AICPA CPA-Auditing Exam Actual Questions
CPA Auditing and Attestation (AUD) (Page 32 )

• Problème: le système d’alertes signale des fluctuations tout en manquant les activités qui restent anormalement constantes sur une période longue. Il faut donc un scénario qui capte les anomalies qui se maintiennent dans le temps plutôt que les pics ponctuels.
• Peer: permet de comparer un client à ses pairs; utile pour repérer des écarts relatifs, mais ne cible pas nécessairement les motifs d’anomalie persistante sur plusieurs périodes.
• Revenus mapping: relie les transactions à des sources ou flux de revenus; utile pour l’analyse des fonds, mais pas directement pour détecter une anomalie longue durée.
• Below-the-line: conçu pour détecter des activités qui passent en dessous des seuils habituels ou qui demeurent anormales sur une longue période, comblant ainsi la faiblesse des alertes à long terme.

• Correct answer: A
• What this is saying: You need to write a Transact-SQL query that uses REGEXP_SUBSTR to extract the ID from MessageText, and you should apply STRING_ESCAPE(MessageText, 'json') before calling REGEXP_SUBSTR.

• MessageText may contain JSON characters (quotes, backslashes, etc.). Escaping the JSON content first ensures the string you pass to the regex is safe and won’t confuse the regex engine.
• The pattern you apply with REGEXP_SUBSTR would then extract the first substring that matches your ID pattern from the (escaped) text.

• Example (conceptual):

• The question implies REGEXP_SUBSTR is available in this environment; some SQL Server and Fabric contexts don’t expose it natively in all versions. If REGEXP_SUBSTR isn’t available, you’d need an alternative approach (e.g., using built-in regex-like capabilities or CLR/UDFs).
• If you need the ID specifically from the first paragraph, you might first isolate the first paragraph and then apply REGEXP_SUBSTR, or compose a single pattern that anchors to the first paragraph.

• Answer: No

• Why: Using several Azure AD directories (tenants) would create separate identity stores for each division, which significantly increases administrative overhead. You’d need cross-tenant access management, separate governance, and duplicated admin efforts, which goes against the goal of minimizing administrative work.

• How to meet the goal instead:

• Options:

• Answer: The correct choice is A (800-61r3).

• NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 3 is the dedicated guide for incident handling/response and reflects the latest guidance on the incident response lifecycle (preparation, detection/analysis, containment, eradication, recovery, post-incident activity).
• 800-61r2 is an older revision of the same incident response guide.
• 800-53 covers security and privacy controls, not a specific incident response standard.
• 800-171 focuses on protecting CUI in non-federal systems and networks, not incident response guidance.

• Amazon Kendra is a managed enterprise search service that can index content stored in S3 and support natural-language queries to find text inside documents (PDFs, Word files, etc.).

• Rekognition analyzes images/videos, not document text search.
• Polly is a text-to-speech service.
• Lex is a chatbot service.

• Create a Kendra index.
• Add a data source of type S3 and point it to your bucket (with an IAM role that allows access).
• Configure/document conversion if needed, then index the data.
• Use the Kendra API or console to run natural-language queries against your indexed documents.

• Security Development Operations (SDO): a security-focused take on DevOps, integrating security into the development pipeline.
• Service Data Object (SDO): a data representation used in some middleware or enterprise apps.
• Software-Defined Overlay (SDO): a networking overlay concept.
• Secure Data Object: a generic data-security term.

• A. Custom and standard objects have standard fields. True. Both object types include standard fields (for example, CreatedDate, LastModifiedDate, Owner). Custom objects also have the Name field, which is a standard field on all objects.
• B. Standard objects are included with Salesforce. True. Standard objects (like Account, Contact, etc.) come with Salesforce out of the box.
• C. A new standard object can be created. False. You can create custom objects, but you cannot create new standard objects.
• D. Only standard objects support master-detail relationships. False. Master-detail relationships can be used with both standard and custom objects.

• Post-Incident Review (A) is the after-action step used to capture lessons learned, identify process gaps, and drive improvements across the incident response lifecycle. This directly supports process maturity and a stronger security posture.
• Incident Analysis (D) focuses on investigating root causes during/after an incident, which is important but more of a diagnostic activity than a standalone baseline improvement to maturity.
• Fast Eradication (B) and Incident Containment (C) are tactical actions aimed at stopping the incident, not on maturing the process.

