ACAMS CGSS Exam Prep
Certified Global Sanctions Specialist (Page 5 )

• What information each stakeholder needs
• When and how often it should be communicated
• Which format or channel should be used
• Who is responsible for communicating it

• A: The team should not decide stakeholder communications without first checking the established plan and CEO’s needs.
• B: An executive summary may be appropriate, but choosing a solution before reviewing the plan is premature.
• D: The stakeholder engagement plan addresses how to engage stakeholders, but this is primarily a communication planning issue.

• Prevent connections to malware command-and-control servers
• Identify infected systems making those DNS requests
• Collect information for incident response

• A: Attackers do not normally use sinkholes to map a company’s domain structure.
• B: Redirecting employees from legitimate sites to attacker-owned sites describes malicious DNS manipulation, not a defensive sinkhole.
• D: Attracting attackers away from real resources is more closely associated with a honeypot or deception system.

• Required response and resolution times
• Availability or uptime targets
• Performance standards
• Support obligations
• Remedies or penalties for failing to meet the terms

• SOW (Statement of Work): Defines the project’s scope, tasks, deliverables, and schedule.
• MOA (Memorandum of Agreement): Describes agreed responsibilities between parties, often for a specific activity.
• MOU (Memorandum of Understanding): Records a mutual understanding or intention, usually less formal than a contract.

• Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed NoSQL database service. It stores and retrieves application data, but it does not provide the complete environment for building, testing, and deploying predictive analytics models.
• Azure Machine Learning is the appropriate service for this requirement. It supports creating experiments, training and testing models, and deploying them for predictions.
• Azure Machine Learning Studio provides the browser-based interface for these tasks.

• Active-active routers: Provide redundant Internet connections/devices. Both can operate, so traffic can fail over or be load-balanced.
• Active-active firewalls: Avoid a single firewall becoming a failure point while maintaining security inspection.
• Load balancers: Distribute requests across multiple web servers. If one server fails, traffic can go to the other.
• Redundant power supplies: A server with separate power supplies should connect to independent power sources or circuits.
• UPS A and UPS B: Provide backup power and redundancy. Ideally, each power supply is connected to a different UPS.
• SONET ring: A ring topology provides alternate paths if a fiber link or segment fails.

• B. Versioned configuration files — Infrastructure is defined in machine-readable files and tracked in version control, allowing repeatable provisioning and change history.
• D. Docker files — Assuming “Doctor files” is a typo for Dockerfiles, a Dockerfile declaratively defines how to build a container image and is commonly considered infrastructure/configuration as code.

• A. Cloned virtual machine images — These are prebuilt infrastructure artifacts, but cloning an image is not itself a code-based infrastructure definition.
• C. Change management database records — A CMDB records information about infrastructure; it does not define or provision that infrastructure.

• Regression predicts continuous numeric outcomes, such as house price, temperature, or sales amount.
• Linear regression assumes the target can be estimated from a linear relationship between the input features and the target.
• In Azure Machine Learning, you use a labeled dataset containing:

• Classification predicts a category or class, such as “spam” or “not spam.”
• Clustering groups similar records without a known label; it is an unsupervised learning technique.

• The servers run different operating systems: Windows, Linux, and Unix.
• Containers generally share the host operating system’s kernel, so they cannot normally run workloads requiring unrelated kernels, such as Windows and Linux, on the same Linux host.
• A hypervisor can create separate virtual machines, allowing each VM to run its own guest OS.
• A Type 2 hypervisor runs on top of a host operating system and can support multiple guest operating systems.

• Code signing: Verifies the software’s authenticity and integrity; it does not hide the source code or prevent reverse engineering.
• Tokenization: Replaces sensitive data with tokens, mainly for protecting data such as payment information—not software logic.
• Blockchain: Provides a tamper-resistant record of transactions or data; it does not protect compiled code from analysis.

• Employees can work from any location, including remote sites and offices worldwide.
• Login can be relatively seamless after the device is registered.
• It does not require distributing additional physical authentication equipment.

• Geotagging: Identifies location, but location alone is not a strong authentication method and may prevent legitimate remote access.
• Smart cards: Provide strong authentication but require card readers and physical cards, increasing equipment and management requirements.
• Time-based logins: Typically involve one-time codes that users must enter, making the experience less seamless and potentially requiring a token or authenticator app.

