CFA CFA I Exam Prep
CFA Level I Chartered Financial Analyst (Page 375 )

• 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.

• Data loss prevention (DLP): Helps detect or prevent unauthorized data transfers, but does not directly protect data on a stolen, powered-off laptop.
• Operating system hardening: Reduces vulnerabilities and attack surface, but does not adequately protect stored data if the device is stolen.
• Boot security: Helps prevent unauthorized operating systems or boot media from loading. It supports device security but is not the primary solution for protecting the data itself.

• 16 VMs: one failure loses 25 GB and 10 cores—only 6.25% of memory.
• 8 VMs: one failure loses 12.5% of memory.
• 4 VMs: one failure loses 25%.
• 1 VM: one failure loses the entire application environment.

• An Azure pay-as-you-go subscription follows an operational expenditure (OpEx) model.
• With OpEx, the organization pays for services as they are used, typically based on consumption.
• There is no need to purchase and maintain physical servers upfront.
• This contrasts with capital expenditure (CapEx), where the company makes a significant upfront investment in infrastructure, such as on-premises Hyper-V hosts.

• A. IDS attack signatures: An IDS primarily detects suspicious network activity and usually alerts rather than directly scanning and blocking uploaded files.
• C. Load balancer: Distributes traffic among servers but does not inspect files for malware.
• D. WAF: Protects web applications from attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and some malicious requests. It is not primarily a PDF-malware scanning solution.

• Basic: Self-help only; no technical support or design assessment.
• Developer/Standard: Technical support, but generally not the full proactive architecture guidance required here.
• Professional Direct: Includes proactive guidance and architecture recommendations.
• Premier: Also supports this, but is not the minimum-cost option.

• Planning — identify the need, objectives, resources and feasibility.
• Analysis — determine user requirements and examine the existing system.
• Design — specify how the new system will work.
• Implementation — build, test, install and introduce the system.
• Maintenance/evaluation — monitor and improve the system after implementation.

• Elicited and documented customer requirements
• Converted them into clear, measurable specifications
• Validated the requirements with the customer
• Used them as the basis for design, quality checks, and acceptance

• A: Requirements should reflect the customer’s needs—not the supplier’s standards.
• B: Iteration review planning does not replace proper requirements collection.
• D: A retrospective occurs after work is completed and is mainly for process improvement, not initial requirements definition.

• B — Increase provisioned concurrency for Lambda

• D — Refactor the Lambda functions

• E — Use Amazon RDS Proxy

• 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.

• Reviewing and validating generated code
• Checking security, licensing, and quality concerns
• Testing the implementation
• Making the final design and coding decisions

• A: Copilot is not a complete replacement for developers.
• C: Human input, review, and oversight are still required.
• D: Copilot Chat supports many tasks beyond debugging, including explanation, generation, refactoring, and testing assistance.

• IKE: Negotiates security parameters for IPsec VPNs; it does not identify switch ports.
• VLAN: A logical network segmentation method, not a discovery protocol.
• netstat: Displays local network connections and listening services, but cannot identify the physical switch or port.

Simple explanation

• The Azure VPN gateway to connect to
• Authentication settings
• Routes for networks that the client can access

• 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.

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.

• 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.

• The files are stored in a document library, which is exposed through the SharePoint Folder connector.
• The connector returns file metadata, including Folder Path, Name, and Content.
• In Power Query, filter Folder Path so only files in the manufacturing reports folder are retained.
• You can then combine the remaining Excel files because they all have the same structure.

• SharePoint List is for SharePoint lists, not document-library files.
• Combine & Load combines files immediately, before you filter to the required folder, and may include unwanted files.
• Transform gives you the opportunity to filter the file list first, which is more efficient and targeted.

• A — Can help keep costs down and improve quality: The provider may have specialist expertise, efficient systems and economies of scale.
• B — There is a known fee if agreed in advance: A fixed or agreed fee can make costs more predictable and support budgeting.
• C — Allows management to focus on core operations and issues: Senior managers spend less time supervising routine finance processes and more time on strategic matters.

