CFA CFA I Exam Prep
CFA Level I Chartered Financial Analyst (Page 159 )

• Batch processing, such as scheduled data transformations
• Streaming processing, such as continuously ingesting events

• Manipulating data with multiple languages: Mainly a benefit of Databricks and Spark.
• Real-time notebook collaboration: A workspace/notebook feature.
• Alerts for query failures: A Databricks SQL or job-monitoring feature.
• Distributing complex operations: Primarily a Spark compute capability.

cmd 
powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File C:\Scripts\Configure-VM.ps1

• GPO logon script: Runs only when a user logs on, so configuration may be delayed and is user-dependent.
• GPO startup script: Can work, but requires the VMs to be domain-joined and introduces GPO dependency. It is not specifically tied to Windows deployment.
• Place scripts in a VHD: Merely makes the files available; it does not execute them.

• Red team: Simulates attackers; exploits weaknesses to test security.
• Blue team: Defends systems; monitors, detects, and responds to attacks.
• Purple team: Combines red- and blue-team efforts to improve detection and defense.
• White team: Oversees or manages the test, defining rules, scope, and authorization.

• Disable default accounts: Default or unused accounts may have predictable names or credentials and can be abused by attackers. They should be disabled, removed, or secured with strong credentials where necessary.
• Remove unnecessary services: Every running service can contain vulnerabilities or provide an entry point. Removing services the server does not need reduces exposure.

• Add the server to the asset inventory: Important for asset management, but it does not directly harden the system.
• Document default passwords: Default passwords should be changed or disabled—not recorded for continued use.
• Send logs to the SIEM: Supports monitoring and detection, rather than directly reducing the attack surface.
• Join the corporate domain: A deployment/configuration decision, not inherently a hardening measure.

• Help the team identify the causes of delays.
• Encourage continuous improvement through retrospectives.
• Support the team in changing its process, tools, or collaboration methods.
• Help remove impediments that the team cannot resolve independently.

• A: An impediment log may help, but simply maintaining it does not ensure the impediments are resolved.
• B: Directing the team to solutions conflicts with agile self-management.
• C: Adding impediments to the product backlog could delay their resolution and treats them like product features.

• Numerical flexibility: Adjusting the number of employees, such as using temporary, part-time or contract staff.
• Temporal flexibility: Varying when employees work, such as through flexitime, overtime or different working hours.
• Shift system flexibility: Changing work patterns or shift arrangements; it is not specifically about moving between tasks.

text 
heartrateheartrateheartrate

• Spark column objects can be multiplied, for example:

python 
  df["heartrate"] * 3

• A DataFrame itself cannot be multiplied, but the expression is referring to a column.
• It is also not primarily a Python syntax error; the code was parsed, then Spark failed while resolving the column name.

• B. Users accessing Salesforce from public Wi-Fi

• C. Users choosing the same password as their Facebook password

• A: 2FA does not protect an already-authenticated, unlocked session if someone accesses an unattended laptop.
• D: Weak password-reset questions are an account-recovery weakness. 2FA primarily strengthens login authentication, not necessarily the security-question reset process.

• VM CPU, memory, disk, and network usage
• Storage transactions and latency
• App Service response time
• Database DTU or CPU utilization

• Azure Traffic Analytics analyzes network traffic flows and security patterns; it is not the general infrastructure metrics tool.
• Azure Activity Log records subscription-level control-plane operations, such as resource creation, deletion, or configuration changes.
• Azure Advisor provides recommendations about cost, security, reliability, performance, and operational excellence, but it is not the primary tool for investigating live metrics.

• Vulnerability scanner: Finds technical weaknesses in systems, applications, or devices. It does not usually analyze the entire supply chain.
• Penetration test: Simulates attacks against a defined target to identify exploitable weaknesses. Its scope is narrower.
• SCAP (Security Content Automation Protocol): Provides standardized formats and methods for automating security configuration and vulnerability checks, rather than mapping the full supply chain.

• A: Daily involvement is unnecessary and may not solve the availability problem.
• C: Clarifying all requirements at the start conflicts with agile’s iterative refinement.
• D: Simply reviewing based on availability leaves the problem unresolved and allows rework to continue.

