CCSP Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) Questions and Answers

The authentication mechanisms and implementations are the responsibility of the cloud provider because they are core components of the application platform and service. Within a SaaS implementation, the cloud customer will provision user access, deploy branding to the application interface (typically), and provide or procure training for its users.

DNSSEC is an extension to the regular DNS protocol that utilizes digital signing of DNS query results, which can be verified to come from an authoritative source. This verification mitigates the ability for a rogue DNS server to be used to spoof query results and to direct users to malicious sites. DNSSEC provides for the verification of the integrity of DNS queries. It does not provide any protection from snooping or data exposure. Although it may help lessen account hijacking by preventing users from being directed to rogue sites, it cannot by itself eliminate the possibility.

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.

Volume storage is allocated and mounted as a virtual hard drive within IaaS implementations, and it can be maintained and used the same way a traditional file system can. Object storage uses a flat structure on remote services that is accessed via opaque descriptors, structured storage resembles database storage, and unstructured storage is used to hold auxiliary files in conjunction with applications hosted within a PaaS implementation.

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.

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.

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.

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 question is describing the Platform as a Service (PaaS) cloud offering, and as such, structured and unstructured storage types will be available to the customer. Volume and object are storage types associated with IaaS, and although the other answers present similar-sounding storage types, they are a mix of real and fake names.

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.

ISO/IEC 27050 strives to establish an internationally accepted standard for eDiscovery processes and best practices. It encompasses all steps of the eDiscovery process, including the identification, preservation, collection, processing, review, analysis, and the final production of the requested data archive. ISO/IEC 27001 is a general security specification for an information security management system. ISO/IEC 27002 gives best practice recommendations for information security management. ISO/IEC 27040 is focused on the security of storage systems.

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.

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.

SOC Type 2 audits are done over a period of time, with six months being the minimum duration. SOC Type 1 audits are designed with a scope that's a static point in time, and the other times provided for SOC Type 2 are incorrect.

Distributed resource scheduling (DRS) is used within all clustered systems as the method for providing high availability, scaling, management, workload distribution, and the balancing of jobs and processes. None of the other choices is the correct term in this case.

Regardless of the particular cloud service used, physical security of hardware and facilities is always the sole responsibility of the cloud provider. The cloud provider may release information about their physical security policies and procedures to ensure any particular requirements of potential customers will meet their regulatory obligations. Personal security of developers and regulatory compliance are always the responsibility of the cloud customer. Responsibility for operating systems, and the auditing of them, will differ based on the cloud service category used.

The management plane uses APIs to execute remote calls across the cloud environment to various management systems, especially hypervisors. This allows a centralized administrative interface, often a web portal, to orchestrate tasks throughout an enterprise. Scripts may be utilized to execute API calls, but they are not used directly to interact with systems. XML is used for data encoding and transmission, but not for executing remote calls. TLS is used to encrypt communications and may be used with API calls, but it is not the actual process for executing commands.

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.

The following groups form the key roles and functions associated with cloud computing. They do not constitute an exhaustive list but highlight the main roles and functions within cloud computing:

- Cloud customer: An individual or entity that utilizes or subscribes to cloud based services or resources.

- CSP: A company that provides cloud-based platform, infrastructure, application, or storage services to other organizations or individuals, usually for a fee; otherwise known to clients “as a service.

- Cloud backup service provider: A third-party entity that manages and holds operational responsibilities for cloud-based data backup services and solutions to customers from a central data center.

- CSB: Typically a third-party entity or company that looks to extend or enhance value to multiple customers of cloud-based services through relationships with multiple CSPs. It acts as a liaison between cloud services customers and CSPs, selecting the best provider for each customer and monitoring the services. The CSB can be utilized as a “middleman” to broker the best deal and customize services to the customer’s requirements. May also resell cloud services.

- Cloud service auditor: Third-party organization that verifies attainment of SLAs.

While the other answers are all steps in moving from normal operations to maintenance mode, we do not necessarily initiate any enhanced security controls.

State notification laws and the loss of proprietary data/intellectual property pre-existed the cloud; only the lack of ability to transfer liability is new.

With SaaS, the application is a shared responsibility between the cloud provider and cloud customer. Although the cloud provider is responsible for deploying, maintaining, and securing the application, the cloud customer does carry some responsibility for the configuration of users and options. Regardless of the cloud service category used, the physical environment is always the sole responsibility of the cloud provider. With all cloud service categories, the data and governance are always the sole responsibility of the cloud customer.

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.

Forensic analysis is the least challenging of the answers provided as it refers to the analysis of data once it is obtained. The challenges revolve around obtaining the data for analysis due to the complexities of international law, the decentralization of data storage or difficulty knowing where to look, and identifying the data owner, controller, and processor.

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.

DNSSEC is used as a security extension to DNS lookup queries in order to ensure the authenticity and authoritativeness of hostname resolutions, in order to prevent spoofing and redirection of traffic. Although it is a very important concept to be employed for security practices, it is not used to secure or encrypt data transmissions. HTTPS is the most commonly used security mechanism for data communications between clients and websites and web services. IPSec is less commonly used, but is also intended to secure communications between servers. VPN is commonly used to secure traffic into a network area or subnet for developers and administrative users.

