and distribution. To ensure data consistency, sufficient time is needed for objects to fully replicate to all potential locations before being accessed. Object storage is optimized for high availability and will not be any less reliable than any other virtual machine within a cloud environment. It is hosted on a separate system that does not have dependencies in local host servers for access control, and it is optimized for files of all different sizes and uses.

The concept of shares within a cloud environment is used to mitigate and control the request for resource allocations from customers that the environment may not have the current capability to allow. Shares work by prioritizing hosts within a cloud environment through a weighting system that is defined by the cloud provider. When periods of high utilization and allocation are reached, the system automatically uses scoring of each host based on its share value to determine which hosts get access to the limited resources still available. The higher the value a particular host has, the more resources it will be allowed to utilize.

Within IaaS, the number of users on a system is not relevant to the particular hosting model in regard to cloud resources. IaaS is focused on infrastructure needs of a system or application. Therefore, a factor such as the number of users that could affect licensing requirements, for example, would apply to the SaaS model, or in some instances to PaaS.

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.

The cloud service developer is responsible for developing and creating cloud components and services, as well as for testing and validating services.

The inter-cloud provider is responsible for peering with other cloud services and providers, as well as overseeing and managing federations and federated services.

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.

The recovery service level (RSL) is a percentage measure of the total typical production service level that needs to be restored to meet BCDR objectives in the case of a failure.

Signed into law and effective starting on September 1, 2015, Russian Law 526-FZ establishes that any collecting, storing, or processing of personal information or data on Russian citizens must be done from systems and databases that are physically located with the Russian Federation.

In any environment, data encryption is incredibly important to prevent unauthorized exposure of data either internally or externally. If a system is compromised by an attack, having the data encrypted on the system will prevent its unauthorized exposure or export, even with the system itself being exposed.

An intrusion detection system (IDS) is designed to analyze network packets, compare their contents or characteristics against a set of configurations or signatures, and alert personnel if anything is detected that could constitute a threat or is otherwise designated for alerting.

A community cloud model is where customers that share a certain common bond or group membership come together to offer cloud services to their members, focused on common goals and interests.

Best practices and industry standards dictate that a BCDR solution should be tested at least once a year, though specific regulatory requirements may dictate more regular testing. The BCDR plan should also be tested whenever a major modification to a system occurs.

When a security professional is considering cloud solutions for BCDR, a top concern is the jurisdiction where the cloud systems are hosted. If the jurisdiction is different from where the production systems are hosted, they may be subjected to different regulations and controls, which would make a seamless BCDR solution far more difficult.

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

Governance at its core is the idea of assigning jobs, takes, roles, and responsibilities and ensuring they are satisfactory performed.

Because the public cloud model is available to everyone, in most instances all a customer will need to do to gain access is set up an account and provide a credit card number through the service's web portal. No additional contract negotiations, agreements, or specific group memberships are typically needed to get started.

A private cloud model, and the specific contractual relationships involved, will give a cloud customer the most level of input and control over how the overall cloud environment is designed and implemented. This would be even more so in cases where the private cloud is owned and operated by the same organization that is hosting services within it.

Affected users refers to the percentage of users who would be impacted by a successful exploit. Scoring ranges from 0, which means no users are impacted, to 10, which means all users are impacted.

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.

Interoperability is the ease with which one can move or reuse components of an application or service. This is maximized when services are designed without specific dependencies on underlying platforms, operating systems, locations, or cloud providers.

XML firewalls are most commonly deployed in line between the firewall and application server to validate XML code before it reaches the application.

Perhaps the biggest concern for any user is having their personal and sensitive information disclosed by an application. There are many aspects of an application to consider with security and protecting this information, and it is very difficult for any application to fully ensure security from start to finish. The obvious focus is on security within the application itself, as well as protecting and storing the data.

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.

Directive 95/46/EC is titled "On the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data."

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.

Regulatory requirements are those imposed upon businesses and their operations either by law, regulation, policy, or standards and guidelines. These requirements are specific either to the locality in which the company or application is based or to the specific nature of the data and transactions conducted.

Some regulations may require specific security controls or certifications be used for hosting certain types of data or functions, and in some circumstances they may be requirements that are unable to be met by any cloud provider.

