ISC CISSP Certified Information Systems Security Professional Exam Dumps and Practice Test Questions Set 1 Q1-15
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Question 1:
Which access control model assigns permissions based strictly on organizational job responsibilities?
A) Discretionary Access Control
B) Mandatory Access Control
C) Role-Based Access Control
D) Rule-Based Access Control
Answer: C
Explanation:
Discretionary Access Control is a model where resource owners have the authority to determine who can access the resources they control. In this system, access rights are granted or revoked at the discretion of the individual owner. While this provides flexibility and autonomy for managing personal or departmental resources, it can lead to inconsistent access privileges across the organization. Because each owner sets permissions independently, there is a higher risk of privilege accumulation or misconfiguration, which could inadvertently provide unauthorized users with access to sensitive resources. In large organizations, this decentralized approach becomes difficult to manage, especially when employees change roles or when resources are numerous and interdependent. Mandatory Access Control, on the other hand, is based on centralized policies and security labels assigned to both subjects (users) and objects (resources). Access decisions strictly adhere to these labels, ensuring that policies are uniformly enforced. This approach is common in highly regulated or classified environments, such as government or military systems, where consistency and strict control are paramount.
However, the rigidity of mandatory controls reduces flexibility and can complicate operational efficiency in typical commercial organizations. Role-Based Access Control assigns permissions based on an individual’s role within the organizational hierarchy rather than on the discretion of individual users. Each role has a predefined set of access rights corresponding to its responsibilities. When a user’s job changes, updating role membership automatically adjusts their access privileges, reducing administrative overhead and simplifying compliance audits. This model enhances security by enforcing the principle of least privilege, ensuring users have only the permissions necessary to perform their job functions. Rule-Based Access Control relies on predefined rules enforced by the system, such as time-based access or location restrictions. While these rules add an additional layer of control, they do not inherently tie access privileges to organizational roles. Considering scalability, administrative efficiency, and alignment with organizational responsibilities, Role-Based Access Control is the optimal choice, as it effectively balances security enforcement with operational flexibility, minimizes the risk of excessive permissions, and allows for consistent application of access policies throughout the organization.
Question 2:
Which form of testing evaluates a system strictly through its external interfaces without knowledge of internal components?
A) White-box testing
B) Gray-box testing
C) Black-box testing
D) Static code analysis
Answer: C
Explanation:
White-box testing evaluates a system with complete knowledge of its internal structure, architecture, and source code. Testers have access to code, logic, control flows, and design diagrams. This approach allows identification of security vulnerabilities, coding errors, logic flaws, and potential weaknesses that may not be apparent externally. White-box testing is highly effective in detecting hidden defects but requires significant expertise and familiarity with the system. Gray-box testing is a hybrid approach where testers have partial knowledge of the system’s internals, such as understanding specific algorithms, data structures, or interfaces. It allows targeted testing without full transparency, improving efficiency in areas like integration testing or validation of known components. While it provides better coverage than black-box testing, it still assumes some knowledge, making it less representative of a true outsider’s perspective. Black-box testing focuses exclusively on evaluating a system from the outside. Testers interact with the system through user interfaces, APIs, or other exposed endpoints, observing how it responds to various inputs without understanding internal implementation. This approach mirrors the perspective of an external attacker or user, aiming to uncover functional errors, misconfigurations, and security vulnerabilities observable externally.
It is particularly useful for penetration testing, compliance validation, and end-user acceptance scenarios. Black-box testing identifies problems that could be exploited without insider knowledge, making it critical for security assessments and real-world evaluations. Static code analysis involves examining source code or compiled binaries without executing the program. This method helps identify coding flaws, logic errors, insecure function calls, potential vulnerabilities, and noncompliance with coding standards. It is a highly effective internal review technique for detecting security weaknesses early in the development lifecycle. However, static analysis does not involve interacting with a running system through its external interfaces, so it cannot evaluate how the system behaves from the perspective of an end user or external attacker. It focuses on internal correctness and security, rather than functional behavior observable from outside the system.
White-box testing is a method where testers have complete access to internal design, architecture, and source code. It allows for detailed analysis of control flow, logic paths, and security mechanisms. While comprehensive, it requires full knowledge of the system’s internals and cannot be applied when such information is unavailable or intentionally restricted. White-box testing excels at identifying vulnerabilities that might not manifest externally, but it does not simulate the perspective of an outsider interacting with the system in a production environment.
