CFA CFA I Exam Prep
CFA Level I Chartered Financial Analyst (Page 85 )

• Open or insecure ports
• Enabled legacy or insecure protocols
• Known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations
• Weak services and outdated software

• curl tests web requests and HTTP-based services.
• Wireshark captures and analyzes network traffic; it does not normally scan servers for weaknesses.
• netcat can test connectivity to individual ports and sometimes grab service banners, but it is not a comprehensive vulnerability scanner.

• 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.

• Tactics: The attacker’s overall goal, such as gaining persistence or exfiltrating data
• Techniques: The methods used to achieve that goal
• Procedures: The specific implementation or sequence of actions

• IP addresses and hash values: Useful indicators, but they can change quickly.
• Indicators of compromise: TTPs may help identify IOCs, but their main value is describing behavior.
• Tools: Attackers can replace tools or use legitimate administrative utilities.

• Modelo de embeddings multimodal: transforma texto e imagens em vetores no mesmo espaço semântico. Isso permite comparar uma consulta textual com imagens, ou uma imagem com textos relacionados.
• Modelo generativo multimodal: interpreta diferentes modalidades e gera conteúdo, mas não é a escolha específica para indexação e busca vetorial.
• Modelo de geração de imagens: cria imagens, portanto é inadequado.
• Modelo de embeddings de texto: não atende consultas com imagens.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Secure: uses encryption, such as HTTPS or SFTP.
• Cross-platform: supported by many languages and operating systems.
• Internet-friendly: designed to communicate across networks, usually using standard Internet protocols.

• JSON/REST over HTTPS — widely supported, secure, and Internet-friendly.
• SOAP over HTTPS — also secure and highly cross-platform, though more heavyweight.
• XML over SFTP — secure file-based exchange, but it is not an API-style interface.

• B. The community must be built with the Customer Account Portal template.

• C. An experience ID (expid) or placeholder parameter must be used in the URL.

• A: The Visualforce + Salesforce Tabs template does not provide this dynamic branding capability.
• D: An external CMS is not required. The branding configuration is handled within Salesforce Experience Cloud.

• 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.

• Digitally signing the software: Verifies authenticity and integrity. It does not hide how the software works.
• Limiting third-party libraries: May reduce dependencies and attack surface, but does not directly prevent reverse engineering.
• Using compile flags: Some compiler options can remove debugging information or optimize code, which may provide limited protection, but this is not the primary technique identified for preventing reverse engineering.

• AWS Audit Manager continuously collects evidence from AWS services and helps assess whether workloads comply with regulatory frameworks and internal policies. It can produce audit-ready reports.
• AWS Config records resource configurations and evaluates them against compliance rules. For example, it can check whether encryption, logging, or access settings meet company requirements.

• Amazon Inspector identifies software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure, not general policy or regulatory compliance.
• Amazon CloudWatch monitors metrics, logs, and operational events, but is not primarily a compliance assessment service.
• AWS CloudTrail records API activity for auditing and investigation. It supports compliance, but does not itself provide the structured compliance assessment capabilities of Audit Manager and Config.

• Reviewing security policies and standards checks whether controls are documented, not whether they work.
• Reviewing security logs may show that monitoring is occurring, but does not directly establish that preventive controls are effective.
• Analyzing technical security practices is broad and may assess implementation, but it is less objective than an actual controlled attack.

• Design/compliance effectiveness: policies, standards, and procedures
• Operational effectiveness: logs, records, and evidence that controls operate
• Technical security effectiveness: penetration testing or vulnerability testing

• Secret scope: A named container that groups related secrets and defines access permissions. Example: finance-prod.
• Secret key: The name of an individual secret stored inside that scope. Example: db-password.

text 
Scope: finance-prod 
  Key: db-username 
  Key: db-password

python 
dbutils.secrets.get( 
    scope="finance-prod", 
    key="db-password" 
)

• 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.

• 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.

• A. Configure prompt modifications to enforce tone, disclaimers, and refusal behavior at the system level.

• D. Configure Power Platform DLP policies to restrict unauthorized data connectors.

• B: Manual topic-by-topic disclaimer edits are specifically discouraged.
• C: Channel settings do not replace agent-level Responsible AI controls.
• E: Publishing before enabling safety filters violates the stated deployment sequence. Responsible AI filters should be enabled before publication, not afterward.

• Accept: Acknowledging the risk without taking additional action.
• Transfer: Shifting the risk’s impact to a third party, such as through insurance or outsourcing.
• Mitigate: Reducing the likelihood or impact of the risk through security controls.
• Avoid: Eliminating the activity or process that creates the risk.

• 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.

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

• Cloud financial management
• Portfolio management
• Data governance
• Risk management
• Compliance

• 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.

Simple explanation

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

• 25 — Traditional SMTP server-to-server delivery; often restricted for client submission and not inherently encrypted.
• 110 — POP3 for retrieving email; unencrypted by default.
• 143 — IMAP for retrieving and synchronizing email; unencrypted by default.
• 587 — Authenticated SMTP submission, commonly secured with STARTTLS.