Trust zones can be implemented to separate systems or tiers along logical lines for great security and access controls. Each zone can then have its own security controls and monitoring based on its particular needs.

The cloud service integrator is the official role that involves connecting and integrating existing systems and services with a cloud environment. This may involve moving services into a cloud environment, or connecting to external cloud services and capabilities from traditional data center-hosted services.

The contract should include requirements for notification by the cloud provider to the cloud customer upon the receipt of such an order. This serves a few important purposes. First, it keeps communication and trust open between the cloud provider and cloud customers. Second, and more importantly, it allows the cloud customer to potentially challenge the order if they feel they have the grounds or desire to do so.

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.

ISO/IEC 27050 strives to establish an internationally accepted standard for eDiscovery processes and best practices. It encompasses all steps of the eDiscovery process: identification, preservation, collection, processing, review, analysis, and the final production of the requested data.

A cloud customer utilizing proprietary APIs or services from one cloud provider that are unlikely to be available from another cloud provider will most negatively impact portability.

The SOAP protocol does not support caching, whereas the REST API does.

The physical security of crypto keys is of some concern, but guards or vaults are not always necessary. Two-person integrity might be a good practice for protecting keys. The best answer to this question is option A, because it is always true, whereas the remaining options depend on circumstances.

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.

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 depend heavily on API calls for management and automation. Any vulnerability with the APIs can cause significant risk and exposure to all tenants of the cloud environment. Resource pooling and elasticity could both be impacted by insecure APIs, as both require automation and orchestration to operate properly, but automation is the better answer here. Redundancy would not be directly impacted by insecure APIs.

Potential clients are not served by SOC Type 1 audits. A Type 2 or Type 3 report would be appropriate for potential clients. SOC Type 1 reports are intended for restricted use, where only the service organization itself, current clients, or auditors would have access to them.

Billing for an audit, or other cost-related items, would not be part of an audit scope statement and would instead be handled prior to the actual audit as part of the contract between the organization and auditors. Reports, exclusions to the scope of the audit, and required certifications on behalf of the systems or auditors are all crucial elements of an audit scope statement.

An intrusion prevention system (IPS) can inspect traffic and detect any suspicious traffic based on a variety of factors, but it can also actively block such traffic. Although an IDS can detect the same types of suspicious traffic as an IPS, it is only design to alert, not to block. A firewall is only concerned with IP addresses, ports, and protocols; it cannot be used for the signature-based detection of traffic. A proxy can limit or direct traffic based on more extensive factors than a network firewall can, but it's not capable of using the same signature detection rules as an IPS.

Application virtualization is a software implementation that allows applications and programs to run in an isolated environment rather than directly interacting with the operating system. Sandboxing refers to segregating information or processes for security or testing purposes, but it's not directly related to isolation from the underlying operating system. Abstracting sounds similar to the correct term but is not pertinent to the question, and hosting is provided as an erroneous answer.

Cryptographic erasure involves having the data encrypted, typically as a matter of standard operations, and then rendering the data useless and unreadable by destroying the encryption keys for it. It represents a very cheap and immediate way to destroy data, and it works in all environments. With a cloud environment and multitenancy, media destruction or the physical destruction of storage devices, including shredding, would not be possible. Depending on the environment, overwriting may or may not be possible, but cryptographic erasure is the best answer because it is always an available option and is very quick to implement.

KRI stands for key risk indicator. KRIs are the red flags if you will in the world of risk management. When these change, they indicate something is amiss and should be looked at quickly to determine if the change is minor or indicative of something important.

With SDN, the filtering and forwarding capabilities and administration are separated. This allows the cloud provider to build interfaces and management tools for administrative delegation of filtering configuration, without having to allow direct access to underlying network equipment. Firewalling and protocols are both terms related to networks, but they are not components SDN is concerned with.

Object storage uses a flat file system to hold storage objects; it assigns files a key value that is then used to access them, rather than relying on directories or descriptive filenames. Typical storage layouts such as tree, directory, and hierarchical structures are used within volume storage, whereas object storage maintains a flat structure with key values.

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.

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.