• Low usage during the first three weeks
• Very high usage during the last week

• High availability: Keeps services running despite failures.
• High latency: Means slow response times; it is not a benefit.
• Load balancing: Distributes traffic across resources but does not specifically address scaling resources up and down.

• The connecting host keeps the private key securely.
• The destination host stores the corresponding public key in its authorized keys.
• Authentication can occur without a person entering credentials each time.
• SSH also provides encrypted communication and host authentication.

• Biometric: Requires a human user and is difficult to automate.
• Smart card: Often requires user interaction or card access.
• Hard-coded password: Unsafe because passwords stored in scripts or applications can be exposed, reused, or difficult to manage securely.

json 
"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::bucket-name/*"

• A: Revoking or changing an instance profile does not reliably invalidate temporary credentials that have already been issued and may still be valid.
• B: Changing the EC2 security group does not necessarily stop the attacker from using the stolen credentials from elsewhere.
• C: Amazon Macie helps discover sensitive data; Object Lock prevents modification/deletion, not reads or downloads.

• Date: 2018-12-31
• Time: 08:59

• B: The original value contains the text at, so it cannot be converted directly to a date.
• A: The last characters contain the time, not the date.
• D: Extracting the first 11 characters can leave an unwanted space and does not properly separate the time component.

• Import mode loads the data into the Power BI model. Visuals query the in-memory model, which generally provides faster calculation and rendering than DirectQuery.
• Import mode also minimizes online processing because report interactions do not send queries back to the dataflow or SQL Server.
• A daily refresh can load data through the previous day, satisfying the freshness requirement without unnecessary hourly processing.

• DirectQuery keeps querying the data source or dataflow during report use, increasing online processing and potentially slowing visuals.
• Adding a gateway enables connectivity for on-premises sources, but it does not remove the performance disadvantages of DirectQuery.
• An hourly Power Automate refresh is unnecessary when the requirement is only data through the previous day and creates additional processing overhead.

• Honeypots: Decoy systems or services designed to attract attackers. Legitimate users should not access them, so activity on a honeypot is a strong indicator of unauthorized activity. Security teams can also observe attacker behavior.

• DNS sinkhole: Redirects requests for known malicious domains to a controlled internal server or blocks them. If an infected workstation attempts to contact command-and-control infrastructure, the sinkhole records the request and helps identify the compromised device.

• Tokenization: Protects sensitive data by replacing it with tokens.
• CI/CD: Automates software development and deployment.
• Threat modeling: Identifies potential risks before or during system design.
• Data obfuscation: Makes data harder to understand, but does not detect intruders.

• C — Schema.describeSObjects(new String[]{myObject})[0].fields.getMap()

• D — Schema.getGlobalDescribe().get(myObject).getDescribe().fields.getMap()

• A: sObjectType is not used this way, and fieldSet() is not the appropriate method for retrieving all fields.
• B: mySObject.myObject is not valid dynamic Apex syntax.

• Interactive development and exploration
• Small datasets
• Lightweight transformations or testing
• Avoiding the overhead and cost of multiple workers

• Automated reports: Jobs may benefit from job clusters or SQL warehouses.
• Working with SQL in Databricks SQL: Databricks SQL warehouses are the relevant compute option.
• Automatically scaling for larger data: A multi-node cluster with autoscaling is more suitable.
• Large amounts of data: Distributed worker nodes are generally needed.

• Amazon DynamoDB — Managed NoSQL database, not PostgreSQL.
• Amazon Athena — Serverless service for querying data in S3; intended for analytics, not OLTP.
• Amazon EMR — Managed cluster platform for big-data frameworks such as Hadoop and Spark.

1. Convert text and images into numerical embeddings.
2. Store or compare those embeddings.
3. Retrieve the most semantically similar items.

• Embedding model: Best for similarity search and retrieval.
• Generation model: Best for producing new text or other content from multimodal input.

• Wiping securely overwrites the drive so the original data cannot reasonably be recovered. It is generally less expensive than physically destroying the device.
• Recycling could expose the data if the drive is not securely erased first.
• Shredding physically destroys the drive and is effective, but usually more costly and prevents reuse.
• Deletion only removes file references; it is not a secure sanitization method.