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

Portability is the ability for a cloud customer to easily move their systems, services, and applications among different cloud providers. By avoiding reliance on proprietary APIs and other vendor-specific cloud features, an organization can maintain flexibility to move among the various cloud providers with greater ease. Reversibility refers to the ability for a cloud customer to quickly and easy remove all their services and data from a cloud provider. Interoperability is the ability to reuse services and components for other applications and uses. Scalability refers to the ability of a cloud environment to add or remove resources to meet current demands.

Sarbanes-Oxley was a direct response to corporate scandals. FERPA is related to education. GLBA is about the financial industry. HIPAA is about health care.

The business impact analysis gathers asset valuation information that is beneficial for risk analysis and selection of security controls (it helps avoid putting the ten-dollar lock on the five-dollar bicycle), and criticality information that helps in BC/DR planning by letting the organization understand which systems, data, and personnel are necessary to continuously maintain. However, it does not aid secure acquisition efforts, since the assets examined by the BIA have already been acquired.

While hard drives may be useful in the kit (for instance, if they store BC/DR data such as inventory lists, baselines, and patches), they are not necessarily required. All the other items should be included.

Orchestration is the programmatic means of managing and coordinating activities within a cloud environment and allowing for a commensurate level of automation and self-service. Provisioning, allocation, and automation are all components of orchestration, but none refers to the overall concept.

Policy drives all programs and functions in the organization; the organization should not conduct any operations that don’t have a policy governing them. Penalties may or may not be an element of policy, and severity depends on the topic. Multifactor authentication and homomorphic encryption are red herrings here.

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) for passing data, and it must rely on the encryption of those data packages for security.

Measured service means that costs are only incurred when a cloud customer is actually using cloud services. This is ideal for a business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solution because it negates the need to keep hardware or resources on standby in case of a disaster. Services can be initiated when needed and without costs unless needed.

DRM applies to the protection of consumer media, such as music, publications, video, movies, and soon.

Representational State Transfer (REST) is a software architectural scheme that applies the components, connectors, and data conduits for many web applications used on the Internet. It uses and relies on the HTTP protocol and supports a variety of data formats.

DNSSEC is designed to prevent the spoofing and redirection of DNS resolutions to rogue sites.

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.

A virtual area network (VLAN) allows the logical separation and isolation of networks and IP spaces to provide enhanced security and controls.

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.

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.

With static masking, a separate and distinct copy of the data set is created with masking in place. This is typically done through a script or other process that takes a standard data set, processes it to mask the appropriate and predefined fields, and then outputs the data set as a new one with the completed masking done.

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 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.

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.

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

Forensics is the application of scientific and methodical processes to identify, collect, preserve, analyze, and summarize/report digital information and evidence.

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.

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 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.

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

In order to obtain and comply with certifications, independent external audits must be performed and satisfied. Although some testing of certification controls can be part of an internal audit, they will not satisfy requirements.

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

The loss of staffing would not be a reason to declare a BCDR situation because it does not impact production operations or equipment, and the same staff would be needed for a BCDR situation.

Cloud environments will regularly change virtual machines as patching and versions are changed. Unlike a physical environment, there is little continuity from one period of time to another. It is very unlikely that the same virtual machines would be in use during a repeat audit.

KPIs fall under the "business" aspect of QoS, along with monitoring and measuring of events and business processes. Services, security, and applications are all core components and concepts of the "IT" aspect of QoS.

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

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.

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.

SOC Type 1 reports are considered "restricted use" reports. They are intended for management and stakeholders of an organization, clients of the service organization, and auditors of the organization. They are not intended for release beyond those audiences.

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.

Authentication is the process of proving whether the identity presented by a user is true and valid. This can be done through common mechanisms such as user ID and password combinations or with more secure methods such as multifactor authentication.

The payment card industry data security standard (PCI DSS) pertains to organizations that handle credit card transactions and is an industry regulatory standard, not a governmental one.

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.

The GLBA, as it is commonly called based on the lead sponsors and authors of the act, is officially known as "The Financial Modernization Act of 1999." It is specifically focused on PII as it relates to financial institutions. There are three specific components of it, covering various areas and use, on top of a general requirement that all financial institutions must provide all users and customers with a written copy of their privacy policies and practices, including with whom and for what reasons their information may be shared with other entities.

The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act is not an act that pertains to privacy or IT security directly, but rather regulates accounting and financial practices used by organizations. It was passed to protect stakeholders and shareholders from improper practices and errors, and it sets forth rules for compliance, regulated and enforced by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The main influence on IT systems and operations is the requirements it sets for data retention, specifically in regard to what types of records must be preserved and for how long.

It is imperative that an application perform checks when each function or portion of the application is accessed, to ensure that the user is properly authorized to access it. 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.

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.

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

DNSSEC does not require any additional DNS queries to be performed. The DNSSEC integrity checks and validations are all performed as part of the single DNS lookup resolution.

Portability is the ability for a service or system to easily move among different cloud providers. This is essential for using a cloud solution for BCDR because vendor lock-in would inhibit easily moving and setting up services in the event of a disaster, or it would necessitate a large number of configuration or component changes to implement. Interoperability, or the ability to reuse components for other services or systems, would not be an important factor for BCDR. Reversibility, or the ability to remove all data quickly and completely from a cloud environment, would be important at the end of a disaster, but would not be important during setup and deployment. Elasticity, or the ability to resize resources to meet current demand, would be very beneficial to a BCDR situation, but not as vital as portability.

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