To monitor data in transit, a DLP solution would optimally be installed at the network perimeter, to ensure that data leaving the network through various protocols conforms to security controls and policies. An application server or a web server would be more appropriate for monitoring data in use, and a database server would be an example of a location appropriate for monitoring data at rest.

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 store phase occurs immediately after the create phase, and as data is committed to storage structures, the first opportunity for security controls to be implemented is realized. During the create phase, the data is not yet part of a system where security controls can be applied, and although the use and share phases also entail the application of security controls, they are not the first phase where the process occurs.

Jurisdiction will dictate much of the compliance and audit requirements for a data center. Although all the aspects listed are very important to security, from a strict compliance perspective, jurisdiction is the most important. Personnel access, natural disasters, and utility access are all important operational considerations for selecting a data center location, but they are not related to compliance issues like jurisdiction is.

A reservation guarantees to a cloud customer that they will have access to a minimal level of resources to run their systems, which will help mitigate against DoS attacks or systems that consume high levels of resources. A limit refers to the enforcement of a maximum level of resources that can be consumed by or allocated to a cloud customer, service, or system. Both guarantee and assurance are terms that sound similar to reservation, but they are not correct choices.

An intrusion detection system (IDS) is implemented to watch network traffic and operations, using predefined criteria or signatures, and alert administrators if anything suspect is found. An intrusion prevention system (IPS) is similar to an IDS but actually takes action against suspect traffic, whereas an IDS just alerts when it finds anything suspect. A firewall works at the network level and only takes into account IP addresses, ports, and protocols; it does not inspect the traffic for patterns or content. A web application firewall (WAF) works at the application layer and provides additional security via proxying, filtering service requests, or blocking based on additional factors such as the client and requests.

The Russian government requires all data and processing of information about its citizens to be done solely on systems and applications that reside within the physical borders of the country. The United States, European Union, and Japan focus their data privacy laws on requirements and methods for the protection of data, rather than where the data physically resides.

Platform as a Service would allow software developers to quickly and easily deploy their applications among different hosting providers for testing and validation in order to determine the best option. Although IaaS would also be appropriate for hosting applications, it would require too much configuration of application servers and libraries in order to test code. Conversely, PaaS would provide a ready-to-use environment from the onset. DaaS would not be appropriate in any way for software developers to use to deploy applications. IaaS would not be appropriate in this scenario because it would require the developers to also deploy and maintain the operating system images or to contract with another firm to do so. SaaS, being a fully functional software platform, would not be appropriate for deploying applications into.

The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) does not support caching, whereas the Representational State Transfer (REST) API does. The other options are all capabilities that are either not supported by SOAP or not supported by any API and must be provided by external features.

During the data-in-use state, the information has already been accessed from storage and transmitted to the service, so reliance on a technology such as digital signatures is imperative to ensure security and complement the security methods used during previous states. Data in transit relies on technologies such as TLS to encrypt network transmission of packets for security. Data at rest primarily uses encryption for stored file objects. Archived data would be the same as data at rest.

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) are the most commonly used data formats for the Representational State Transfer (REST) API and are typically implemented with caching for increased scalability and performance. Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) are both standards for exchanging encoded data between two parties, with XML being for more general use and SAML focused on authentication and authorization data. HTML is used for authoring web pages for consumption by web browsers

The Safe Harbor regulations were developed by the Department of Commerce and are meant to serve as a way to bridge the gap between privacy regulations of the European Union and the United States. Due to the lack of adequate privacy laws and protection on the federal level in the US, European privacy regulations generally prohibit the exporting of PII from Europe to the United States. Participation in the Safe Harbor program is voluntary on the part of US organizations. These organizations must conform to specific requirements and policies that mirror those from the EU, thus possibly fulfilling the EU requirements for data sharing and export. This way, American businesses can be allowed to serve customers in the EU. 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 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) regulates the financial and accounting practices used by organizations in order to protect shareholders from improper practices and errors.

