CFA Sustainable-Investing Exam Prep
Sustainable Investing Certificate(CFA-SIC) (Page 35 )

Simple explanation

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

• 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.

• 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.

• Accept: Acknowledge the risk and choose not to take additional action.
• Transfer: Shift the risk or its financial impact to another party, such as through insurance or outsourcing.
• Mitigate: Reduce the likelihood or impact of the risk, such as by implementing security controls.
• Avoid: Eliminate the activity or condition that creates the risk.

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.

• Drops packets when traffic exceeds a certain bitrate: This describes traffic policing, not shaping.
• Fragments large packets and queues them: Shaping does not fragment packets as its primary congestion-control action.
• Drops packets randomly from lower-priority queues: Packet dropping may occur if a shaping queue becomes full, but it is not the defining behavior.

• Shaping: buffers and delays excess traffic.
• Policing: drops or marks traffic that exceeds the configured rate.

1. Selling price per unit: $750
2. Required annual return:

1. Required profit per unit:

1. Target cost per unit:

• Define the contractor’s deliverables, responsibilities, acceptance criteria, and deadlines.
• Agree on a reporting cadence to monitor progress.
• Allow the local company to use its expertise and manage its own work.

• A: “Under the supervision of the project manager” suggests excessive direct control and is less empowering.
• B: Micromanaging prevents the contractor from functioning independently and is inefficient.
• D: Deploying the contractor’s staff under the PM’s supervision creates a staffing/control arrangement rather than empowering the contracted company.

• C series: CPU-optimized instances; not designed primarily for LLM training.
• G series: GPU instances generally optimized for graphics and some machine learning workloads, but not specifically large-scale model training efficiency.
• P series: Powerful GPU instances for ML training, but typically consume more energy than Trainium-based instances for suitable training workloads.

• Customers access the portal without needing a full Dynamics 365 license.
• They submit case information through portal forms.
• The submitted data is stored in Dataverse tables, such as the Case table.
• Security is controlled using web roles and table permissions, so customers can access only appropriate records.

• Dynamics 365 Connector — connects apps to Dynamics 365 data but is not the portal’s underlying data platform.
• Microsoft SharePoint — useful for documents and collaboration, not the standard case-management data source for portals.
• Microsoft Azure Storage — stores files or other data, but is not the native portal business-data platform.

• 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.

• 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.

• Disaster recovery backups
• Long-term backup retention
• Data archiving that still needs occasional access

• Multi-Regional Storage: Intended for frequently accessed data needing broad geographic availability; it costs more.
• Regional Storage: Suitable for frequently accessed data within one region.
• Nearline Storage: Intended for data accessed roughly once per month, such as monthly backups.
• Coldline Storage: Better fit for backups accessed only during a disaster or occasional recovery event.

• 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.

• Primary and core nodes: Use On-Demand Instances because the workload is business-critical. These nodes manage the cluster and store/process HDFS data.
• Task nodes: Use Spot Instances in an instance fleet. Task nodes are suitable for interruption because they do not hold essential cluster data and can be replaced or diversified across instance types.
• Terminate the entire cluster after processing: The job runs only about six hours each morning, and EMRFS stores data in Amazon S3. Keeping the cluster running for the rest of the day would waste money.

• A: Using Spot for primary and core nodes risks interruption of the critical cluster.
• C: All On-Demand is reliable but unnecessarily expensive; terminating the cluster helps, but Spot task nodes provide greater savings.
• D: Leaving primary and core nodes running after the task finishes continues to incur costs. Savings Plans also are less appropriate for this intermittent workload.

• 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.

• 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.

• A. Modify CommunitiesSelfRegController

• C. Configure Communities registration to use a custom Visualforce page

• B. Modify the self-registration trigger — There is no standard “self-registration trigger” intended for this configuration. The registration logic is handled by the Visualforce controller.
• D. Configure a custom Apex controller — The standard approach is to modify the provided CommunitiesSelfRegController, rather than simply selecting a separate controller configuration.

• 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.

• Application management: Controls which apps can be installed or used; it does not remove existing data after theft.
• Full-disk encryption: Protects data when the device is powered off or locked, but it may not help if the attacker has already unlocked the device.
• Containerization: Separates corporate data from personal data, but the attacker may still access the corporate container using the stolen credentials.

• A. Microsoft 365 group with Assigned membership
• C. Microsoft 365 group with Dynamic User membership

Why?

• Assigned membership: You explicitly add User1, User2, and User3.
• Dynamic User membership: Membership is automatically determined by a rule based on user attributes.

Why the other options are incorrect

• B and D: Security groups do not support the Microsoft 365 group expiration policy.
• E: Dynamic Device groups are intended for devices, not these users, and are also security groups.

• Leaf switches provide access ports for servers, endpoints, and other devices.
• Spine switches form the fabric’s backbone.
• Every leaf connects to every spine, creating a predictable, high-bandwidth, low-latency path.

• A: Adding both a spine and leaf is unnecessary for simply adding access ports.
• B: Adding a spine does not directly provide endpoint access ports.
• D: A single connection to one spine creates a bottleneck and a single point of failure.