• Basic: Self-help only; no technical support or design assessment.
• Standard: Technical support, but not the full proactive architectural guidance required here.
• Professional Direct: Provides proactive guidance and architecture-related assistance.
• Premier: Also supports this, but is a more expensive, enterprise-level option.

• The correct answer: C. Tokenization

• Why:

• Why the others are weaker:

• To get min/max per column, you need column profiling. That’s provided by enabling the column profile.
• To actually see those min/max values, you should show the column profile in the details pane, and you also need the details pane itself enabled so you can view it.

• Enable column profile (B)
• Show column profile in details pane (C)
• Enable details pane (E)

• Show column value distribution (D) shows distribution shape but isn’t required to get min/max.
• Show column quality details (D) deals with data quality metrics, not min/max.

• Premium file shares: contoso104 only
• Blob access tiers: contoso101, contoso102, and contoso103

• Premium Azure Files shares require a storage account with the FileStorage account kind. This is a specialized account type and is not used for blob storage.
• Blob access tiers such as Hot, Cool, and—where supported—Archive apply to blob-capable accounts, such as General-purpose v2 or BlobStorage accounts shown in the exhibit.
• contoso104 is therefore excluded from the blob-tier selection because it is the premium Files account.

• A) MTU mismatch: OSPF neighbors must exchange Hello packets with a compatible MTU. If MTUs differ, the neighbor conversation fails and the adjacency cannot become Full.

• B) Incorrect subnet mask: Routers must be in the same IP subnet on the connected link to form a neighbor relationship. A subnet mismatch prevents Hello packets from being considered valid on the same network.

• D) Area ID not the same: Neighbors must share the same Area ID. A mismatch stops adjacency from forming beyond the 2-Way state.

• E) Different metric set on each end of the link: Cost differences do not prevent OSPF adjacency; they affect routing decisions, not neighbor formation.
• F) Router ID not defined: OSPF can auto-choose a router ID; an undefined ID is not a prerequisite for adjacency to reach Full.

• En Cisco SD-Access, el fabric overlay se extiende hasta lo inalámbrico; los APs son nodos de borde del fabric y su tráfico queda dentro del overlay.
• El cliente inalámbrico genera tráfico que viaja por el overlay, pero no es un componente del fabric en sí.
• El WLC es principalmente una herramienta de gestión y control, no forma parte del overlay; el underlay es el transporte físico.

• The correct option is A: Data architecture.

• Why: In the AWS CAF, the Platform perspective covers the technical foundation and architecture that enable cloud workloads to run reliably and efficiently. This includes how data is modeled, stored, and accessed across the enterprise—the core of data architecture.

• Quick mapping for the other options:

Why B works

• AWS KMS keys are Regional resources. A normal customer managed key in Region A cannot be used directly in Region B.
• A customer managed multi-Region KMS key (MRK) has related key replicas in both Regions. The replicas share key material and key ID, although each has a Regional ARN.
• With client-side encryption, the application encrypts the data before storing it in S3. Cross-Region replication then copies already-encrypted objects, so S3 does not need to decrypt and re-encrypt them with a different Regional key.

Why the other choices are weaker

• A and C: SSE-S3 uses Amazon-managed S3 keys, not the required customer managed KMS key.
• D: SSE-KMS can work only if the solution creates and configures the appropriate KMS key or multi-Region key replica in each Region. As written, it says to create a customer managed KMS key in each Region, which implies separate keys—not the same KMS key. Replication also requires additional KMS permissions and destination encryption configuration.

• The question asks which Azure support plans allow you to open new support requests.

• Key concept:

• Therefore, the correct choice is the plan(s) other than Basic (i.e., Developer, Standard, Professional Direct, Premier). If the provided key lists only one option as correct (A), it may be incomplete or misleading—the official plans page shows that Basic does not meet the requirement, while the paid plans do. See: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/plans/

powershell 
Get-AzureVM -ServiceName <service-name> -Name <vm-name> | 
  Set-AzureStaticVNetIP -IPAddress <private-ip> | 
  Update-AzureVM

• New-AzureRMVMConfig configures VM settings but does not itself assign the static IP.
• Set-AzureSubnet is not the appropriate cmdlet for assigning a VM’s private IP.
• The Azure portal option mentioned in the question was not the intended method for this older deployment model.
• Changing settings in Windows Network and Sharing Center is incorrect because Azure assigns the IP through the VM’s virtual network interface; manually configuring it inside the guest can cause conflicts.