• Customer contains one row per customer and the customer’s Address ID.
• Address contains one row per address and the corresponding location details.

1. Select the Customer query.
2. Choose Merge Queries.
3. Match Customer[Address ID] with Address[Address ID].
4. Use a Left outer join so every customer is retained.
5. Expand the merged Address column and select City, State/Region, and Country.

• Append adds rows vertically and is used for tables with the same structure.
• Group By summarizes rows rather than adding related columns.
• Transpose switches rows and columns and does not establish a relationship.

• The user authenticates with the external Identity Provider.
• Salesforce receives the SAML assertion.
• Salesforce uses attributes in that assertion—such as username, email, first name, last name, and profile/community information—to create the user during the first login.
• On later logins, Salesforce updates or uses the existing user record.

• On-the-fly provisioning is a general phrase; the Salesforce capability being tested is specifically JIT provisioning.
• Salesforce APIs would require a separate integration and provisioning process.
• Identity Connect is designed primarily to synchronize users from an identity directory, not to create users at the moment of their first SAML login.

• A: My Domain is required for many SSO configurations, but if SSO works, it is unlikely to be the cause of losing the target record.
• B: HTTP-POST is a valid SAML binding and does not inherently prevent redirection.
• D: An incorrect Federation ID generally causes authentication or user-matching failure—not successful login to the home page.

• B. Data loss prevention (DLP): Helps prevent sensitive data from being copied, emailed, or exfiltrated. It is not the primary control for protecting a stolen laptop’s stored data.
• C. Operating system hardening: Reduces vulnerabilities by disabling unnecessary services and applying secure settings, but it does not necessarily protect the files if the disk is accessed directly.
• D. Boot security: Helps ensure the device starts only through trusted software or approved processes. It supports platform integrity but does not itself encrypt stored files.

• A — conformant: Incorrect because one explicit requirement is violated.
• B — consistent: “Consistent” is not sufficient where the implementation contradicts a mandatory specification. The RPC mechanism is covered by the architecture, and the implementation differs from it.
• C — consistent: Incorrect reasoning: the RPC mechanism does have a defined architectural requirement, so conformance must be assessed.
• D — non-conformant: Correct because the implementation fails to follow the specified RPC/threading requirement.

1. Create a custom Sensitive Information Type (SIT) in the Microsoft Purview portal.
2. Use a regular expression to match the 32-character alphanumeric account number.
3. Reference that SIT in the DLP policy protecting SharePoint Online.

• Format-based data ? custom SIT with RegEx
• Built-in sensitive data ? Microsoft-provided SIT
• Document classification/protection ? sensitivity labels
• Security investigation queries ? Advanced Hunting, not DLP detection

• Ease of exploitation
• Required privileges
• User interaction
• Impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability

• CVE: Identifies and names a specific publicly known vulnerability; it does not measure severity.
• OSINT: Refers to intelligence gathered from publicly available sources.
• SOAR: Automates and coordinates security operations, such as alert response and playbooks.

• B — Single customer login across properties: Customer 360 Identity provides centralized identity services, allowing an organization to recognize a customer across multiple digital properties and applications. This helps UC understand authenticated activity as part of a broader customer identity.

• C — Multi-brand support: Customer 360 Identity can support multiple brands and user experiences. Identity services can remain centralized while correlating a customer’s activity across different corporate brands or channels.

• A: Customer 360 Identity does not automatically populate all data into Customer 360 Data Manager and Customer 360 Audiences. Integration and data configuration are still required.
• D: Tracking anonymous activity and linking it after sign-up may be possible through broader customer-data and tracking implementations, but it is not the primary Customer 360 Identity benefit tested here. Identity focuses mainly on authentication, registration, and cross-property identity correlation.