• C series: CPU-optimized instances; not designed primarily for LLM training.
• G series: GPU instances generally optimized for graphics and some machine learning workloads, but not specifically large-scale model training efficiency.
• P series: Powerful GPU instances for ML training, but typically consume more energy than Trainium-based instances for suitable training workloads.

• HTTPS: Secure web traffic, not general command-line server administration.
• SNMPv3: Secure network monitoring and management, not interactive server login.
• RDP: Provides graphical remote desktop access. It can be secure, but it is not the direct replacement for Telnet in this scenario.
• SMTP: Used to send email.

• Compute: Not used; no virtual warehouse is required.
• Data Storage: Not scanned again.
• Metadata: May help Snowflake manage and validate cached results, but it is not the Snowflake architectural layer identified as serving the request.
• Cloud Services: Handles query coordination, metadata services, authentication, and result-cache access.

• Sensitive document shared during a Teams chat: Teams chat
• Sensitive document stored/shared in a Teams channel: Teams channel messages

• Files shared in a chat are generally stored in the sender’s OneDrive, but the relevant DLP context is the Teams chat message and its attachment.
• Files shared in a channel are stored in the team’s SharePoint site, but the relevant context is the Teams channel message.
• The DLP rule can then use an action such as restrict access to the content to prevent guest users from opening the sensitive document.

• Create and manage approved IT services as products
• Control which users can deploy those products
• Apply governance, permissions, and constraints
• Use and manage infrastructure-as-code templates, such as AWS CloudFormation templates

• AWS Resource Explorer: Helps find and browse AWS resources; it does not govern IaC deployments.
• AWS Organizations: Manages accounts, consolidated billing, and organization-wide policies.
• AWS Systems Manager: Provides operational management, such as patching, automation, and parameter storage, but it is not primarily used to catalog and govern IaC-based service deployments.

• T?o m?t Systems Manager Automation runbook d? ch?y l?nh kh?i d?ng l?i ?ng d?ng trên các EC2 instance.
• T?o m?t Amazon EventBridge rule ph?n ?ng khi CloudWatch alarm chuy?n sang tr?ng thái ALARM.
• Ð?t Automation runbook làm target c?a EventBridge rule.

1. Log c?a ?ng d?ng du?c ghi vào CloudWatch Logs.
2. CloudWatch alarm phát hi?n nhi?u l?i liên quan d?n vi?c restart.
3. Alarm chuy?n sang tr?ng thái ALARM.
4. EventBridge nh?n s? ki?n thay d?i tr?ng thái này.
5. EventBridge g?i Systems Manager Automation runbook.
6. Runbook restart ?ng d?ng trên các EC2 instance, không restart c? instance.

• A: SNS không tr?c ti?p g?i Systems Manager Automation runbook nhu m?t target native.
• B: Lambda có th? th?c hi?n vi?c restart, nhung ph?i t? x? lý vi?c xác d?nh instance và ch?y l?nh t? xa.
• C: Lambda ch? làm trung gian d? g?i runbook, không c?n thi?t vì EventBridge có th? g?i runbook tr?c ti?p.

• Inherent risk: Risk that exists before controls are implemented.
• Avoided risk: Risk eliminated by choosing not to perform the risky activity.
• Operational risk: Risk arising from failures in processes, people, systems, or daily operations.

• Gaia Portal: Controlled by Gaia administration settings, not SmartConsole Trusted Clients.
• SSH: Controlled by Gaia or operating-system SSH access settings.
• Security Gateway(s): SmartConsole connects to the Security Management Server, not directly to gateways for this purpose.

• Documented and evaluated
• Assessed for security, cost, and operational impact
• Reviewed and approved by the appropriate personnel
• Tested before implementation
• Tracked with version history and rollback procedures

• Risk management process: May help assess the issues, but it does not authorize and manage design changes.
• Product design process: Applies primarily while creating a new design.
• Design review process: Normally evaluates a design before release; this design is already released.

• Espionage: Stealing information for intelligence or competitive purposes.
• Data exfiltration: Unauthorized removal or transfer of data.
• Nation-state attack: A sophisticated attack sponsored by a government.
• Shadow IT: Unapproved technology or access methods used by employees.