• 6-phone boxes: 6x
• 8-phone boxes: 8x

• Answer: A. Use Amazon SageMaker Serverless Inference to deploy the model.

• Why: SageMaker Serverless Inference hosts the model and serves real-time predictions without you provisioning or managing servers. It scales automatically and handles deployment details.

• Why the others aren’t suitable:

• Quick example flow: web app ? SageMaker Serverless Inference endpoint ? model ? response.

• runParallel is defined as async, so it returns a Promise.
• To use the result, you attach a then handler (or use await inside another async function).

• A: “Async runParallel() .then(data);” is invalid. “async” is a keyword for function declarations, not something you put in front of a call, and you’d need a function as the then-argument.
• B: “runParallel().done(function(data){return data;});” .done is not standard in native Promises (it exists in some libraries). Without a compatible library, this won’t work.
• C: “runParallel().then(data);” is invalid because then expects a function as its argument; data is not a function.
• D: “runParallel().then(function(data){ return data; });” is valid (or equivalently, runParallel().then(data => data);).

• The robust, standard option is D.
• B could work only with a library that provides .done; otherwise it’s not reliable.

• Network Security Groups (NSGs) control network traffic to and from Azure resources.
• By applying NSGs to the web tier and the database tier (subnets or NICs), you can:

• NSGs provide the necessary granularity (source/destination, port, protocol) to enforce the desired traffic patterns between tiers.
• For easier management you can use separate subnets for each tier or, optionally, use Application Security Groups to simplify rule management.

• Sales Processes define the set of Opportunity stages for a given workflow.
• Record Types let you have different data models (different fields and picklist values) on the same object.
• Page Layouts control which fields are shown/required for each record type.

• Create three Sales Processes so each team can use its own stages.
• Create three Record Types so each team has its own fields and picklist values.
• Create three Page Layouts so each record type shows the appropriate fields.

• Le rôle n’a pas de clés propres. Des identifiants temporaires (via STS) sont émis lorsque quelqu’un ou quelque chose « assume » le rôle.
• La trust policy déclare qui peut assumer le rôle (par ex. une instance EC2, un utilisateur IAM, ou un service comme Lambda).
• Une fois attaché à une ressource (par exemple comme un instance profile sur une EC2), l’application peut appeler les services AWS avec les permissions du rôle.

• Respect du principe du moindre privilège: on accorde uniquement ce qui est nécessaire.
• Pas de stockages de clés sur les instances; les credentials se renouvellent automatiquement.

• Rôles pour EC2, rôles pour Lambda, accès cross-compte, etc.

• Ablauf: Er wird in der gleichen Transaktion ausgeführt, bei der z. B. ein Datensatz erstellt oder aktualisiert wird. Der Benutzer wartet, bis der Workflow abgeschlossen ist.
• Stufen: Kann vor dem Vorgang (pre-operation) oder nach dem Vorgang (post-operation) laufen.
• Zweck: Sofortige Validierung oder Anpassung von Daten, ggf. auch das Verhindern eines Vorgangs, wenn Bedingungen nicht erfüllt sind.

• Automatisierte Flows (Power Automate, automatisierte/ Background Flows) laufen asynchron im Hintergrund, nachdem der Trigger erkannt wurde, und blockieren den Benutzer nicht.

• The requirement is a fully managed file server that natively supports Microsoft workloads and file systems and uses the SMB protocol. FSx for Windows File Server is built specifically for Windows workloads, provides native SMB file shares, and supports Windows permissions/Active Directory integration.
• Why the others don’t fit:

• Version control provides a single source of truth for metadata changes and tracks every modification.
• It supports branching and merging, so each feature can be developed in isolation and later merged without overwriting others.
• It allows diffs and conflict resolution, making it easier to manage dependencies across features and ensure a stable release.