• Increased control: Control may decrease because the activity is performed externally.
• Increased independence: The organisation becomes dependent on the supplier.
• Increased understanding of the outsourcing business: The internal organisation usually has greater business knowledge; the provider may initially lack it.
• Increased confidentiality: Sharing financial information externally may create confidentiality risks.
• Internal expertise improved: Outsourcing can reduce opportunities to develop internal finance skills.

1. You try to access a cloud application, such as accounting software.
2. The application redirects you to the company’s IdP.
3. You authenticate with the IdP.
4. The IdP sends a digitally signed SAML assertion to the application.
5. The application validates the assertion and grants access.

• The user’s identity
• Whether authentication succeeded
• Roles or group membership
• Access-related attributes

• A. A virtual network gateway
• D. A virtual network

• Azure virtual machines must be connected to an Azure virtual network (VNet). The VNet provides private IP addressing and network connectivity for the VMs.
• A virtual network gateway enables communication between the Azure VNet and the on-premises network, typically through a site-to-site VPN or ExpressRoute connection.

• Load balancer: Distributes traffic among Azure VMs; it does not connect Azure to an on-premises network.
• Application gateway: Provides web-application load balancing and Layer 7 routing; it is not the normal resource for on-premises connectivity.
• Gateway subnet: A gateway subnet is required inside the VNet when deploying a virtual network gateway, but the question’s intended two primary resources are the VNet and virtual network gateway.

• Identity provider (IdP): Authenticates users and asserts their identity.
• Service provider (SP): The application being accessed—in this case, Salesforce/the employee portal.
• Identity store: A directory that stores user identities, such as Active Directory.
• Authentication store: A system used to validate credentials.

• A — Increasing the minimum password length to 14 characters: Longer passwords have more possible combinations, making them harder to guess or crack through brute force.
• F — Requiring at least one special character: This increases password complexity and expands the possible character combinations.

• MD5 to SHA-512: Improves password-hash resistance, but does not stop users from choosing easy-to-guess passwords. Also, modern systems should use a password-specific hashing algorithm such as bcrypt, scrypt, or Argon2.
• Increasing maximum age to 120 days: Leaves weak passwords in use longer.
• Reducing minimum length to 10: Makes guessing easier.
• Reducing minimum age to zero: Allows immediate password changes but does not make the password itself harder to guess.

• 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.

• 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.

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.

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

• B — Frequent, single-row DMLs: Incorrect.

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

• D — Use staging tables to manage MERGE statements: Correct.

• Conserve public IPv4 addresses: IPv4 addresses are limited, so many internal devices share a smaller number of public addresses through NAT.
• Reduce direct exposure: Private addresses are not directly routable from the public Internet, which helps reduce unsolicited access to internal devices.

• Multi-factor authentication
• A secure password change for users whose credentials may be compromised

• A laptop
• Software access
• A password reset
• A mobile phone

• They run behind the scenes — applies more to automation or workflows.
• They are optional — catalog items are fundamental to a request-based catalog.
• They provide options — variables and variable options collect the requester’s choices for an item; they are not the catalog item itself.

• Business
• People
• Governance
• Platform
• Security
• Operations

• Cloud financial management
• Portfolio and program management
• Risk management
• Data governance
• Compliance and oversight

• 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.

• Generates a syslog message
• Shuts down the PoE port
• Places the port into error-disabled (err-disabled) state
• Frees the power allocation

• A device starting to draw power does not necessarily generate a syslog message.
• Monitoring does not pause data traffic while checking power.
• Drawing less than the configured minimum does not automatically mean the device has failed and should be disconnected.

• 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.

• Writing with Apache Spark, typically as Delta tables.
• Reading with Apache Spark for processing and analysis.
• Reading with T-SQL through the lakehouse’s automatically generated SQL analytics endpoint.
• Reading with KQL through Fabric’s query capabilities that can access lakehouse data.

• Eventhouse: Optimized for real-time and KQL workloads, but it is not the natural destination for Spark-based writes or general lakehouse storage.
• Datamart: Intended mainly for relational analytics and Power BI; it is not designed for Spark-based data ingestion.
• Warehouse: Primarily T-SQL-based and structured. It does not provide the same native Spark write experience or flexibility for semi-structured data.