• Microservices: An application design approach that divides software into small services; it does not specifically reduce the number of operating systems.
• Containerization: Uses isolated containers that share the host OS kernel—best match.
• Virtualization: Creates separate virtual machines, and each typically requires its own guest OS, so it does not minimize OS instances as effectively.
• Infrastructure as code: Automates deployment and management of infrastructure; it does not describe the architecture being used.

• desktopwidth:i:1280
• desktopheight:i:1024

• Connection information: Controls connection-related settings, not the desktop resolution.
• Scaling plan: Controls when session hosts start, stop, or scale based on demand.
• Session behaviour: Controls behavior such as disconnect or logoff handling.
• Display settings: Specifically controls RDP display properties, making it the appropriate choice.

• Monitoring: Detects activity but does not remove the underlying risk.
• Patching: Useful for systems that must remain operational, but these desktops are unused.
• Isolating: Can be a temporary containment measure, but permanently removing unnecessary systems is more appropriate.

• An active relationship is used automatically when filters are evaluated. An inactive relationship does not propagate filters unless explicitly activated in DAX, so it would not reliably enforce the required security behavior.
• Apply security filter in both directions allows RLS filters to propagate across the relationship in both directions. This ensures that bidirectional filtering respects the RLS rules applied to both tables.
• Assume referential integrity is unrelated to RLS. It is mainly a DirectQuery optimization that allows Power BI to use an inner join when matching keys are guaranteed to exist.
• The relationship must therefore be active, with security filtering enabled in both directions.

• Restrict a port to a defined number of MAC addresses
• Use statically assigned or “sticky” MAC addresses
• Shut down or restrict the port when violations occur

• Load balancer: Distributes application traffic; it does not protect switch MAC tables.
• IPS: May detect suspicious network activity, but is not the primary control for limiting switch MAC entries.
• NGFW: Filters traffic at the network boundary; it does not directly prevent MAC table flooding on access switches.

• A: Allow SAN certificates — SANs are used to identify valid hostnames in a certificate. They do not bypass trust validation.
• C: Open the secure LDAP port — A blocked port would normally cause a timeout or connection-refused error, not certificate errors.
• D: Increase the TLS version on the RA — The issue concerns certificate trust, not the organization’s registration authority.

• Which host first communicated with the suspected malicious source
• Whether that host initiated suspicious traffic or merely received it
• Which other hosts show evidence of infection, such as connections from the originating host
• Which hosts have no related suspicious activity and are therefore clean

• An outbound connection to a suspicious external address
• A downloaded or executed malicious file
• Later lateral connections from that host to other internal systems
• Firewall logs showing the direction and timing of the traffic

• Determining ISP-assigned address space: Usually involves public reconnaissance, such as WHOIS or regional Internet registry information.
• Bypassing DNS sinkholing: Would require evidence that malicious domains are resolving outside the organization’s sinkhole controls.
• Achieving initial access: DNS log entries alone do not demonstrate compromise or entry.
• Exfiltrating data: DNS tunneling generally involves repeated queries containing encoded or unusually long data, not merely internal host discovery.

• Packet capture: Collects and analyzes network traffic; it does not describe the scan type.
• Privilege escalation: Attempts to gain higher permissions after obtaining access.
• System enumeration: Identifies systems, services, or resources, but is not specifically defined by the lack of credentials.
• Passive scan: Observes traffic without actively probing systems. A vulnerability scan is generally an active assessment.

1. Define – establish the project’s objectives, scope, feasibility and requirements.
2. Design – plan how the project will be carried out, including resources, schedules and controls.
3. Deliver – execute the project and produce the required outputs.
4. Develop – close the project formally and capture learning for future projects.

• Filing documentation and records
• Closing project and accounting systems
• Settling costs
• Handing over the completed work and obtaining sign-off
• Reviewing performance and giving feedback

• Check whether the data is accurate, complete, and properly prepared.
• Confirm that the pattern is not caused by an outlier, data-quality problem, or modeling issue.
• If the data is valid, treat the result as a potentially valuable new business insight.

• A: A data scientist may help, but expert validation and data-quality checking come first.
• C: Filtering out inconvenient data risks hiding a valid insight.
• D: Einstein’s result should not be accepted without verification simply because it produced the finding.