With multitenancy, multiple customers share the same physical hardware and systems. With the nature of a cloud environment and how it writes data across diverse systems that are shared by others, the process of eDiscovery becomes much more complicated. Administrators cannot pull physical drives or easily isolate which data to capture. They not only have to focus on which data they need to collect, while ensuring they find all of it, but they also have to make sure that other data is not accidently collected and exposed along with it. Measured service is the aspect of a cloud where customers only pay for the services they are actually using, and for the duration of their use. Portability refers to the ease with which an application or service can be moved among different cloud providers. Broad network access refers to the nature of cloud services being accessed via the public Internet, either with or without secure tunneling technologies. None of these concepts would pertain to eDiscovery.

Multitenancy is the aspect of cloud computing that involves having multiple customers and applications running within the same system and sharing the same resources. Although considerable mechanisms are in place to ensure isolation and separation, the data and applications are ultimately using shared resources. Broad network access refers to the ability to access cloud services from any location or client. Portability refers to the ability to easily move cloud services between different cloud providers, whereas elasticity refers to the capabilities of a cloud environment to add or remove services, as needed, to meet current demand.

Shares are used within a cloud environment to prioritize resource allocation when customer requests exceed the available resources. Cloud providers utilize shares by assigning a priority score to each customer and allocating resources to those with the highest scores first. Scoring is a component of shares that determines the actual order in which to allocate resources. Neither weighting nor prioritization is the correct term in this case.

When operating within a global framework, a security professional runs into a multitude of jurisdictions and requirements, which often may not be clearly applicable or may be in contention with each other. These requirements can involve 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, and finally the appropriate laws and regulations for the jurisdiction housing the IT resources and where the data is actually stored, which may be multiple jurisdictions as well. Different certifications would not come into play as a challenge because the major IT and data center certifications are international and would apply to any cloud provider. Different capabilities and different operational procedures would be mitigated by the organization's selection of a cloud provider and would not be a challenge if an appropriate provider was chosen, regardless of location.

DNSSEC is an extension of the normal DNS protocol that enables a system to verify the integrity of a DNS query resolution by signing it from the authoritative source and verifying the signing chain. It is not used for securing data transmissions or exchanges. HTTPS is the most common method for securing web service and data calls within a cloud, and TLS is the current standard for encrypting HTTPS traffic. VPNs are widely used for securing data transmissions and service access.

The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recommends 64.4 to 80.6 degrees Fahrenheit (or 18 to 27 degrees Celsius) as the optimal temperature range for data centers. None of these options is the recommendation from ASHRAE.

Within a SaaS implementation, the cloud customer licenses the use of the software from the cloud provider because SaaS delivers a fully functional application to the customer. With SaaS, the cloud provider is responsible for the entire software application and any necessary infrastructure to develop, run, and maintain it. The purchasing, development, and maintenance are fully the responsibility of the cloud provider.

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.

The Uptime Institute publishes the most widely known and used standard for data center topologies and tiers. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) publishes a broad range of fire safety and design standards for many different types of facilities. Building Industry Consulting Services International (BICSI) issues certifications for data center cabling. The International Data Center Authority (IDCA) offers the Infinity Paradigm, which takes a macro-level approach to data center design.

When a cloud service provider receives an eDiscovery order pertaining to one of their customers, the first action they must take is to notify the customer. This allows the customer to be aware of what was received, as well as to conduct a review to determine if any challenges are necessary or warranted. Taking snapshots of virtual machines, copying data, and escrowing encryption keys are all processes involved in the actual collection of data and should not be performed until the customer has been notified of the request.

The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recommends 40 to 60 percent relatively humidity for data centers. None of these options is the recommendation from ASHRAE.

Cloud services make exclusive use of virtualization, and systems change over time, including the addition, subtraction, and reimaging of virtual machines. It is extremely unlikely that the exact same virtual machines and images used in a previous audit would still be in use or even available for a later audit, making the tracking of changes over time extremely difficult, or even impossible. Elasticity refers to the ability to add and remove resources from a system or service to meet current demand, and although it plays a factor in making the tracking of virtual machines very difficult over time, it is not the best answer in this case. Resource pooling pertains to a cloud environment sharing a large amount of resources between different customers and services. Portability refers to the ability to move systems or services easily between different cloud providers.

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.

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.

