CFA CFA I Exam Prep
CFA Level I Chartered Financial Analyst (Page 145 )

• A: Knowledge of IT platforms, networks, and methodologies — Useful technical knowledge, but the CISO does not need to be the deepest technical expert.
• C: Regulatory and project management knowledge — Important, but compliance and projects must still support the organization’s broader needs.
• D: Managing people and resources — Essential for execution, but effective management of the wrong security priorities will not produce good results.

• A — Tables
• B — Named file formats
• C — Schemas
• E — Databases

Why these are correct

• Tables: Can be cloned using CREATE TABLE ... CLONE. The clone initially uses zero-copy cloning, so storage is shared until changes are made.
• Named file formats: Can be cloned as database objects, preserving the file-format definition.
• Schemas: A schema and its eligible objects can be cloned.
• Databases: A database and its eligible schemas and objects can be cloned.

Why the others are incorrect

• Shares: A share is an account-level data-sharing object, not a normal cloneable database object.
• Users: Users are security principals and cannot be cloned with CLONE.

• Suporta domínios personalizados.
• Oferece 50 GB de armazenamento — suficiente para os 10 GB de cada aplicação.
• Usa instâncias de computação dedicadas.
• Inclui balanceamento de carga entre instâncias.
• É o plano mais econômico entre as opções que atendem a todos esses requisitos.

• Footprinting is reconnaissance used to map an organization’s network, hosts, naming conventions, and services.
• A name such as fshare.int.complia.org suggests an internal file-sharing host (fshare) and an internal naming structure (int).
• This can reveal useful information to an attacker before attempting exploitation.

• ISP-assigned address space: Usually determined through public registration and DNS data, not an internal hostname.
• DNS sinkhole bypass: Would involve avoiding redirected malicious-domain queries.
• Initial access: DNS reconnaissance alone does not compromise the server.
• Data exfiltration: DNS tunneling typically generates many encoded or unusually long subdomain queries, not simply a meaningful internal hostname.

1. Start with the number of devices: 260 usable addresses.
2. Use the formula:

1. Test the host-bit values:

1. IPv4 has 32 total bits:

• /24: 254 usable — too small
• /23: 510 usable — sufficient
• /22: 1,022 usable — more waste
• /21: 2,046 usable — even more waste

• Limiting the number of MAC addresses learned on a switch port
• Allowing only specific, approved MAC addresses
• Taking action when the limit is exceeded, such as dropping frames or disabling the port

• Create procurement-manager-role only in the shared services accounts, where procurement managers operate.
• Attach AWSPrivateMarketplaceAdminFullAccess to that role.
• Procurement managers assume the role when they need to administer Private Marketplace.
• Apply a root-level SCP that explicitly denies Private Marketplace administration to everyone except that role. The SCP acts as a maximum-permission boundary across member accounts.
• Add another SCP denying creation of a role with the same name. Otherwise, another administrator might create a similarly named role and bypass the intended exception.

• Creating the role in every account increases administration and creates more opportunities for misuse.
• A permissions boundary on developer roles does not prevent other administrators from managing Private Marketplace.
• Applying the SCP only to shared services accounts would not protect the rest of the organization.

• Repetitive and time-consuming
• Based on measurable conditions, such as last check-in time
• Easy to automate with alerts, dashboards, or scheduled reports
• Important for ensuring scan coverage

• Assigning custom recommendations usually requires analyst judgment and context.
• Analyzing false positives can sometimes be assisted by automation, but validation often requires human review.
• Rendering an additional executive report increases reporting activity rather than reducing a core operational workload.

• Required response time
• Resolution time
• Availability or uptime
• Support hours
• Performance targets
• Consequences if targets are missed

• SOW (Statement of Work): Defines the project’s scope, tasks, deliverables, and schedule.
• MOA (Memorandum of Agreement): Describes the responsibilities and commitments between parties.
• MOU (Memorandum of Understanding): Documents a general mutual understanding or intent, often before a formal agreement.

• AWS Network Firewall can inspect and block traffic across a VPC when traffic is routed through the firewall. A Drop action rule can deny traffic from the suspicious source IP.
• GuardDuty findings are sent to Security Hub.
• A Lambda function can be invoked when Security Hub receives a new GuardDuty finding, extract the source IP, and update the Network Firewall policy with a blocking rule.