• How quickly the vendor must respond to an incident or request
• Target resolution times
• Availability or uptime requirements
• Performance metrics and penalties for not meeting them

• SOW (Statement of Work): Describes the project’s scope, tasks, deliverables, and timeline.
• MOA (Memorandum of Agreement): Documents a formal agreement to cooperate or perform specific activities.
• MOU (Memorandum of Understanding): Records a mutual understanding or intent, often less binding than a contract.

• 10 TB with maximum I/O performance: Use EC2 instance store. It provides very high-throughput, low-latency local storage suitable for temporary video-processing data. The application must tolerate data loss because instance store is ephemeral.
• 300 TB of highly durable media: Use Amazon S3, which is designed for highly durable object storage and can scale to this size.
• 900 TB of inactive archival media: Use S3 Glacier, which provides lower-cost storage for data that is rarely accessed.

• A: Amazon EBS offers high performance but is not the best fit for the question’s “maximum possible I/O” requirement compared with local instance store.
• B: Amazon EFS is durable and shared, but is generally more expensive and less suitable for very large archival storage.
• C: Uses EC2 instance store for performance, but incorrectly uses EFS for the 300-TB durable tier and S3 rather than Glacier for archival data.

• B. Deploy to a SageMaker endpoint: This is needed for SageMaker-hosted models, not for a model intended to be used directly in Amazon Bedrock.
• C. Register with SageMaker Model Registry: SageMaker Model Registry is unrelated to invoking custom models in Bedrock.
• D. Grant access in Bedrock: Access permissions may be necessary, but they do not replace the required provisioned capacity.

• Online payment fraud
• Account takeover
• Fake account creation
• Suspicious transactions

• B: Developer Edition has limited user, storage, and data-volume capacity, making realistic community testing difficult.
• C: A Developer Edition org cannot contain sandboxes, so it cannot provide separate environments for development, integration, and UAT.
• E: A standalone Developer Edition org is not part of the production org’s deployment path, so change sets cannot be used to deploy from it directly to that production org. The team would need Metadata API, Salesforce CLI, or another deployment method.

• 255.255.255.128 = /25: 128 total, 126 usable
• 255.255.255.192 = /26: 64 total, 62 usable
• 255.255.255.224 = /27: 32 total, 30 usable
• 255.255.255.240 = /28: 16 total, 14 usable

• One for the network address
• One for the broadcast address

• 8 total addresses
• 6 usable addresses
• Mask: 255.255.255.248

• A — Correct: Flow Builder is declarative and visual, so administrators and other non-developers can participate in designing and improving business processes without writing Apex.
• D — Correct: Flow Builder provides visual debugging tools, allowing an admin to test paths, inspect variable values, and identify where a specific business case fails.
• E — Correct: A flow’s visual structure documents the logic and makes later maintenance easier than reading and updating custom Apex code.

• B — Incorrect: Flow debugging does not attach a debugger to live customer sessions. The admin uses Flow Builder’s debug functionality with test inputs; this is not live-session debugging and should not be used to monitor real customer transactions.

Question 3: AWS Storage Gateway File Gateway

• A: S3 bucket per user — S3 is object storage, not a traditional shared file system; mounting it requires extra tools and is less efficient.
• B: File Gateway — Provides a local file share using standard file protocols while storing files in Amazon S3. This preserves convenient local access and extends storage capacity.
• C: WorkSpaces and WorkDocs — Designed for virtual desktops and document collaboration, not large shared file storage.
• D: EC2 with EBS — EBS is attached to one EC2 instance and is not designed for direct multi-user file sharing.

1. insert con; ? 1
2. Database.setSavepoint(); ? 2
3. update con; ? 3
4. Database.rollback(sp_admin); ? 4

• Crowd-sourced evaluation: Requires recruiting and managing many evaluators.
• Human-worker evaluation: Provides human judgment but requires coordination, labeling instructions, and quality control.
• RLHF: Is a training and alignment process, not simply a low-overhead model comparison method.
• Automatic model evaluation: Quickly evaluates outputs using predefined toxicity or quality metrics with minimal manual effort.