• The user starts in the corporate portal.
• The portal launches the Salesforce resource.
• The IdP sends the SAML response to Salesforce.

• Connected App + OAuth is for OAuth authorization and API/app access, not this SAML-based seamless login scenario.
• SP-initiated SSO would begin when the user first requests the Salesforce resource and Salesforce redirects them to the IdP. That is not the described starting point.

• 800 devices ? a scalable, centralized solution is needed.
• Four hardware/vendor classes ? the tool must handle different drivers and images.
• Two user groups ? it should allow different configurations for each group.
• “Distribute custom images” ? an imaging/deployment tool is required, not just a file-copy utility.

• 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.

• Fileless malware: Nothing in the command indicates malware executing only in memory.
• Living-off-the-land binaries: Mimikatz is a credential-access tool, not a normal system utility used for LOLBin abuse.
• Social engineering: The command shows technical credential abuse, not manipulation of an accountant.

• Manage multiple organizations from one hierarchy.
• Enterprise-wide policies, including repository visibility, forking, and GitHub Copilot policies.
• Centralized identity and access management, such as SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, and—where applicable—Enterprise Managed Users.
• Centralized billing and licensing, including organization and Copilot seat management.
• Enterprise audit log, which aggregates activity across organizations.
• Security and compliance oversight, such as organization security visibility and enterprise-wide controls.
• Enterprise support and account management features, depending on the plan.

• Organization: manages its own repositories, teams, members, and local policies.
• Enterprise: governs multiple organizations and can enforce policies across them.

• Hardware and infrastructure
• System software
• Networks and communications
• Technology platforms and services

• Business Architecture: Defines business strategy, organization, functions, and processes.
• Data Architecture: Defines the structure and management of enterprise data.
• Application Architecture: Describes application systems and how they interact to support business and data processing.

• Dynamics 365 Remote Assist — used for remote collaboration and mixed-reality scenarios.
• Dynamics 365 Finance — supports financial and operational management.
• Dynamics 365 Business Central — designed primarily for small and medium-sized businesses’ finance and operations.
• Dynamics 365 for Phones — provides mobile access to Dynamics 365 apps, including Sales, through the mobile Unified Interface.

• Accept: Acknowledging the risk without taking additional action.
• Transfer: Shifting responsibility or financial impact to another party, such as through insurance or outsourcing.
• Mitigate: Reducing the likelihood or impact of the risk through controls.
• Avoid: Eliminating the activity or condition that creates the risk.

• 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.

• Users retain their existing usernames and passwords.
• Existing accounts can be used to access Azure-based resources.
• Administrators avoid manually recreating thousands of accounts.
• The transition is less disruptive before the on-premises data center is retired.

• BIOS language support: Useful for usability, but not whether the PC can operate electrically.
• Supply chain security: Concerns procurement and hardware trust, not deployment across countries.
• Power efficiency: Important for energy usage, but it does not ensure compatibility with local power systems.

• Microsoft Teams: Connects to Teams-related data, but it isn’t the primary connector for the Power Apps data tables.
• Personal Analytics: Provides personal productivity insights, not application data.
• SQL Server database: Only applies if the app explicitly uses SQL Server as its data source.
• Dataflows: Used for preparing and centralizing data, not as the normal direct connection to a Power Apps app.

• Data lakes: scalable, low-cost storage for structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data.
• Data warehouses: reliable SQL analytics, governance, and performance features.

• Data lake: Primarily provides flexible, scalable storage but may lack warehouse-style reliability and governance.
• Data warehouse: Strong for structured analytics but less flexible for raw and unstructured data.
• All of these: The individual lake and warehouse do not, by themselves, unify the siloed architecture.

• ARP poisoning: Redirects or intercepts local network traffic; monitoring would typically show suspicious ARP changes or man-in-the-middle behavior.
• Jamming: Interferes with wireless or radio signals. It would affect connectivity, not usually show a server-specific overload.
• Kerberoasting: Attempts to obtain and crack Kerberos service-account hashes; it does not normally cause a system outage.