• principal represents the source or initiating system.
• principal.port is the source port.
• target represents the destination system.
• target.port is the destination port.

text 
principal.port = 5555

• network.ApplicationProtocol = HTTP identifies HTTP traffic but not the backdoor specifically.
• target.port = 5555 finds traffic going to port 5555, rather than originating from it.
• network.ip_protocol = TCP is too broad because many services use TCP.

• C — “when the query finishes”

• D — “when the query began”

• 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.

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.

• 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.

• Compare each server’s drive specifications and performance data.
• Identify the drive that is faulty, slow, or mismatched.
• Replace it with a drive that matches the required interface, capacity, and performance characteristics.
• Avoid selecting a slower drive, because storage performance can bottleneck the entire server.
• In a redundant array, use a compatible replacement so rebuilding does not create unnecessary performance degradation.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Planning – identifying the need, objectives, scope and resources.
• Analysis – understanding business requirements and current problems.
• Design/development – determining how the system will work.
• Implementation – installing the system and putting it into operation.

• 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.

• 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.

• The legacy system creates a signed JWT assertion.
• Salesforce validates the assertion using a certificate configured on a Connected App.
• Salesforce issues an access token for the integration user.
• No refresh token is required; the system can request a new access token when needed.

• Web Server Flow: normally uses a client secret and authorization/refresh tokens.
• Username-Password Flow: requires storing Salesforce credentials and is discouraged for integrations where stronger options are available.
• User Agent Flow: intended for user-interactive applications, not unattended server-to-server processing.

• Snapshot: Captures a point-in-time state for rollback. It is not an independent running VM and does not protect against failure of the underlying host or storage.
• Convert to dynamic disks: Changes disk allocation behavior; it does not provide redundancy or high availability.
• P2V: Converts a physical machine into a virtual machine. That is a migration process, not an availability solution.

• Import — Loads data into Power BI. It requires a refresh, so it may not reflect changes within two minutes unless refresh is configured appropriately.
• Live connection — Connects to an existing Power BI semantic model or Analysis Services model; it is not the normal choice for connecting directly to an Azure SQL database.

• 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.

Flat organisation

• Few levels of management
• A wide span of control—managers supervise many employees
• Shorter communication channels
• More employee autonomy and quicker decisions
• Fewer formal promotion levels

Tall organisation

• Many levels of management
• A narrow span of control—managers supervise relatively few employees
• A clear hierarchy and reporting structure
• More formal supervision and communication channels
• More obvious promotion and career stages

• Geo-redundant storage (GRS) replicates data to a secondary Azure region, but the secondary copy is normally unavailable for read access.
• RA-GRS provides geo-replication and read-only access to the secondary region, satisfying all requirements.
• Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) replicates data across availability zones within the same Azure region, not separate geographic regions.
• Locally redundant storage (LRS) keeps copies within a single datacenter or region and does not provide geographic resiliency.

• B — Increase provisioned concurrency for Lambda

• D — Refactor the Lambda functions

• E — Use Amazon RDS Proxy

• Progress iteratively with feedback focuses on making improvements in manageable steps and learning from feedback.
• Optimize and automate focuses on maximizing value from resources and automating suitable activities.
• Start where you are focuses on assessing the current situation and reusing what already exists.

• MAC flooding: Overwhelms a switch’s MAC address table, potentially causing traffic to be broadcast.
• DNS spoofing: Provides false DNS responses to redirect users.
• ARP poisoning: Sends false ARP information to associate an attacker’s MAC address with another device’s IP address.

• 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.

1. Ingestion Lambda receives requests from API Gateway and places messages in an SQS queue.
2. Processing Lambda is triggered by the queue and loads records into Aurora PostgreSQL.

• Decoupling: API request handling is separated from database loading.
• Buffering: SQS absorbs bursts when incoming traffic exceeds the database’s processing capacity.
• Controlled concurrency: Configure the SQS-triggered Lambda’s concurrency and batch size to avoid overwhelming Aurora or exhausting database connections.
• Automatic retries: Messages that fail processing can return to the queue and be retried. A dead-letter queue can capture persistent failures.
• Lower operational effort: The solution remains serverless and avoids managing EC2 servers or Kubernetes clusters.

• A: EC2 and Tomcat add server-management overhead.
• B: DynamoDB/DAX would require changing the database model and does not solve the Aurora ingestion design.
• C: SNS is useful for notifications and fanout, but SQS is better for durable buffering and backpressure in this producer-consumer workflow.

• IaaS: You deploy and manage virtual machines, operating systems, disks, and networking. Azure manages the physical datacenter and host infrastructure.
• PaaS: Azure manages the operating system and runtime so you can focus on deploying applications, such as with Azure App Service or Azure Functions.
• SaaS: You consume a complete, provider-managed application.