Regulated PII pertains to data that is outlined in law and regulations. Violations of the requirements for the protection of regulated PII can carry legal sanctions or penalties. Contractual PII involves required data protection that is determined by the actual service contract between the cloud provider and cloud customer, rather than outlined by law. Violations of the provisions of contractual PII carry potential financial or contractual implications, but not legal sanctions. Legal and jurisdictional are similar terms to regulated, but neither is the official term used.

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.

To monitor data at rest appropriately, the DLP solution would be installed on the host system where the data resides. A database server, in some situations, may be an appropriate answer, but the host system is the best answer because a database server is only one example of where data could reside. An application server processes data and typically sits between the data and presentation zones, and as such, does not store data at rest. A network firewall would be more appropriate for data in transit because it is not a place where data would reside.

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.

With a federated identity system, a user will perform authentication with their home organization, and the application will accept the authentication tokens and user information from the identity provider in order to grant access. The purpose of a federated system is to allow users to authenticate from their home organization. Therefore, using the application or a third-party authentication system would be contrary to the purpose of a federated system because it necessitates the creation of additional accounts. The use of a cloud provider would not be relevant to the operations of a federated system.

No matter what form they come in, "services" are obtained or purchased by a cloud customer from a cloud service provider. Services can come in many forms--virtual machines, network configurations, hosting setups, and software access, just to name a few. Hosting and servers--or, with a cloud, more appropriately virtual machines--are just two examples of "services" that a customer would purchase from a cloud provider. "Customers" would never be a service that's purchased.

Within IaaS, where the cloud customer is responsible for everything beyond the physical network, the number of users on a system would not be a factor in billing or service charges. The core cloud services for IaaS are based on the memory, storage, and CPU requirements of the cloud customer. Because the cloud customer with IaaS is responsible for its own images and deployments, these components comprise the basis of its cloud provisioning and measured services billing.

Volume storage is allocated via a LUN to a system and then treated the same as any traditional storage. The operating system is responsible for formatting and securing volume storage as well as controlling all access to it. Applications, although they may use volume storage and have permissions to write to it, are not responsible for its formatting and security. Both a hypervisor and the management plane are outside of an individual system and are not responsible for managing the files and storage within that system.

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.

The recovery time objective (RTO) is a measure of the amount of time it would take to recover operations in the event of a disaster to the point where management's objectives are met for BCDR.

The recovery point objective (RPO) is defined as the amount of data a company would need to maintain and recover in order to function at a level acceptable to management. This may or may not be a restoration to full operating capacity, depending on what management deems as crucial and essential.

Metadata is data about data. It contains information about the type of data, how it is stored and organized, or information about its creation and use.

During any audit, regulations are the most important factor and guidelines for what must be tested. Although the requirements from management, stakeholders, and shareholders are also important, regulations are not negotiable and pose the biggest risk to any organization for compliance failure.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets stringent requirements in the United States for the protection of healthcare records.

With data anonymization, data is manipulated in such a way so as to prevent the identification of an individual through various data objects, and is often used in conjunction with other concepts such as masking.

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

Regardless of which cloud-hosting model is used, the cloud customer always has sole responsibility for the data and its security.

An SLA requires performance monitoring of CPU, memory, storage, and networking. The number of users active on a system would not be part of an SLA specifically, other than in regard to the impact on the other four variables.

SOC Type 2 reports are focused on the same policies and procedures, as well as their effectiveness, as SOC Type 1 reports, but are evaluated over a period of at least six consecutive months, rather than a finite point in time.

Cloud environments depend heavily on API calls for management and automation. Any vulnerability with the APIs can cause significant risk and exposure to all tenants of the cloud environment.

To implement DNSSEC, no additional changes are needed to applications or their code because the integrity checks are all performed at the system level.

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.

Any time a major functional change of an application occurs, a new BCDR test should be done to ensure the overall strategy and process are still applicable and appropriate.

Because IPsec is implemented at the system or network level, it is the responsibility of the systems staff. IPsec removes the responsibility from developers, whereas other technologies such as TLS would be implemented by developers.

The most common and efficient manner of securing operating systems is through the use of baselines. A baseline is a standardized and understood set of base configurations and settings. When a new system is built or a new virtual machine is established, baselines will be applied to a new image to ensure the base configuration meets organizational policy and regulatory requirements.