• GuardDuty threat lists: Used to identify or increase the severity of findings; they do not directly block VPC traffic.
• AWS WAF: Protects supported web applications, such as CloudFront or Application Load Balancers. It does not provide general VPC-wide traffic blocking.
• GuardDuty suppression rules: Suppress or hide findings. They do not block the suspicious traffic.

• httprint fingerprints Web servers by analyzing their HTTP responses. It can help identify the Web server type and sometimes its version, even when the banner has been modified or hidden.
• Wget is mainly used to download files or Web content.
• WinSSLMiM is associated with SSL man-in-the-middle testing.
• Whisker is an older Web-server vulnerability assessment tool, especially associated with IIS, rather than the expected banner-grabbing tool here.

• Disable default accounts: Default or unused accounts may have known usernames or predictable settings, making them targets. They should be disabled, removed, or securely configured.
• Remove unnecessary services: Every running service creates potential vulnerabilities. Removing services the server does not need reduces exploitable entry points.

• Add the server to the asset inventory: Important for asset management, but not a hardening step.
• Document default passwords: Default passwords should be changed or eliminated—not documented for continued use.
• Send server logs to the SIEM: Valuable for monitoring and detection, but generally performed as part of logging/monitoring configuration.
• Join the server to the corporate domain: May be necessary operationally, but does not itself harden the server.

• The ERSPAN source is the device or interface whose traffic is being copied.
• The ERSPAN destination is the device receiving the encapsulated copy and forwarding it to the traffic analyzer.
• The local monitor session number is locally significant. Therefore, the source and destination do not need matching session IDs such as 47 or 48.
• The erspan-id identifies the ERSPAN stream and must correspond between the source and destination configuration.

• A — VARIANT "null" values are not the same as SQL NULL values: True

• B — Frequent, single-row DMLs: False

• C — Validate data before loading into the target table: True

• D — Use staging tables to manage MERGE statements: True

• 25 — Traditional SMTP server-to-server mail delivery; often restricted and not the usual client submission port.
• 110 — POP3, used for retrieving email; normally unencrypted.
• 143 — IMAP, used for retrieving and synchronizing email; normally unencrypted.

1. Clear principles and boundaries — Employees have freedom, but decisions must remain within clear organizational values, policies and limits.
2. High degree of freedom — Managers are trusted to make decisions rather than seeking continual approval from senior management.
3. Frontline customer responsibility — Customer-facing managers should be empowered to manage customer relationships and respond quickly to needs.
4. Transparent and ethical information — Information should be openly available and used honestly, supporting trust and informed decision-making.

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.

• Honeypots: Decoy systems designed to attract attackers. Legitimate users should not access them, so activity there is a strong indication of unauthorized access.
• DNS sinkholes: Redirect requests for known malicious domains to a controlled internal destination instead of the real attacker infrastructure. Security teams can then identify infected systems making those requests.

• Tokenization: Replaces sensitive data with non-sensitive tokens; it protects data but does not detect intruders.
• CI/CD: Software development and deployment processes.
• Threat modeling: Identifies potential threats before or during system design, rather than detecting successful infiltration.
• Data obfuscation: Makes information harder to understand, but is not an attacker-detection mechanism.

• STIX: A standardized format for exchanging cyber-threat intelligence.
• OVAL: A language and framework for describing and assessing system vulnerabilities and configuration issues.
• Threat intelligence feed: Provides current indicators or threat information, but is not specifically a reference for common application exploitation techniques.
• CVE: A catalog of publicly disclosed vulnerabilities, identified by unique CVE numbers.

• Injection
• Broken access control
• Authentication failures
• Security misconfiguration
• Cross-site scripting

• STIX: A standardized language and format for exchanging threat intelligence.
• OVAL: Used to describe and assess system vulnerabilities and configuration issues.
• Threat intelligence feed: Provides current indicators and intelligence about threats, but not necessarily a structured overview of common application exploitation methods.
• CVE: A catalog of individually identified, publicly disclosed vulnerabilities.

• MFA adds an additional authentication factor, such as a phone notification or verification code.
• It helps prevent unauthorized sign-ins, even if a password is compromised.
• It does not encrypt, store, or protect credentials used by deployment processes.

• 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.