Gray-box testing is a hybrid approach, providing testers with partial knowledge of internal mechanisms, such as architecture or data flows. This approach allows for more targeted testing than purely external methods but still depends on some level of internal understanding. While it combines the benefits of white-box and black-box testing, it does not represent a completely external viewpoint.
Black-box testing evaluates a system entirely from the outside, without any knowledge of the internal workings, code, or architecture. Testers interact with user interfaces, APIs, and exposed components, observing outputs in response to specific inputs. This perspective mimics the experience of an external attacker or user and ensures that the system’s behavior, functionality, and security controls are tested as they would be encountered in the real world. Black-box testing is critical for penetration testing, functional validation, and user acceptance testing.
Among these methodologies, black-box testing is the only approach that strictly relies on external interaction without requiring internal knowledge, making it the correct choice. It provides an objective assessment of system behavior, validates external controls, and ensures resilience against external threats while maintaining the perspective of an outsider who has no internal information about the system. This makes black-box testing essential for evaluating operational security, usability, and functional integrity under realistic conditions.
Question 3:
Which security design principle states that a system must remain secure even if its internal workings become publicly known?
A) Security through obscurity
B) Open design
C) Least functionality
D) Defense in depth
Answer: B
Explanation:
Security through obscurity is a principle that relies on keeping system details hidden to maintain security. The idea is that attackers will be unable to compromise a system if they do not know its inner workings. While obscurity can provide a temporary layer of protection, it is inherently unreliable because secrets can be exposed through leaks, reverse engineering, or insider threats. Once the internal workings are discovered, the system may become completely vulnerable. This approach alone cannot guarantee robust security, and reliance solely on hidden mechanisms can lead to a false sense of safety and weak resilience against sophisticated attacks. Open design, in contrast, asserts that security should not depend on secrecy. A system must remain secure even if every detail of its design is public knowledge. The principle emphasizes that strong security comes from sound architecture, well-implemented controls, and rigorous policies rather than hidden mechanisms. Transparency allows independent evaluation, testing, and verification by experts, improving overall reliability and trustworthiness. When systems are designed openly, vulnerabilities can be identified and addressed proactively, reducing the likelihood of catastrophic failure. Least functionality aims to minimize the number of enabled services and features to reduce the attack surface. While minimizing functionality improves security by limiting potential exploitation points, it does not directly address the requirement of maintaining security if design details are publicly known. Defense in depth employs multiple layers of controls, ensuring that if one layer fails, others continue to protect the system. While effective at mitigating risk, relying on obscurity also does not address the principle of resilience when internal mechanisms are revealed. Security through obscurity assumes that hiding system details will prevent attacks, but once those details become known, the system is left vulnerable. Attackers can exploit weaknesses that were previously hidden, demonstrating the inherent fragility of security dependent on secrecy. Open design, in contrast, is fundamentally about creating systems whose security relies on robust architecture, sound protocols, and rigorous controls rather than the concealment of internal workings.
By adhering to the open design principle, organizations achieve multiple benefits: transparency, trust, resilience, and verifiable security. Transparent systems allow experts to examine, test, and validate mechanisms, identifying weaknesses early and enabling continuous improvement. This approach encourages peer review, formal verification, and security testing, making the system stronger over time. Importantly, open design ensures that even if all internal mechanisms are exposed to the public, attackers cannot easily compromise the system because its security does not depend on secrecy.
Implementing open design supports long-term reliability and aligns with best practices in cryptography, secure software development, and system architecture. It promotes resilience by ensuring that security controls function as intended under scrutiny and cannot be bypassed simply because system details are known. Considering these aspects, the correct choice that embodies the principle of maintaining security despite public knowledge of internal workings is open design. By focusing on strong construction, validation, and transparency, open design provides a durable, trustworthy foundation for secure systems, making it a cornerstone principle in CISSP security architecture and engineering practices.
Question 4:
Which backup type copies all files that have changed since the last full backup but does not reset the archive bit?
