Free Cloud Security Alliance CCSK Practice Exam with Questions & Answers

According to the CIS AWS (Center for Internet Security AWS) benchmarks, unauthorized API calls should be closely monitored because they indicate potential security threats or malicious activity within the AWS environment. Monitoring unauthorized API calls helps detect unauthorized access, misconfigurations, or attempts to exploit cloud resources. It's a key part of maintaining a secure AWS environment and helps ensure compliance with security best practices.

Regular file backups are important but not specifically a focus of the CIS AWS benchmarks. Data encryption at rest is a security best practice but monitoring unauthorized API calls directly addresses access control and security within the environment. Successful login attempts are important but monitoring failed login attempts (as opposed to successful ones) is generally a better practice for identifying suspicious activity.

IAM failures are a leading cause of cloud-native breaches, often due to misconfigurations or inadequate access control mechanisms. Reference: [Security Guidance v5, Domain 5 - IAM]

In a cybersecurity environment, it is important to capture and centralize workload logs promptly because logs may be lost during a scaling event.When workloads are scaled up or down, such as when cloud resources are dynamically allocated, logs may not be properly captured or may be overwritten if they are not centralized and stored in a reliable, persistent location. Centralizing logs ensures that valuable security data is not lost during these events and can be accessed for incident detection, analysis, and response.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides a development and deployment environment with resources that enable users to deliver everything from simple cloud-based apps to sophisticated, cloud-enabled enterprise applications.

According to CSA Security Guidance v4.0 – Domain 1: Cloud Computing Concepts and Architectures:

“PaaS adds an additional layer of integration with application development frameworks, middleware capabilities, and functions such as databases, messaging, and queuing. These services allow developers to build applications on the platform with programming languages and tools that are supported by the stack.”

(CSA Security Guidance v4.0, Domain 1)

This integration with app development and middleware is the key defining feature of PaaS.

Effective cloud governance focuses on managing and overseeing cloud resources to ensure that security, compliance, and business objectives are met. Key aspects include:

Decision making: Establishing clear processes for how decisions are made regarding cloud resource usage, security measures, and compliance strategies.

Prioritization: Ensuring that critical security and compliance risks are prioritized and addressed first.

Monitoring: Continuously monitoring cloud environments for security threats, performance issues, and compliance violations.

Transparency: Ensuring that governance activities are visible to stakeholders, enabling accountability and making it easier to demonstrate compliance with laws, regulations, and internal policies.

These aspects help organizations maintain control over their cloud environments while ensuring they meet security and regulatory requirements.

A key benefit ofSoftware-Defined Networking (SDN)is that it allows networks to bedynamically configured and managed through software. SDN separates the control plane from the data plane, enabling centralized management and programmable network configurations, which improves flexibility and scalability in cloud environments.

From theCCSK v5.0 Study Guide, Domain 9 (Network Security), Section 9.3:

“Software-Defined Networking (SDN) enables dynamic configuration and management of networks through software, decoupling the control plane from the data plane. This allows organizations to programmatically adjust network policies and traffic flows, improving agility and scalability in cloud environments.”

Option C (SDN allows networks to be dynamically configured and managed through software) is the correct answer.

Option A (Hardware-based solution) is incorrect because SDN is software-based.

Option B (Eliminates physical devices) is incorrect because SDN still relies on physical infrastructure.

Option D (Focused on firewalls) is incorrect because SDN’s primary benefit is flexibility, not firewalls.