• /27 (255.255.255.224)

• /26 (255.255.255.192)

• /25: Creates only 2 subnets, not 3
• /28: Provides only 14 usable hosts per subnet

• Operating profit is affected because transfer price determines internal sales revenue.
• Return on investment (ROI) is affected because ROI depends partly on operating profit.
• Sales revenue is affected because the division records revenue from transferring its output.
• Cost of components purchased is not affected by the transfer price. These are input costs paid to external suppliers and are based on the supplier’s price.

• 50% memory utilization baseline: The environment can be provisioned with excess capacity, leaving room for growth and workload spikes.
• Storage scalability: Cloud storage can generally be expanded as needed without redesigning the physical platform.
• Single circuit failure resilience: A properly designed IaaS provider uses redundant power circuits and infrastructure, so failure of one circuit should not take the platform offline.

• A — Dual PDUs: Helps with power redundancy but does not provide storage scalability.
• C — Network load balancing: Provides network-path resilience, not memory or storage scalability, and does not address a power-circuit failure.
• D — Multiple NAS devices: May improve storage capacity, but does not inherently provide power resilience or the required compute-capacity baseline.

• B: Extending credit to customers increases receivables, so more cash is tied up in working capital.
• C: Replacing obsolete inventory does not reduce the overall inventory investment; it simply changes its composition.
• D: Paying suppliers earlier reduces payables. This uses cash and therefore increases the funds tied up in working capital.

• Firewalls and routers
• Servers and applications
• Endpoint devices
• Authentication systems
• Cloud services

• Centralized log collection
• Event correlation
• Dashboards and reporting
• Alerting
• Compliance support

• Honeypots are deliberately vulnerable or attractive systems designed to lure attackers. Legitimate users should not normally access them, so activity there can indicate a successful intrusion or lateral movement.

• A DNS sinkhole redirects requests for known malicious domains to a controlled internal system instead of the real destination. Security teams can monitor those requests and identify compromised devices attempting to contact command-and-control infrastructure.

• Tokenization: Replaces sensitive data with non-sensitive tokens; it is a protection method, not an attacker-detection method.
• CI/CD: Automates software development and deployment processes.
• Threat modeling: Identifies potential threats during design and planning.
• Data obfuscation: Makes information harder to understand, but does not directly detect infiltrators.

• Elasticity: Automatically increases or decreases resources based on demand.
• Scalability: The ability to increase capacity to handle more workload.
• Low latency: Minimizes network response time; it does not provide protection from failures.

1. System prompts can authorize users — No

1. System prompts can reduce TPM consumption — Yes, with qualification

1. System prompts guide generative AI behavior — Yes

• Controlar o fluxo de dados entre S3 e SageMaker;
• Aplicar regras de segurança por meio da VPC;
• Reduzir a exposição dos dados;
• Permitir acesso privado ao bucket do S3.

• Amazon Inspector: avalia vulnerabilidades, mas não gerencia o fluxo de dados.
• Amazon Macie: ajuda a descobrir e proteger dados sensíveis no S3, mas não cria a conexão com o SageMaker.
• S3 Glacier Deep Archive: é uma classe de armazenamento para arquivamento, não uma solução de conectividade.

• Defender for Servers is the Defender for Cloud plan that protects Azure VMs and generates security alerts that can be reviewed in Defender for Cloud.
• Azure Diagnostics extension collects guest OS monitoring data, but it does not onboard VMs to Defender for Cloud or provide Defender security alerts.
• Data connectors are used for Sentinel integrations.
• Azure Storage Analytics and workflow automation do not provide VM protection.

• Active remediation actions role in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

• Security Reader role in Azure AD/Entra ID

• Security Administrator is broader than necessary because it grants extensive security-management permissions, violating least privilege.
• Compliance Data Administrator is intended for compliance data management, not Defender for Endpoint remediation approvals.

• CBWFQ (Class-Based Weighted Fair Queuing): Creates traffic classes and assigns each class a guaranteed bandwidth or queueing treatment.
• PQ (Priority Queuing): Uses multiple queues with strict priority. Higher-priority queues are serviced before lower-priority queues, making it useful for delay-sensitive traffic—but it can starve lower-priority traffic.

• FRTS: Traffic shaping for Frame Relay; it controls the transmission rate rather than selecting packets during congestion.
• CAR: Polices traffic by rate, typically dropping or remarking packets that exceed a limit.
• PBR: Policy-Based Routing; it selects forwarding paths and is not a QoS queueing mechanism.