• AWS AppSync is designed for serverless applications that need to retrieve and combine data from multiple sources.
• A pipeline resolver can invoke multiple functions or data-source resolvers, including resolvers connected to different DynamoDB tables.
• The application can receive the combined result through one GraphQL request, without requiring custom aggregation logic in the application.
• This is operationally efficient because AppSync manages the API layer and resolver execution.

• Athena Federated Query is intended primarily for analytics and ad hoc querying, not low-latency application data retrieval.
• Querying DynamoDB through Athena can consume DynamoDB read capacity and may affect table performance.
• It also introduces analytical-query overhead and is not the normal choice for a microservice web application.

• Store privileged credentials securely
• Grant the consultant only the access needed
• Provide temporary or time-limited access
• Rotate passwords automatically
• Record or monitor administrator sessions

• TACACS+: Centralizes authentication and authorization, commonly for network devices, but does not primarily provide password vaulting and privileged-session control.
• SAML: Enables web-based federation and single sign-on, not privileged credential management.
• SSO platform: Reduces the number of passwords users need, but does not necessarily protect administrative credentials or control privileged sessions.
• Role-based access control (RBAC): Assigns permissions based on job roles, but does not by itself prevent password sharing or securely broker administrator access.

• Works across SaaS and internal applications: TOTP is widely supported by authentication systems and can be integrated into many applications.
• Device manufacturer agnostic: A hardware token or authenticator application can generate the code without depending on a specific computer or phone manufacturer.
• Offline capability: The code is generated locally using a shared secret and the current time; an internet connection or cellular service is not required.

• Username and password: May work offline but provides weaker authentication and does not meet the intended improvement in security.
• Biometrics: Can depend on device hardware, operating-system support, and enrollment mechanisms.
• SMS verification: Requires cellular connectivity and is vulnerable to threats such as SIM swapping.

• Encryption to preserve confidentiality
• Integrity protection to detect alteration
• Authentication of the server through certificates

• SHA-256: A hashing algorithm; it does not encrypt data for transmission.
• SSL 3.0: Obsolete and insecure. It should not be used.
• AES-256: A strong encryption algorithm, but by itself it does not provide the complete secure communication protocol needed for data in transit.

CIMA P3 topics

• IT governance and systems strategy
• Systems development and implementation
• Change and project governance
• Strategic and business risk

• A — Plan for new systems: The committee should help identify and prioritise systems requirements and ensure planned systems support organisational needs.
• D — Consider competitive issues: New information systems may affect Y’s competitive position, service quality and efficiency. These strategic implications should be considered.
• E — Ensure the system meets company goals: This is a key governance responsibility. The committee should ensure the project remains aligned with Y’s objectives and delivers business value.

• B — Develop new systems: Detailed system development should be performed by IT specialists and project teams, not the steering committee.
• C — Manage the project: The project manager should handle day-to-day project management. The steering committee should provide oversight, challenge and key decisions, rather than manage daily activities.

• Espionage: Stealing confidential information, often for a competitor or government.
• Data exfiltration: Unauthorized transfer of data outside the organization. This could occur, but the question focuses on using unapproved access methods.
• Nation-state attack: An attack sponsored or conducted by a government.
• Shadow IT: Employees using technology or access methods outside the organization’s approved security controls.

• Prevention costs – costs incurred to stop defects occurring, such as staff training, quality planning and supplier evaluation.
• Appraisal costs – costs of checking whether products meet standards, such as inspection, testing and quality audits.
• Internal failure costs – costs of defects found before delivery to customers, such as scrap, rework and retesting.
• External failure costs – costs of defects found after delivery, such as warranty claims, returns, complaints and product recalls.

• Plenum: Describes a fire-resistant cable jacket rating, not a transmission medium or speed.
• Ethernet: Describes a networking technology; Ethernet can use copper or fiber, so the term alone does not identify the fastest cable type.
• DAC (Direct Attach Copper): Uses copper and is typically intended for short-distance, high-speed connections in data centers.

Correct reasoning

• Create storage5 as a General-purpose v2 (StorageV2) account.
• Configure Blob object replication from storage5 to an existing compatible storage account.
• The destination must support object replication—typically another StorageV2 or premium block blob account.
• Blob versioning must be enabled on both accounts.
• Blob change feed must be enabled on the source account.
• The accounts must meet Azure’s object-replication requirements, including being in supported regions and having compatible configuration.