A) Full backup
B) Differential backup
C) Incremental backup
D) Synthetic full backup
Answer: B
Explanation:
A full backup captures every file in the selected dataset, regardless of whether it has changed since the last backup. This approach provides a complete snapshot and simplifies restoration, as only the full backup is needed to recover data. However, full backups require significant storage space and time, especially as data volumes grow, making them less efficient for frequent backups. Differential backups copy all files that have changed since the last full backup, but do not reset the archive bit. Each subsequent differential backup contains all modifications since the last full backup, leading to progressively larger backups over time. During restoration, both the last full backup and the most recent differential backup are required, simplifying recovery compared to incremental backups while reducing administrative complexity. Incremental backups only copy files changed since the last backup of any type, whether full or incremental, and reset the archive bit afterward. While efficient in terms of storage and speed, incremental backups require the last full backup and all subsequent incremental backups for recovery, complicating restoration. Synthetic full backups combine previous full and incremental backups to generate a new full backup without reading all data from the source. While useful for reducing the load on production systems, synthetic backups are not inherently linked to the behavior of differential backups or archive bit handling. The backup type that specifically copies all changes since the last full backup without resetting the archive bit balances efficiency and recoverability. It captures cumulative changes while leaving indicators intact, ensuring that data can be restored effectively without excessive administrative effort. Considering functionality, efficiency, and restoration simplicity, the correct choice is differential backup, as it uniquely meets the requirement described in the question.
Question 5:
Which document specifies required security controls for a system before development begins?
A) Service Level Agreement
B) Security Requirements Traceability Matrix
C) Baseline Configuration
D) System Security Requirements Specification
Answer: D
Explanation:
Service Level Agreements define operational and performance expectations between service providers and clients, such as uptime guarantees, support response times, and service availability. While SLAs ensure accountability and performance monitoring, they do not provide detailed technical or security requirements necessary for system design. A Security Requirements Traceability Matrix is a tool that maps each security requirement to specific system components, processes, or test cases. It is primarily used to ensure coverage and verification during development and testing phases, but it does not serve as the original specification of controls prior to development. Baseline Configuration provides a pre-approved set of system settings, software versions, and hardware specifications to maintain consistency and stability.
While important for operational security, it establishes a reference state rather than defining the initial security controls a system must implement. The System Security Requirements Specification explicitly documents all required security measures before development begins. It outlines controls related to confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, auditing, and other protective mechanisms. This specification serves as a blueprint for developers and architects, guiding the integration of security into the system design from the outset rather than retrofitting protections afterward. Establishing detailed security expectations enables compliance with policies, legal requirements, and organizational standards. The document also provides a basis for validation and verification during testing phases. Among these options, only the System Security Requirements Specification defines the required security controls at the initial stages of development, ensuring that security is an integral part of the system’s architecture and design, making it the correct answer.
Question 6:
What is the primary purpose of a digital signature?
A) Prevent data from being intercepted
B) Provide non-repudiation
C) Encrypt messages for confidentiality
D) Improve hashing efficiency
Answer: B
Explanation
Preventing data interception is primarily addressed through encryption and secure communication protocols such as TLS or VPNs. While digital signatures ensure authenticity and integrity, they do not prevent unauthorized access to the data in transit. Providing non-repudiation is the core purpose of a digital signature. Digital signatures use cryptographic algorithms to bind the identity of the sender to the data, allowing recipients to verify that the sender cannot deny sending the message. This mechanism ensures both authenticity and integrity, as any modification to the signed message invalidates the signature. Non-repudiation also provides legal and operational accountability, serving as evidence in regulatory, contractual, or judicial contexts.
Encrypting messages for confidentiality ensures that only authorized recipients can read the content. Although digital signatures involve cryptographic operations, their function is not to hide information but to validate origin and detect alterations. Improving hashing efficiency is unrelated; while hashing is a component of the digital signature process, its purpose is to condense data for signature generation, not to increase computational performance. Digital signatures combine hashing and asymmetric cryptography to provide verifiable proof of authorship, ensure data integrity, and prevent denial of sending. They are widely used in electronic transactions, secure communications, software distribution, and legal documentation to provide assurance of authenticity and integrity. Digital signatures are implemented using asymmetric cryptography, where a sender uses a private key to sign the message or document, and the recipient uses the corresponding public key to verify the signature. This process ensures that only the holder of the private key could have created the signature, providing strong evidence of the sender’s identity. Any modification of the signed data after signing invalidates the signature, allowing recipients to detect tampering or data corruption.