• A — Consumption-based pricing: AWS generally uses a pay-as-you-go model. You pay for the resources you consume rather than purchasing hardware upfront or paying for unused capacity.
• C — Economies of scale: AWS purchases and operates infrastructure at a very large scale, allowing it to reduce costs and pass some savings to customers through lower service prices.

• Perpetual licenses: These involve paying once for permanent software ownership and are not a primary AWS Cloud economic benefit.
• AWS Enterprise Support at no additional cost: Enterprise Support has an additional charge.
• Bring-your-own-hardware model: AWS provides and manages the underlying cloud infrastructure; customers do not normally bring their own physical servers.

• Ramen is a Linux worm associated with Red Hat Linux 6.2 and 7.0 systems.
• It spreads by scanning randomly generated IP addresses using tools such as synscan.
• It exploits vulnerable network services, including web-related services, and may leave malicious files or altered web content.
• The tar.gz file is also a clue because it is a common Linux archive/package format.

• Code Red: Primarily targeted Microsoft IIS servers running Windows.
• LoveLetter: Spread mainly through email attachments.
• Nimda: A Windows-based worm that spread through email, web servers, and network shares.

• Existing expected ROI: 15%
• New project ROI: 14%
• Cost of capital: 12%

• Project return = 14%
• Cost of capital = 12%
• It earns 2% more than the cost of capital, so it should increase shareholder value.

• Penetration test: Tests for exploitable vulnerabilities; it does not provide a broad opinion on whether security controls operate effectively.
• Annual self-assessment: Not independent, so it provides less assurance.
• Allow each client the right to audit: Inefficient because every customer may conduct a separate audit, creating duplicated effort and disruption.

• Customers may boycott V’s products.
• Supermarket customers may stop buying from V.
• Investors may view V as having higher legal, ethical and reputational risk.
• V could face fines, lawsuits, contract losses and higher costs.
• Expected future profits may fall.

• Create a CodeCommit repository in the secondary Region.
• Use CodeBuild to run a Git mirror operation from the primary repository to the secondary repository.
• Use EventBridge to detect relevant repository events, such as a pull request being merged.
• Invoke a Lambda function, which starts the CodeBuild project.

• B: Amazon S3 is object storage, not a Git repository that developers can use as a CodeCommit remote.
• C: CodeArtifact is intended for packages and artifacts, not source-code repository mirroring.
• D: An AWS Cloud9 environment is not an appropriate automated replication mechanism and would require manual or persistent infrastructure management.

• A — Improved management of storage space: Correct.

• B — Improved supplier relationships: Correct.

• C — Improved pricing decisions: Correct.

• D — Non-product-specific costs must be apportioned: Incorrect.

• E — Profitability of each customer group: Incorrect.

• GPS coordinates
• Date and time the image was taken
• Camera or device model
• Exposure settings

• Log data: Records events or activities, such as system or application activity.
• Encrypted data: Information intentionally encoded to prevent unauthorized access.
• Sensitive data: A broad classification for information requiring protection; geolocation may be sensitive, but the technical type stored in the image is metadata.

• transform() — modifies every element in an array
• filter() — keeps elements matching a condition
• exists() — checks whether any element matches
• aggregate() — reduces array elements to one result

sql 
SELECT transform(scores, x -> x * 2) 
FROM student_scores;

• A is incorrect because higher-order functions are mainly useful for nested or complex data.
• B is incorrect because they do not convert logic into Python.
• D is incorrect because their purpose is not to fix slow built-in functions, but to process arrays or maps with custom logic.

• Job compute isolates production pipelines from interactive development and terminates after the job completes.
• Autoscaling adds and removes workers during telemetry spikes, directly addressing bursty workloads.
• Photon can improve performance and reduce processing time, but it does not provide autoscaling, schema-drift handling, or exactly-once processing by itself.

• A — Shared compute: violates production isolation and can allow development workloads to affect ingestion.
• C — Larger fixed cluster: may improve capacity but cannot adapt efficiently to changing workloads.
• D — Disable autoscaling: directly conflicts with the requirement to handle telemetry spikes.

• Record changes — a flow can start when a record is updated or otherwise changes.
• Schedules — a flow can run at a specified date/time or on a schedule.
• Record inserts — a flow can start when a new record is created.

• Subflows are reusable flow components called by another flow; they are not normally trigger types.
• Record views do not generally initiate a Flow Designer flow.