• Setup Audit Trail: only logs who/change when something happened; it doesn’t prevent overwriting or manage cross-feature dependencies.
• Change Sets: used to deploy changes between orgs, not to coordinate parallel development or prevent conflicts across ongoing sprints.

• Amazon S3 — Object storage, not a database.
• Amazon DynamoDB — Fully managed NoSQL key-value and document database.
• Amazon Redshift — Managed data warehouse designed for analytics, not primarily transactional MySQL workloads.

• cloud applications only
• all Web traffic including cloud applications

• Cloud applications only: Only traffic to cloud apps is steered to Netskope for inspection/enforcement; other traffic bypasses.
• All Web traffic including cloud applications: All web-bound traffic, including cloud app traffic, is steered to Netskope.

• Browser isolation, Web traffic only, or a vague “traffic only” option are not the standard two steering modes.
• These two configurations let you decide what traffic Netskope analyzes in real time and what is bypassed.

• The “Answer(s)” field lists B and C (likely incorrect). The explanatory text correctly describes cloud applications only and all Web traffic including cloud applications as the two configurations.

• Correct answer: B (No, it does not).

• A purchase agreement in Dynamics 365 SCM is a vendor-side price arrangement. It sets prices/discounts for what your company buys from suppliers, not for what you sell to customers.
• The objective in Question 2 is to give clients a quantity-based discount on items they purchase from you. To accomplish this, you should configure a sales price / trade agreement (on the customer/sales side), not a purchase agreement.
• In a sales price trade agreement, you can define quantity breaks such as:

• Create a Sales price trade agreement for the item and relevant customer (or customer group).
• Add quantity breaks: 51–100 with 10% discount, 101+ with 15% discount.
• Ensure the agreement is active for the desired date range.

• Answer: C (192.168.0.1-192.168.0.99, 192.168.0.101-192.168.0.254)

• Why: The interface is 192.168.0.100/24, so DHCP pools must be within the 192.168.0.0/24 subnet and cannot include the router’s IP (192.168.0.100), the network address (192.168.0.0), or the broadcast (192.168.0.255). Option C provides two ranges that exclude those addresses.

• Why the other options are invalid:

• Answer: A) Clear the Windows event logs

• Windows event logs (System, Security, Application) are key forensic artifacts. If an attacker clears these logs, there’s no built-in local record of actions taken, making it harder for investigators to trace what happened.

• Modify the system time: may misalign timestamps but does not erase past events and can be easily detected.
• Alter log permissions: could prevent new log entries, but it doesn’t remove existing ones and can raise alarms due to permission changes.
• Reduce log retention settings: affects only future logs; it doesn’t wipe already recorded activity.

• In real environments, defenders mitigate this risk with tamper-evident, centralized logging (remote SIEM, write-once storage, log integrity checks) to preserve evidence even if a host is compromised.

• The Balanced Scorecard translates an organization’s vision and strategy into a set of concrete objectives and metrics across four perspectives (financial, customer, internal processes, learning & growth). This framework explicitly links IT goals to business goals and provides a way to measure and monitor alignment over time.

• Enterprise architecture (EA): Great for governance, standards, and roadmaps to ensure IT assets support business needs, but it’s more about structure and alignment at design time rather than directly measuring ongoing alignment of goals.
• KPIs: Useful metrics, but they don’t by themselves provide a full framework to ensure IT goals are aligned with organizational strategy.
• Enterprise dashboard: A visualization tool for metrics; it helps report status but doesn’t inherently establish or assess alignment.

• Pay-as-you-go in Azure is an operating expense (OPEX) model, not an “elastic” expenditure model.
• Elastic or scalable terms describe capacity planning, not the cost category. The cost should be treated as OPEX since you pay for usage each month.
• The parallel question (Question 12) shows the correct approach is using an operational expenditure model.

• D. Provide public endpoints to store and retrieve data

• E. Manage the infrastructure layer and the operating system

• Classifying data
• Configuring access permissions, such as IAM policies
• Selecting or configuring available encryption options, depending on the requirement

• What it’s asking: In an ARM template, for an Availability Set, what value should you set for the property platformFaultDomainCount to maximize availability during fabric failures or maintenance?