The fundamental purpose, which distinguishes digital signatures from encryption or other mechanisms, is non-repudiation. Non-repudiation ensures that the sender cannot deny having sent the message, providing legal and operational accountability. Encryption, by contrast, primarily ensures confidentiality by preventing unauthorized parties from reading the content, but it does not inherently prove the sender’s identity or prevent denial of origin. Hashing alone provides data integrity checks but does not authenticate the source. Digital signatures combine cryptographic hashing with asymmetric encryption to guarantee both integrity and authentication, thereby ensuring that messages or documents are both genuine and unaltered.
Digital signatures are essential in scenarios such as e-commerce payments, contract signing, government communications, software updates, and secure email (e.g., S/MIME). They help organizations meet regulatory requirements, maintain trust, and prevent disputes over transactional authenticity. By providing verifiable proof of origin and ensuring the integrity of transmitted data, digital signatures enable secure and reliable digital interactions. The core function of linking the sender’s identity to the message and detecting tampering underscores why the primary purpose of a digital signature is non-repudiation, making it the correct answer.
Question 7:
Which risk response strategy involves transferring the impact of a risk to a third party?
A) Mitigate
B) Accept
C) Transfer
D) Avoid
Answer: C
Explanation:
Mitigation is a proactive strategy that reduces the probability or impact of a risk through controls, safeguards, or process changes. For instance, implementing firewalls, encryption, or additional monitoring reduces exposure but leaves ultimate responsibility with the organization. Acceptance involves consciously tolerating a risk, acknowledging that it exists but choosing not to take action, typically because the likelihood or impact is low or mitigation is cost-prohibitive. This approach does not shift responsibility; the organization assumes the consequences if the risk materializes. Transferring risk reallocates the potential impact or liability to a third party. This can be achieved through insurance policies, outsourcing sensitive operations, or contractual agreements assigning specific responsibilities to vendors.
While operational effects may still occur, the financial, legal, or compliance burden shifts, allowing organizations to manage exposure efficiently. Avoidance entails eliminating the activity or condition that introduces risk. By discontinuing risky operations or changing processes, the organization prevents the risk from arising. This approach, known as risk avoidance, is highly effective in eliminating exposure but may limit operational opportunities, reduce business flexibility, or restrict strategic initiatives. Organizations must carefully weigh the tradeoffs between completely avoiding a risk and maintaining desired business functionality. Acceptance, on the other hand, involves acknowledging a risk and consciously deciding to tolerate it due to cost, low likelihood, or minimal potential impact. While acceptance allows business operations to continue without additional controls, the organization retains full responsibility for any consequences. Mitigation focuses on reducing the probability or impact of a risk by implementing controls such as security measures, redundancy, or policy enforcement. Although mitigation lessens exposure, the organization still bears the residual risk.
Transfer, in contrast, reallocates responsibility and financial or legal consequences to a third party. This strategy is often applied through cybersecurity insurance policies, outsourcing arrangements, managed security services, or contractual agreements that specify liability and responsibility for certain risks. For example, purchasing cyber insurance transfers the financial consequences of a data breach to the insurer, while outsourcing IT services transfers operational risk to the vendor. By shifting accountability externally, the organization can manage risk without directly absorbing all potential losses or consequences.
Transfer does not eliminate the underlying risk, but it reallocates its impact to a party better equipped or contractually obligated to handle it. Considering the mechanisms, intent, and practical application of risk response strategies, transferring the impact of a risk to another entity is the approach that most accurately fits the description of risk transfer, making it the correct answer. This method allows organizations to continue operations while ensuring that financial, legal, or operational burdens associated with certain risks are effectively managed externally.
Question 8:
What is the primary concern addressed by the separation of duties?
A) Preventing physical theft
B) Reducing single points of failure
C) Preventing fraud and misuse
D) Increasing operational efficiency
Answer: C
Explanation:
Preventing physical theft primarily involves physical security measures, such as locks, surveillance systems, and controlled access points. Separation of duties contributes indirectly by reducing opportunities for internal theft but is not primarily designed for physical security. Reducing single points of failure is a concept in fault tolerance and redundancy, ensuring that system or process failure does not completely halt operations. While separation of duties involves multiple personnel, its goal is not operational redundancy but rather oversight and accountability. Preventing fraud and misuse is the core objective of the separation of duties.
