Effective Study Techniques for the ISC CCSP Exam

Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solutions largely sit idle until they are actually needed. This traditionally has led to increased costs for an organization because physical hardware must be purchased and operational but is not used. By using a cloud system, an organization will only pay for systems when they are being used and only for the duration of use, thus eliminating the need for extra hardware and costs. Portability is the ability to easily move services among different cloud providers. Broad network access allows access to users and staff from anywhere and from different clients, and although this would be important for a BCDR situation, it is not the best answer in this case. On-demand self-service allows users to provision services automatically and when needed, and although this too would be important for BCDR situations, it is not the best answer because it does not address costs or the biggest benefits to an organization.

Auditing involves reports and evidence that show user activity, compliance with controls and regulations, the systems and processes that run and what they do, as well as information and data access and modification records. A cloud environment adds additional complexity to traditional audits because the cloud customer will not have the same level of access to systems and data as they would in a traditional data center.

The platform service capability provides programming languages and libraries from the cloud provider, where the customer can deploy their own code and applications into a managed and controlled framework.

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.

While the main focus of confidentiality revolves around technological requirements or particular security methods, an important and often overlooked aspect of safeguarding data confidentiality is appropriate and comprehensive training for those with access to it. Training should be focused on the safe handling of sensitive information overall, including best practices for network activities as well as physical security of the devices or workstations used to access the application.

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

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

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.

Plausibility, here, is a distractor and not specifically relevant to cloud forensics.

We don’t use DAM in place of encryption or masking; DAM augments these options without replacing them. We don’t usually think of the database interaction as client-server, so A is the best answer.

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.

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 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.

While the provider might share any of the other options listed, the provider will not share administration of security controls with the customer. Security controls are the sole province of the provider.

The exposure of data by hackers is considered a data breach. Data loss focuses on the data availability rather than security. Data loss occurs when data becomes lost, unavailable, or destroyed, when it should not have been.