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Representational State Transfer (REST) are the most commonly used APIs within a cloud environment. Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) are both standards for exchanging encoded data between two parties, with XML being for more general use and SAML focused on authentication and authorization data.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) are commonly used to allow access into trust zones. Via a VPN, access can be controlled and logged and only allowed through secure channels by authorized users. It also adds an additional layer of encryption and protection to communications.

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 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires the U.S. Federal Department of Health and Human Services to publish and enforce regulations pertaining to electronic health records and identifiers between patients, providers, and insurance companies. It is focused on the security controls and confidentiality of medical records, rather than the specific technologies used, so long as they meet the requirements of the regulations.

Cloud environments lack the ability to physically separate resources like a traditional data center can. To compensate, cloud computing logical segregation concepts are employed. These include VLANs, sandboxing, and the use of virtual network devices such as firewalls.

Once a storage LUN is allocated to a virtual machine, the operating system of that virtual machine will format, manage, and control the file system and security of the data on that LUN.

Local, physical access in a data center is done via KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switches.

Any time data is created, modified, or imported, the classification needs to be evaluated and set from the earliest phase to ensure security is always properly maintained for the duration of its lifecycle.

The United States lacks a single comprehensive law at the federal level addressing data security and privacy, but there are multiple federal laws that deal with different industries.

BIOS is the firmware that governs the physical initiation and boot up of a piece of hardware. If it is compromised, an attacker could have access to hosted systems and make configurations changes to expose or disable some security elements on the system.

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) are the most commonly used data formats for the Representational State Transfer (REST) API, and are typically implemented with caching for increased scalability and performance.

iSCSI is a protocol that allows for the transmission and use of SCSI commands and features over a TCP-based network. iSCSI allows systems to use block-level storage that looks and behaves as a SAN would with physical servers, but to leverage the TCP network within a virtualized environment and cloud.

The standards put out by the International Data Center Authority (IDCA) have established the Infinity Paradigm, which is intended to be a comprehensive data center design and operations framework. The Infinity Paradigm shifts away from many models that rely on tiered architecture for data centers, where each successive tier increases redundancy. Instead, it emphasizes data centers being approached at a macro level, without a specific and isolated focus on certain aspects to achieve tier status.

Contractual PII has specific requirements for the handling of sensitive and personal information, as defined at a contractual level. These specific requirements will typically document the required handling procedures and policies to deal with PII. They may be in specific security controls and configurations, required policies or procedures, or limitations on who may gain authorized access to data and systems.

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.

The cloud service business manager is responsible for overseeing business and billing administration, purchasing cloud services, and requesting audit reports when necessary

A Type 2 hypervisor differs from a Type 1 hypervisor in that it runs on top of another operating system rather than directly tied into the underlying hardware of the virtual host servers. With this type of implementation, additional security and architecture concerns come into play because the interaction between the operating system and the hypervisor becomes a critical link. The hypervisor no longer has direct interaction and control over the underlying hardware, which means that some performance will be lost due to the operating system in the middle needing its own resources, patching requirements, and operational oversight.

The guidelines from ASHRAE establish 64.4-80.6degF (18-27degC) as the optimal temperature for a data center.

Deletion merely removes the pointers to data on a system; it does nothing to actually remove and sanitize the data. As such, the data remains in a recoverable state, and more secure methods are needed to ensure it has been destroyed and is not recoverable by another party.

With multitenancy, eDiscovery becomes more complicated because the data collection involves extra steps to ensure that only those customers or systems that are within scope are turned over to the requesting authority.

Type 1 hypervisors run directly on top of the bare metal and only contain the code and functions required to perform their purpose. They do not rely on any other systems or contain extra features to secure.

A reservation is a minimum resource that is guaranteed to a customer within a cloud environment. Within a cloud, a reservation can pertain to the two main aspects of computing: memory and processor. With a reservation in place, the cloud provider guarantees that a cloud customer will always have at minimum the necessary resources available to power on and operate any of their services.

iSCSI does not natively support encryption, so another technology such as IPsec must be used to encrypt communications.