By dividing critical responsibilities among multiple individuals, no single person can execute a sensitive operation from start to finish independently. For example, in financial transactions, one individual may authorize a payment, while another approves it, ensuring checks and balances. This structure reduces the risk of intentional misconduct, errors, or policy violations by ensuring that no single individual has complete control over critical processes. It promotes accountability and internal control compliance by requiring multiple individuals to participate in approval, execution, and verification steps. This layered approach makes it easier to detect anomalies or suspicious activity, as multiple parties are involved in each stage, increasing transparency and oversight. It also discourages collusion because bypassing controls would require coordination among multiple individuals, which is both difficult to achieve without detection and more likely to be noticed by auditors, supervisors, or automated monitoring systems.
While separation of duties may slightly reduce operational efficiency due to additional handoffs, approvals, or checks, the tradeoff enhances security, accountability, and governance. Efficiency-focused initiatives aim to streamline processes, reduce bottlenecks, and optimize resource usage, but when critical functions are at stake, prioritizing security and compliance is essential. Separation of duties ensures that critical functions such as financial approvals, system access provisioning, and sensitive data modifications are not controlled by a single person, thereby mitigating the risk of fraud, theft, or policy violations.
In addition to preventing fraud and misuse, separation of duties strengthens organizational governance by clearly defining responsibilities and establishing checks and balances. It supports regulatory compliance requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and ISO 27001, which mandate controls over sensitive processes and transactions. By distributing responsibilities across multiple roles, organizations also enhance risk management, making processes more resilient to internal threats, human error, or mismanagement.
Furthermore, separation of duties facilitates audit readiness and simplifies forensic investigations by providing a clear trail of actions performed by each individual. It enables organizations to identify accountability gaps, monitor performance, and detect policy violations more effectively. The primary concern addressed by this principle is ensuring that no individual has unchecked authority over critical processes, thereby preventing fraudulent activity, unauthorized actions, or misuse of resources. By enforcing oversight, distributing responsibility, and mitigating potential abuse, separation of duties is a cornerstone of organizational security and internal control, making it the correct answer to preventing fraud and misuse.
Question 9:
Which cloud service model provides customers with the highest level of administrative control?
A) Infrastructure as a Service
B) Platform as a Service
C) Software as a Service
D) Function as a Service
Answer: A
Explanation:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides customers with virtualized computing resources, including virtual machines, storage, and network components. Customers are responsible for managing operating systems, applications, middleware, and configurations, while the cloud provider handles the underlying physical infrastructure, including servers, storage, and network connectivity. This level of administrative control allows organizations to install, configure, and customize environments according to their business needs. IaaS is particularly suitable for organizations that require flexibility, full administrative privileges, and control over security configurations. Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides a pre-configured development and runtime environment, enabling users to deploy and manage applications without handling the underlying operating system, middleware, or hardware.
While PaaS simplifies deployment and maintenance, administrative control is limited to application-level settings and configuration, reducing operational overhead but restricting customization at the infrastructure level. Software as a Service (SaaS) delivers fully managed software applications via a web interface or API. Users have minimal administrative control, usually limited to application-specific settings and user management. The provider handles infrastructure, application updates, and security configurations. This model offers the least flexibility and control for customers, focusing instead on ease of use and maintenance. Function as a Service (FaaS) allows users to deploy code functions in an event-driven environment without managing servers or infrastructure. Administrative control is abstracted almost entirely, focusing only on code deployment and event triggers, with the provider managing scaling, runtime, and resource allocation. Compared to IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and FaaS, only IaaS allows the customer full control over operating systems, software installation, configurations, and network security settings, giving them the maximum administrative authority.
This model balances flexibility, customization, and responsibility, making it ideal for organizations that need to maintain detailed control over their computing environments while relying on the cloud provider for physical infrastructure maintenance. Considering the spectrum of cloud service models, IaaS clearly provides the highest level of administrative control, allowing organizations to configure and manage the environment according to internal policies, security requirements, and operational needs, making it the correct choice.