• Key concept: Fault domains are groups of hardware that can fail independently. By spreading VMs across more fault domains, you reduce the risk that a single hardware fault takes out many VMs.

• Important detail: For managed Availability Sets, the number of fault domains you can use varies by region — typically 2 or 3.

• What to choose: Set platformFaultDomainCount to the maximum supported in your region. In most regions this is 3, which gives you the best resilience. If your region only supports 2, you’d use 2.

• Answer: 3 (Max Value). In ARM template syntax, this would appear as "platformFaultDomainCount": 3 (within the Availability Set resource).

• User1 can sign in because the account is cloud-only. It does not depend on the on-premises domain.
• User3 can sign in because the account uses Password Hash Synchronization (PHS). Azure AD has a synchronized password hash and can validate the sign-in even when connectivity to on-premises Active Directory is unavailable.
• User2 cannot sign in because the account relies on Pass-through Authentication (PTA). PTA sends the authentication request to an on-premises PTA agent, which must contact a domain controller. With the internet connection from on-premises lost, that validation cannot occur.

• Correct answer: A. Inbound data transfer from the internet

• Why: AWS does not charge for data transferred into AWS from the internet. Inbound data transfer is free, regardless of the amount (in this case, 2 TB). The other options involve data leaving AWS or moving between AWS regions/AZs, which incur costs:

• Correct choices: A and D.

• Why not B, C, or E?

• The correct answer is A: CCTV recordings are not regularly reviewed.

• CCTV is a monitoring/control mechanism. If recordings aren’t reviewed, security events (break-ins, policy violations, equipment tampering) can go undetected and unaddressed.
• Regular review is essential for deterrence, incident response, and forensic evidence. Without it, the entire CCTV control provides little value.

• B (records deleted after one year) affects forensic availability, but it’s a data-retention issue rather than the ongoing effectiveness of the surveillance program.
• C (footage not recorded 24x7) creates gaps in coverage, which is a concern, but regular review of available footage still supports detection; 24x7 coverage is a separate policy/perimeter issue.
• D (cameras not in break rooms) is more about privacy and space planning than core data-center security monitoring.

• The Well-Architected Framework has five pillars: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, and Cost Optimization.
• Operational Excellence: how you run and improve your systems—monitoring, incident response, and evolving processes.
• Reliability: the ability of a workload to recover from failures, maintain uptime, and scale as demand changes.

• Availability (A) is not a pillar name; it’s an outcome that relates to Reliability.
• Scalability (C) isn’t a pillar name; scalability touches on Performance Efficiency.
• Responsive design (D) is not a pillar in the Well-Architected Framework.

• The correct setting to configure is the Enrollment Status Page (ESP) profile.
• Why: ESP tracks the enrollment progress and logs during Autopilot provisioning. You can enable log collection within the ESP policy so that, if ESP times out, the user can collect and share the logs with support.
• Optional enhancement: In the ESP policy (or the Autopilot diagnostics settings), you can enable:

• Automatic enrollment settings: control how devices auto-enroll, not log collection.
• Windows Autopilot deployment profile: controls deployment steps but not ESP log collection.
• Device configuration profile: applies settings but doesn’t provide ESP log collection mechanics.

• Review the risk register.
• Use the previously defined risk response plan, such as assigning a backup resource, reprioritizing work, or using another qualified engineer.
• Implement the response promptly because the task is on the critical path.

• B: Revising the schedule without first applying the planned response may be premature.
• C: Excluding a required task could compromise the project’s objectives and requirements.
• D: Updating the risk and lessons learned records is appropriate, but it should happen after managing the immediate issue, not as the next primary action.

python 
import azure.cognitiveservices.speech as speechsdk 


speech_config = speechsdk.SpeechConfig( 
    subscription="YOUR_KEY", 
    region="YOUR_REGION" 
)

Important Azure Speech SDK classes

• SpeechConfig

• AudioConfig

python 
  audio_config = speechsdk.audio.AudioConfig( 
      use_default_microphone=True 
  )

• SpeechRecognizer

python 
  recognizer = speechsdk.SpeechRecognizer( 
      speech_config=speech_config, 
      audio_config=audio_config 
  )

• SpeechSynthesizer

• AudioOutputConfig

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