• A — Correct: Flow Builder is declarative and visual, so administrators and other non-developers can participate in designing and improving business processes without writing Apex.
• D — Correct: Flow Builder provides visual debugging tools, allowing an admin to test paths, inspect variable values, and identify where a specific business case fails.
• E — Correct: A flow’s visual structure documents the logic and makes later maintenance easier than reading and updating custom Apex code.

• B — Incorrect: Flow debugging does not attach a debugger to live customer sessions. The admin uses Flow Builder’s debug functionality with test inputs; this is not live-session debugging and should not be used to monitor real customer transactions.

• Due Date
• Order Date
• Delivery Date

DAX 
Order Date = 'Due Date' 
Delivery Date = 'Due Date'

• Due Date[Date] ? Sales[Due Date]
• Order Date[Date] ? Sales[Order Date]
• Delivery Date[Date] ? Sales[Delivery Date]

• 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.

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

• The policy is confidential, and the requester is no longer authorized merely because they used to work for the organization.
• The security professional should not disclose it by email or display it on a device without authorization.
• Using official channels allows the organization’s owner or information custodian to verify:

• Aggregation happens once, during the scheduled job.
• Dashboard users query a relatively small, precomputed table.
• Repeated users do not trigger expensive aggregations against the detailed sales table.
• Overwriting is appropriate because the summary is rebuilt for the reporting period.

• B: Structured Streaming is unnecessary for data that only needs daily refreshes and adds operational/compute overhead.
• C: A view recomputes the aggregation at query time, increasing latency and query cost.
• D: Delta caching may improve reads but does not replace the need to materialize the expensive aggregation, and cache availability is not the main design guarantee.

• Equipment and hardware
• Facilities
• Inventory
• Backup media
• Supplies stored at an alternate or remote location

• Personal belongings of staff: Usually not organizational assets.
• DR line-item revenues: Revenue is a financial impact, not a physical asset.
• Cloud-based applications: These are primarily logical or information-processing assets, even though they depend on physical infrastructure.

• Azure creates a corresponding service principal in Microsoft Entra ID.
• The identity’s lifecycle is tied to the Azure resource.
• If the resource is deleted, Azure automatically deletes the identity.
• Only the associated resource can use that identity to request tokens.
• You can grant the identity permissions to access services such as Key Vault or Storage without storing credentials in code.

sql 
CREATE TABLE my_table 
USING CSV 
OPTIONS (path '/path/to/csv');

sql 
CREATE TABLE my_table 
USING CSV 
LOCATION '/path/to/csv';

• USING CSV specifies the file format.
• path or LOCATION specifies where the files are stored.
• USING DELTA would be used only when the source data is in Delta format.
• FROM is used in a SELECT statement, not normally as the format declaration in CREATE TABLE.

• Virtual machine disks
• Databases
• Storage accounts
• File systems

• Site-to-site VPN: protects data moving between networks
• HTTPS: protects data moving between a client and website
• Encrypted email: generally protects the message while being transmitted

• At rest = stored data
• In transit = moving data
• In use = data currently being processed by a system

• 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.

• A. IDS attack signatures: An IDS primarily detects suspicious network activity and usually does not provide dedicated file-upload malware scanning. It is generally detective rather than preventive.
• C. Load balancer: Distributes traffic among servers and improves availability; it does not inspect documents for malware.
• D. WAF: Helps block web-application attacks such as SQL injection, command injection, and XSS. Although a WAF may inspect upload requests, malware detection in PDF files is more directly addressed by antivirus or content-scanning functionality.

• 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.

• ADF: Automatic Document Feeder; a printer/scanner hardware component.
• USB: A short-range wired connection, not a protocol for accessing a remote shared folder.
• PCL: Printer Control Language; it describes how print jobs are formatted, not how files or printers are shared over a network.

• 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.

• SOW
• SLA
• MOA
• MOU

• Gaia Portal: Controlled by Gaia administration settings, not SmartConsole Trusted Clients.
• SSH: Controlled by Gaia or operating-system SSH access settings.
• Security Gateway(s): SmartConsole connects to the Security Management Server, not directly to gateways for this purpose.

• Matching hashes: The software is unchanged.
• Different hashes: The software was modified or corrupted.

• Encryption: Protects confidentiality.
• Baselines: Define approved configurations or normal performance.
• Tokenization: Replaces sensitive data with tokens.

• Filtering or reshaping columns
• Joining with an analysis-specific dataset
• Creating calculated fields
• Applying business logic for a particular project

• Data blending: Combining different data sources, not specifically the final processing step.
• Data enhancement: A broad term for enriching data.
• Data testing: Checking data quality or pipeline correctness.
• Last-mile ETL: The precise term for additional transformations performed after the main pipeline, often directly before analytics or reporting.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Replace the keyboard: More expensive and unnecessary before simpler causes are ruled out.
• Replace the key switch: Laptop keyboards generally aren’t designed for individual switch replacement.
• Replace the circuit board: Excessive for a single nonworking key and not a cost-effective first step.

• Multiple nodes: Data is replicated several times in the primary region.
• Separate geography: A copy is asynchronously replicated to a secondary Azure region.
• Readable secondary: RA-GRS provides read-only access to the secondary replica, even when the primary region is available.

• GRS: Replicates to another region but the secondary copy isn’t normally readable.
• ZRS: Replicates across availability zones in the same region, not a separate geographic region.
• LRS: Keeps replicas within a single datacenter or region and provides no geographic redundancy.

• 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.