Question 10:
Which cryptographic attack involves comparing captured hashes to a precomputed list of hash-value pairs?
A) Brute-force attack
B) Rainbow table attack
C) Man-in-the-middle attack
D) Replay attack
Answer: B
Explanation:
A brute-force attack systematically tries every possible combination of characters to discover a password or key. It does not rely on precomputed values and can take significant time depending on password complexity. While effective, it is computationally intensive and not optimized using preexisting tables.
A rainbow table attack uses precomputed tables containing plaintext and corresponding hash values. When an attacker captures a hash, they can compare it against the table to rapidly find the original input. This method significantly reduces the time required to break hashed credentials compared to brute-force methods, but requires substantial storage for the precomputed tables. Rainbow tables are particularly effective against unsalted hashes.
A man-in-the-middle attack intercepts communications between two parties to capture or alter data in transit. While it can involve capturing hashes, the attacker relies on interception rather than precomputed comparisons. This attack primarily targets communication integrity and confidentiality, not hash reversal through precomputed data.
A replay attack captures a valid data transmission and retransmits it to gain unauthorized access. It exploits authentication systems but does not attempt to crack hashes using precomputed lists. The primary goal is the reuse of credentials or messages, not hash comparison.
The attack that specifically relies on precomputed hash tables to reverse hashes efficiently is the rainbow table attack. Its use of prior computation enables rapid identification of plaintext values from captured hashes, making it the correct answer.
Question 11:
What is the primary purpose of a business impact analysis (BIA)?
A) Identifying technical vulnerabilities
B) Determining resource recovery priorities
C) Mapping network dependencies
D) Conducting threat modeling
Answer: B
Explanation:
Identifying technical vulnerabilities involves scanning systems, evaluating software, and testing infrastructure for weaknesses. While this is crucial for security assessments, it focuses on technical risk rather than the operational consequences of business disruption. Mapping network dependencies involves documenting the relationships between systems, applications, and infrastructure, which is useful for understanding technical interactions but does not address business priorities or recovery strategies. Conducting threat modeling identifies potential adversaries, attack vectors, and vulnerabilities, focusing on preventive measures to mitigate risk rather than determining operational recovery. A business impact analysis is a structured process to assess the effects of disruptions on business operations. It evaluates critical functions, quantifies potential financial losses, assesses regulatory or legal impacts, and determines acceptable downtime for key processes. Through a BIA, organizations identify which systems, processes, and resources are most crucial to operational continuity.
By establishing recovery priorities, a BIA guides disaster recovery planning, resource allocation, and continuity strategies. This ensures that critical systems, applications, and business functions are restored first, minimizing financial loss, operational disruption, reputational damage, and regulatory non-compliance. It also informs risk management by highlighting areas that require redundancy, backups, failover capabilities, or mitigation measures. Unlike vulnerability assessments, which focus on technical weaknesses, or threat modeling, which examines potential attack vectors, a BIA emphasizes business consequences, examining the real-world impact of disruptions on operations, revenue, and service delivery. The primary output of a BIA is a prioritized list of resources, processes, and recovery objectives, including Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), which define acceptable downtime for critical functions, and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs), which define the maximum tolerable data loss. This prioritization allows organizations to allocate resources effectively, ensuring that mission-critical processes are protected and can resume quickly in the event of a disruption.
A thorough BIA also identifies dependencies between systems, personnel, facilities, and third-party vendors, highlighting which components are interrelated and must be recovered in sequence to restore full operational functionality.
Additionally, it provides a framework for testing and validating business continuity and disaster recovery plans, ensuring preparedness for both expected and unexpected incidents. By aligning recovery priorities with strategic and operational goals, a BIA helps management make informed decisions about investments in backup systems, alternative facilities, insurance coverage, and crisis management procedures. It also supports regulatory compliance, audits, and stakeholder confidence by demonstrating that the organization understands the criticality of its processes and is prepared to maintain continuity under adverse conditions. Considering all these factors, the main purpose of a BIA is to determine which resources and processes require immediate attention during a disruption, making determining resource recovery priorities the correct answer.
Question 12:
Which security mechanism provides the most effective protection against SQL injection attacks?
