Free CrowdStrike CCCS-203b Practice Exam with Questions & Answers

In CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, exclusions for cloud scans are designed to be precise and scalable so that organizations can safely reduce noise without weakening overall security coverage. According to CrowdStrike best practices,tagsare the recommended and supported criterion for creating cloud scan exclusions.

Tags are metadata labels applied to cloud resources (such as AWS accounts, instances, or services) and are commonly used for ownership, environment classification (for example, dev, test, or prod), or application grouping. By using tags as exclusion criteria, security teams can dynamically control which resources are excluded from scans without relying on static identifiers. This is especially important in cloud environments where resources are frequently created, modified, or terminated.

Exclusions based onaccounts,regions, orservicesare broader in scope and can unintentionally exclude large portions of the environment, increasing the risk of blind spots. Tag-based exclusions allow CrowdStrike Falcon to maintain least-privilege security principles by excluding only explicitly labeled resources.

Because Falcon continuously evaluates cloud resources, tag-based exclusions automatically apply to newly created assets that inherit the same tag, ensuring consistent policy enforcement. For these reasons, CrowdStrike documentation and operational guidance identifyTagas the correct and most effective criterion for creating cloud scan exclusions.

When registering an individual AWS account in CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security using the Falcon UI, therecommended and supported method is AWS CloudFormation. CrowdStrike provides a prebuilt CloudFormation template that automates the creation of required AWS resources, including IAM roles, permissions, and trust relationships needed for secure, read-only API access.

Using CloudFormation ensures the deployment isconsistent, auditable, and aligned with AWS best practices. It minimizes human error by automatically configuring the correct permissions required for Falcon to collect configuration, identity, and resource metadata from AWS. This method also simplifies lifecycle management—resources can be updated or removed cleanly by managing the CloudFormation stack.

Other options are not recommended for this use case.AWS Configis a native AWS compliance service but does not handle Falcon onboarding.Terraform scriptsmay be used in advanced or large-scale automation scenarios, but they are not the default or recommended approach for single-account registration in the Falcon UI.Bash scriptslack governance, validation, and repeatability.

Therefore, when registering a single AWS account through the Falcon console,AWS CloudFormationis the correct and CrowdStrike-recommended method.

When registering an AWS account with CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, enabling real-time visibility and detection is recommended to improve overall security posture. This ensures continuous monitoring of cloud activity, identities, and resources rather than relying solely on periodic posture assessments.

Real-time detection allows Falcon to identify risky behavior, misconfigurations, and attack techniques as they occur, reducing dwell time and improving response effectiveness. The other options are not registration-specific security enhancements within Falcon.

Therefore, the correct answer is Real-time visibility and detection.

CrowdStrike recommends starting withPhase 1: Initial deploymentwhen an environment already haspre-existing Host Intrusion Prevention Systems (HIPS)or similar legacy security controls in place. This guidance is based on the need to carefully evaluate compatibility, performance impact, and policy overlap before enabling more advanced protections.

Phase 1 focuses on sensor deployment, baseline visibility, and detection-only monitoring. This approach allows security teams to observe system behavior, identify potential conflicts, and fine-tune policies without immediately enforcing blocking or prevention actions. When legacy HIPS solutions are already active, enabling stronger protections too quickly can lead to false positives, application disruptions, or system instability.

Phase 2: Interim protection is better suited for environments that are cloud-native, highly ephemeral, or already aligned with modern endpoint security practices. However, environments with existing HIPS suites require a more cautious rollout to avoid overlapping controls and duplicated enforcement.

CrowdStrike’s phased deployment model ensures a smooth transition by prioritizing stability and operational awareness. Therefore, whenpre-existing HIPS suitesare present, CrowdStrike documentation and deployment best practices clearly recommend beginning withPhase 1: Initial deploymentbefore progressing to stronger enforcement phases.

The most efficient and CrowdStrike-recommended way to stop seeing vulnerabilities for older images is to use the“Stop assessing images older than (number) of days”setting in Image Assessment configuration.

This setting prevents Falcon Cloud Security from continuing to assess images beyond a defined age threshold—90 days in this case. By stopping assessment at the source, Falcon reduces noise, conserves assessment capacity, and focuses findings on images that are actively used or likely to be deployed.

Other approaches are inefficient or risky. Fusion workflows and manual hiding add operational overhead and do not stop assessments from occurring. Deleting images from registries may disrupt workflows and is outside Falcon’s control.

CrowdStrike best practices favorassessment-scoping controlsover post-processing suppression. Therefore, the correct answer isUse the Stop assessing images older than (number) of days setting.

In Falcon Cloud Security, theRegistry assessment statuswidget provides visibility into the current state of container image assessments for connected registries. This widget displaysaggregate totals of assessed and unassessed images, allowing analysts to quickly determine whether images are being successfully scanned.