• Confirm the required columns and data types
• Identify the target/label column
• Handle missing or duplicate records if present
• Transform data into a suitable format
• Split it into training and validation/test datasets

1. Prepare the training data
2. Select an algorithm or configure AutoML
3. Train the model
4. Evaluate its performance
5. Tune hyperparameters if needed
6. Deploy the model

Correct choices

• DB1: Azure Data Box Heavy
• Virtual machines: Azure Migrate

Why

• Replication with minimal downtime
• A test migration
• Final cutover after validation

• SOW
• SLA
• MOA
• MOU

1. Product + ProductSubCategory: Inner join

1. Result + ProductCategory: Left outer join

sql 
GRANT ALTER ON SCHEMA::schemaA TO User1;

• TRUNCATE TABLE is a DDL operation, not a normal DELETE.
• Having DELETE permission on a table is not sufficient to truncate it.
• The minimum relevant permission is ALTER on the table.
• Granting ALTER on SCHEMA::schemaA allows the user to truncate tables within schemaA.
• It does not grant equivalent permissions on schemaB or schemaC, satisfying least privilege.

• Normalize casing in the data source—for example, convert all values to uppercase or lowercase.
• Add an index key to provide a unique, stable identifier for each row or value.

• A private IP address on the virtual network
• An associated public IP address

• Accept: Acknowledging the risk without taking additional action.
• Mitigate: Reducing the likelihood or impact through controls, such as patching or employee training.
• Avoid: Eliminating the activity or condition that creates the risk.
• Transfer: Shifting the consequences—usually financial—to another party, such as an insurer.

• A Layer 2 switch checks the destination MAC address in its MAC address table (CAM table).
• If the destination MAC is unknown, the switch cannot select a specific outgoing port.
• It therefore performs unknown-unicast flooding, sending the frame out every other port in that VLAN.
• The frame is not sent back through the port where it arrived.

• Identifying the communication strategy: Usually part of a business continuity or incident response plan.
• Evaluating the risk management plan: Part of risk assessment and risk management activities.
• Establishing backup and recovery procedures: Usually part of disaster recovery planning.
• Developing the incident response plan: Part of incident response planning.

• 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.

• B: Moving the task may affect the critical path and should not be done before evaluating the planned response and impacts.
• C: Excluding a required task is not appropriate without formal analysis and stakeholder approval.
• D: Lessons learned and the risk log should be updated, but only after or alongside managing the immediate issue; updating them is not the first action.

• You provision the virtual machine.
• You manage the guest operating system, applications, and configuration.
• Azure manages the physical servers, datacenter, and underlying virtualization infrastructure.

• SageMaker endpoint: Not required because the model is being used through Amazon Bedrock.
• SageMaker Model Registry: Used for managing SageMaker models, not for making a Bedrock custom model available.
• Grant access in Amazon Bedrock: IAM permissions may still be needed, but granting access alone does not provide the required inference capacity.

• A — Custom Button: A button can launch a flow, typically by passing the flow’s URL and record context.
• D — From a Process: A Process can invoke a flow using an Apex action configured for flow invocation. However, this is automation-triggered, not directly accessed by a user.
• B — Quick Action: In current Salesforce functionality, a Flow Quick Action can launch a screen flow directly from a record page. This makes B a valid modern method.
• C — Visual Workflow Launcher: This is not generally listed as a standard access method in current Salesforce terminology; Salesforce commonly uses the Flow component on Lightning pages instead.

• A: Reduce management overhead — This is generally an advantage of public cloud, not hybrid cloud. Hybrid environments can increase management complexity.
• B: Cross-platform virtualization — Not the defining advantage of hybrid cloud.
• D: Leverage IaaS and PaaS — Public clouds commonly provide both IaaS and PaaS, so this is not unique to hybrid cloud.

1. Remote access to a Windows PC
2. Full chat and optional game-console functions

• Windows Remote Desktop (RDP) uses TCP 3389. The router needs a port-forwarding rule that sends incoming traffic on that port to the Windows PC’s internal IP address.
• The game console should connect through the wireless AP. Using WPA2-PSK provides the required wireless security while allowing normal online, chat, and optional services.
• The firewall should separate the internal network from the screened subnet. Its screened-subnet-side address is shown as 10.100.0.1.
• Devices must be placed in the correct network locations: the PC behind the router, the console on the wireless AP, and the firewall between the appropriate network segments.

• 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.