A) Error suppression
B) Input validation
C) Data encryption
D) Database backups
Answer: B
Explanation:
Error suppression hides detailed error messages that might expose system information, such as database structure, table names, query syntax, or backend logic. While this reduces information leakage and limits what attackers can learn about the system, it does not prevent malicious SQL commands from being submitted. Attackers can still exploit vulnerable input fields to manipulate queries, bypass authentication, or extract sensitive data. Therefore, error suppression serves as an informational control but does not address the underlying vulnerability that allows SQL injection in the first place. Data encryption protects data at rest and in transit, ensuring that unauthorized parties cannot read sensitive information even if intercepted. However, encryption does not prevent SQL injection attacks, because these attacks target the execution of queries within the database engine rather than the confidentiality of the stored data. Database backups provide a mechanism to restore data following corruption or loss, offering a reactive recovery measure. While essential for disaster recovery and continuity, backups do not prevent the initial attack or protect the system from compromise.
Input validation, in contrast, is a proactive control designed to examine all user-provided data for type, length, format, allowed characters, and compliance with expected patterns before the data is processed by the database. By enforcing strict validation, input validation blocks malicious SQL commands from being executed, preventing attempts to manipulate queries, inject arbitrary SQL code, or escalate privileges. It is commonly combined with parameterized queries, stored procedures, or prepared statements to enforce a separation between user input and database logic, which further strengthens defenses. Input validation addresses the root cause of SQL injection by ensuring that only safe, sanitized, and expected data reaches the database, making exploitation significantly more difficult.
Implementing rigorous validation minimizes the risk of unauthorized access, data leakage, corruption, or systemic compromise. This layered approach not only protects data integrity but also enhances the overall security posture of the application by reducing attack surfaces, facilitating compliance with security standards, and supporting secure software development practices. Among the listed mechanisms, input validation stands out as the most effective preventive measure against SQL injection, because it stops harmful commands before they reach the database, preserving system integrity, operational reliability, and security.
Question 13:
Which process ensures that changes to systems occur in a controlled and documented manner?
A) Incident response
B) Configuration management
C) Change management
D) Patch management
Answer: C
Explanation:
Incident response addresses detecting, containing, and recovering from unexpected security incidents. While essential for operational resilience, it is inherently reactive and does not provide governance for planned or routine changes to systems. Its primary focus is on managing unforeseen events such as breaches, malware infections, or policy violations, rather than controlling the introduction of legitimate modifications. Configuration management maintains system settings, software versions, hardware specifications, and baseline configurations to ensure consistency and stability over time. It guarantees that systems remain in a known and secure state, preventing drift from approved standards. However, configuration management alone does not provide the formal process for requesting, approving, or documenting changes before they are applied. Patch management focuses on applying updates, security patches, and fixes to software and systems. Although critical for maintaining security and addressing vulnerabilities, patch management is a subset of change management and does not encompass the broader range of modifications, such as system upgrades, application deployments, or infrastructure changes.
Change management is a comprehensive and formalized process designed to govern all modifications to systems in a controlled, systematic, and auditable manner. It includes submitting change requests, performing impact analysis, evaluating risks, obtaining approvals from relevant stakeholders, implementing changes according to predefined procedures, and conducting post-implementation reviews. This process ensures that modifications do not introduce security vulnerabilities, compliance violations, or operational instability. Change management also facilitates communication between teams, enabling coordination among development, operations, security, and business units to prevent conflicts, downtime, or misconfigurations.
By providing a structured framework, it establishes accountability, traceability, and auditability, making it possible to review changes, identify errors, and maintain compliance with organizational policies and regulatory requirements. Effective change management reduces operational disruptions, mitigates risks associated with unauthorized or poorly planned modifications, and supports continuous improvement of IT processes. Among the listed processes, only change management systematically ensures that all changes are controlled, documented, and approved before implementation, making it the correct answer. Its structured approach safeguards both the security and reliability of systems while facilitating organizational efficiency, governance, and operational resilience.
Question 14:
What type of malware disguises itself as a legitimate program to trick users into executing it?