When investigating unassessed images, this widget is the primary starting point because it reflects real-time assessment coverage across all configured registry connections. It helps identify gaps caused by authentication failures, network restrictions, throttling, or configuration limits such as assessment age thresholds.

Other widgets provide narrower views.Image processingfocuses on images currently being scanned,Assessed imagesonly shows completed scans without highlighting gaps, andConnection statusreflects connectivity health but not assessment coverage.

CrowdStrike documentation and UI design emphasize the Registry assessment status widget as the authoritative summary for image assessment completeness. Therefore, the correct answer isRegistry assessment status.

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security performs agentless cloud security posture management (CSPM) by integrating directly with cloud service providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform using native APIs. This approach allows Falcon to continuously assess cloud configurations, permissions, networking, storage, and identity controls without deploying sensors or agents.

By default, CrowdStrike configures cloud account scans to runevery 4 hours. This scan frequency is designed to strike a balance between near-real-time visibility and efficient API usage across cloud providers. Cloud environments are highly dynamic, with frequent changes to configurations, IAM policies, and services. A four-hour scan interval ensures that new misconfigurations or risky changes—such as overly permissive roles, exposed storage, or insecure network rules—are identified quickly enough to reduce exposure time.

Scanning more frequently could introduce unnecessary API throttling or operational overhead, while less frequent scans could delay detection of critical security gaps. The four-hour interval is therefore CrowdStrike’s recommended default for maintaining continuous visibility while preserving cloud provider performance and stability.

This default interval can be adjusted in certain scenarios, but unless explicitly changed,every 4 hoursis the standard scan cadence applied to AWS, Azure, and GCP environments.

According to CrowdStrike Falcon documentation regardingFalcon Cloud Security (FCS)andContainer Security, the method used to deploy sensors significantly impacts how updates are managed. When Linux hosts are part of a Kubernetes cluster and the Falcon sensor is deployed as aDaemonSet, the standard "Sensor Update Policy" configured in the Falcon Console does not automatically trigger a version change in the same way it does for a standard Windows or Linux workstation.

In aDaemonSet deployment, the sensor version is typically tied to the specificcontainer image tagor the version defined in theHelm chartor YAML manifest used during deployment. If the manifest specifies a static version or if the orchestration layer (Kubernetes) is not instructed to pull a newer image and rollout a restart of the DaemonSet pods, the hosts will remain on their current version regardless of the "n-2" policy set in the console.

Furthermore, CrowdStrike documentation notes that forLinux Sensor Update Policies, the "n-2" setting dictates which version isassignedto the host, but the mechanism of delivery must be supported. In containerized environments, the "Auto-update" feature is often bypassed by the immutable nature of the deployment. To resolve this, the administrator must update the DaemonSet configuration to point to the newer sensor image, allowing Kubernetes to perform a rolling update across the nodes.

Falcon Cloud Security categorizes IOAs usingMITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques, enriched withcloud-provider contextto accurately represent cloud-native attack behavior.

To identifyDefense Evasion via Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Toolsactivity specifically withinAzure, analysts must filter IOAs usingMITRE Tactic and Techniquewhile also scoping the environment to thecloud provider. This ensures visibility into attacker behaviors such as disabling logging, modifying security services, or impairing monitoring controls at the cloud-provider level.

Filtering by attack type alone lacks the structured MITRE mapping required for accurate investigative workflows. Service-level filters are insufficient because impairment of defenses in cloud environments often impacts provider-managed services rather than individual workloads.

Therefore,MITRE Tactic and Technique – Cloud provideris the correct and most precise filter to identify Azure-specific defense evasion IOAs.

Visibility intoAWS IAM controls, includingrestricted use of AWS CloudShell (CIS IAM 1.20), is provided throughCrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security posture managementusingIndicators of Misconfiguration (IOMs). These checks continuously evaluate cloud resources againstindustry-standard benchmarks, including theCIS Foundations Benchmarks for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

CrowdStrike maintainsprebuilt, managed IOM policiesthat are automatically updated to reflect the latest CIS guidance. Leveraging existing IOM policies ensures immediate coverage without the operational risk or overhead of creating and maintaining custom rules. These policies assess IAM configurations, permissions usage, service access controls, and policy enforcement related to CloudShell usage.

IOAs are designed for runtime behavioral detections and are not suitable for posture or configuration validation. Creating custom IOMs is unnecessary for CIS-aligned controls because CrowdStrike already provides validated, benchmark-mapped policies maintained by CrowdStrike security research.

Therefore,leveraging existing IOM policiesis the correct and recommended approach to maintaincontinuous, benchmark-aligned visibilityacross multi-cloud environments.