A) Worm
B) Trojan
C) Virus
D) Rootkit
Answer: B
Explanation:
Worms are self-replicating programs designed to propagate across networks without user intervention. While worms can spread quickly and cause significant disruption, they do not rely on disguising themselves as legitimate programs or tricking users into execution. Viruses attach themselves to files and require execution to spread, relying on replication to infect additional systems. However, viruses do not necessarily masquerade as legitimate applications, although some may combine replication with deception. Rootkits focus on concealing malicious activity, often providing attackers with privileged access while hiding their presence. Rootkits are primarily concerned with stealth rather than initial deception or user trickery. Trojans, or Trojan horses, are malware that intentionally appear to be legitimate or useful applications to deceive users. They rely on social engineering techniques to persuade users to download and execute them. Once executed, Trojans can deliver malicious payloads, such as data theft, system compromise, or backdoor installation. Trojans do not self-replicate; their spread depends on user action and manipulation.
The deceptive nature of Trojans allows attackers to bypass security measures by exploiting trust or human behavior. They often appear as harmless applications, utilities, or updates, which convince users to download or execute them voluntarily. Unlike worms, Trojans do not self-replicate, and unlike viruses, their primary mechanism is not infection through files but through social engineering tactics. This reliance on deception makes user awareness and training critical in defending against such threats. Trojans can carry a wide range of malicious payloads, including keyloggers, remote access tools, ransomware, or spyware, which can compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of systems and data. The malware type that explicitly depends on masquerading as legitimate software and tricking users into execution is the Trojan, making it the correct choice. Trojans are widely used in phishing campaigns, malicious downloads, software piracy schemes, and even malicious email attachments. They exploit weak user practices, such as clicking on unverified links, downloading unauthorized software, or bypassing security prompts.
This highlights the importance of endpoint protection, real-time monitoring, secure software sourcing, and strong organizational policies to prevent execution. In addition, combining technical defenses such as antivirus software, application whitelisting, sandboxing, and intrusion detection with regular security awareness training reduces the risk of Trojan infections. Organizations must also implement network segmentation and least-privilege access to limit the damage if a Trojan does execute. The pervasive use of Trojans in targeted attacks demonstrates that human behavior is often the weakest link, reinforcing the need for both technical and educational controls to mitigate this threat effectively.
Question 15:
Which control type is designed to identify incidents after they occur?
A) Preventive
B) Deterrent
C) Corrective
D) Detective
Answer: D
Explanation:
Preventive controls are proactive measures designed to stop incidents before they happen. Examples include access controls, firewalls, authentication mechanisms, and policy enforcement. These controls aim to reduce exposure and prevent security breaches, but they do not detect incidents after they occur. Deterrent controls discourage undesirable behavior by signaling potential consequences or increasing perceived risk. Examples include warning banners, visible security cameras, and posted policies. While they may reduce the likelihood of incidents, they do not provide active detection or alerting capabilities. Corrective controls are reactive measures implemented after an incident to restore systems, data, or processes to a secure state. Examples include patching vulnerabilities, restoring backups, or repairing compromised systems.
While essential for recovery, corrective controls do not detect or alert organizations to incidents themselves. They focus on restoring systems, data, or processes to a secure state after an incident has occurred, but without proactive monitoring, organizations may remain unaware of ongoing attacks or policy violations. Detective controls, in contrast, are specifically designed to identify and alert organizations when incidents occur, providing the visibility needed to respond in a timely manner. Examples include intrusion detection systems (IDS), audit logs, file integrity monitoring, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions, network monitoring tools, and anomaly detection systems.
These controls continuously analyze system and network activity to detect unauthorized access, policy violations, suspicious behavior, or operational anomalies. Detective controls not only trigger alerts in real time but also provide forensic evidence that can be used for post-incident investigation, compliance reporting, and legal purposes. They enable organizations to correlate events, identify patterns of malicious activity, and prioritize responses based on severity or risk. Detective controls complement preventive measures, which attempt to stop incidents before they occur, and corrective measures, which restore systems afterward, by providing a middle layer of awareness and monitoring. By integrating detective controls into a security framework, organizations can ensure continuous oversight, reduce dwell time for attackers, and improve overall incident response effectiveness. Among the listed types of controls, only detective controls are explicitly intended to identify and report incidents after they occur, making them the correct answer.
They are a critical component of security monitoring, operational oversight, and risk management strategies, providing both accountability and actionable intelligence to mitigate damage and enhance organizational resilience.