CFA Sustainable-Investing Exam Prep
Sustainable Investing Certificate(CFA-SIC) (Page 39 )

• 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.

• The VM keeps its configuration, disks, IP settings, and associated resources.
• The operation may cause downtime.
• You cannot guarantee that it will move specifically to Host2; Azure selects the new host.
• Update management is for update configuration, not host relocation.
• Moving to another subscription does not move the VM to a different physical host.
• Usage location is unrelated to VM placement.

• 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.

• Failed login attempts
• The account being targeted
• The source user or system
• Time and frequency of attempts

• Two-factor authentication: Helps prevent unauthorized access, but does not primarily detect the employee’s attempts.
• Firewall: Controls network traffic; it generally does not monitor individual login attempts.
• Intrusion prevention system (IPS): Can detect certain network attacks, but this scenario is best addressed through authentication and audit logging.

• 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

• 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.

• 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.

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

• Continuous deployment: Automates software releases; it does not specifically test input handling.
• Static code analysis: Examines source or compiled code without executing it. It can find coding flaws but does not directly stress the application with malformed inputs.
• Manual peer review: Developers inspect code or design manually. Useful, but not the best practice specifically for testing how a live product handles invalid input.

• 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.

• Input feature distributions differ from training data ? Analyze dataset drift metrics

• Model accuracy drops without code changes ? Analyze dataset drift metrics

• Endpoint latency increases under load ? Investigate scaling and infrastructure metrics

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.

• A — Add a Path for Stage: A Path lets users update the Opportunity’s Stage directly from the record page, without opening the full edit form. It can also display guidance and key fields.
• B — Use a Kanban list view: Users can move Opportunities between stages by dragging records between columns, which is ideal when Stage is the only field they normally change.

• Basic: No technical or architectural guidance.
• Standard: Technical support, but not the required design-assessment service.
• Professional Direct: Provides advisory and architecture guidance.
• Premier: Provides it too, but is unnecessarily expensive for this requirement.

• vSmart controls the overlay control plane. It uses OMP to exchange routing information, distribute policies, and determine how WAN Edge devices reach one another.
• vManage is the centralized management and configuration platform.
• vBond is the orchestrator. It helps devices authenticate, discover controllers, and traverse NAT during onboarding.
• APIC-EM is not the SD-WAN control-plane component described here.

• Uses on-premises data or resources
• Runs components in the cloud
• Can scale across multiple cloud environments when demand increases

• Public cloud: Resources are hosted entirely by a cloud provider.
• Private cloud: Resources are dedicated to one organization, usually in its own environment.
• Hybrid: Combines on-premises and cloud resources.

• 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.

• prompt: the input or instruction given to the model
• completion: the desired response

json 
{"prompt":"Summarize this customer complaint.","completion":"The customer reports a delayed shipment."}

• B: A .txt file containing CSV-style lines is not automatically a valid fine-tuning dataset. The required structure and format must match the selected Bedrock model.
• C: Provisioned Throughput provides dedicated inference capacity; it does not fine-tune a model.
• D: Journals and textbooks might support domain adaptation or pretraining, but they do not provide the prompt-to-answer examples typically required for supervised fine-tuning.

• 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.

• Looking up accounts, contacts, and opportunities
• Logging calls and updating Salesforce records
• Accessing previously available customer information when temporarily offline

• Salesforce Touch App: Primarily an older tablet-focused experience, not the best general solution for the sales team.
• Custom hybrid app: Unnecessary development when Salesforce provides the required capabilities natively.
• SalesforceA: Intended mainly for Salesforce administrators, not sales representatives.

• 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.

• 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.

• Amazon S3 — Object storage, not a database.
• Amazon DynamoDB — Fully managed NoSQL key-value and document database.
• Amazon Redshift — Managed data warehouse designed for analytics, not primarily transactional MySQL workloads.

• Use private connectivity from a cloud provider
• Set up SSO for federated authentication

• Private connectivity—such as a cloud provider’s private endpoint—keeps Snowflake access within the company’s private network path instead of exposing access over the public internet. This fits the VPN/VDI requirement.
• SSO for federated authentication allows Snowflake users to authenticate using the credentials already managed by the company’s identity provider—the same identity system used for VDI—eliminating separate Snowflake passwords.

• Tri-Secret Secure protects encryption keys; it does not provide private network access or credential reuse.
• A proxy Snowflake account outside the VPN conflicts with the requirement that Snowflake have no internet visibility and is not the normal solution for federated login reuse.

1. Start with the Customer table.
2. Use Merge Queries and select the Address table.
3. Match Customer[Address ID] to Address[Address ID].
4. Use a Left Outer join so every customer is retained.
5. Expand only City, State/Region, and Country.

• Append adds rows vertically; it is for stacking similarly structured tables.
• Group By summarizes rows and does not retrieve address columns.
• Transpose swaps rows and columns and is unrelated to table relationships.

• Mesh: WAPs communicate wirelessly with one another, often to extend coverage without wired connections. It does not specifically describe centralized WLC management.
• Point-to-point: Connects two specific devices or locations.
• Ad hoc: Wireless devices communicate directly with one another without an access point.

• IPsec: Protects traffic at the network layer, commonly for VPNs; it is not WPA2’s authentication protocol.
• SSL: Protects specific application sessions and has largely been replaced by TLS.
• SSH: Secures remote command-line administration.

• Default network device credentials: More associated with external attackers or poor device configuration.
• Spear phishing emails: Commonly used to compromise users, but less characteristic of an insider who already has access.
• Typosquatting and impersonation: Primarily social-engineering techniques aimed at deceiving users.
• Unidentified removable devices: Provide a direct way to transfer data outside the organization and may bypass network monitoring.

• S3 Lifecycle rules automate actions such as transitioning objects to different storage classes or deleting old objects.
• S3 bucket policies control access permissions; they do not preserve earlier object versions.
• S3 server-side encryption protects data confidentiality by encrypting objects at rest, but it does not prevent deletion or overwriting.

• Accidental deletion or overwriting ? S3 Versioning
• Unauthorized access ? bucket policies and IAM
• Data encryption ? server-side encryption

• BCP: Maintains essential business operations during and after disruption. It is broader than IT recovery, but the question focuses on restoring the destroyed data center.
• Communication plan: Defines how the organization communicates with staff, the public, and other stakeholders.
• IRP: Handles security incidents such as malware, unauthorized access, or data breaches—not physical disaster recovery.

1. Identify the fact table

• Records something that happened, such as a sale, test, appointment, or measurement
• Contains foreign keys to other tables
• Contains measures or numeric results
• Has many rows

2. Identify a dimension table

• Describe people, products, dates, locations, or departments
• Contain descriptive columns
• Are referenced by the fact table
• Have fewer rows than the fact table

3. Identify the surrogate key

• System-generated
• Unique within the dimension
• Often named PatientKey, CustomerKey, or similar
• Usually an integer
• Not meaningful outside the model

• SQL injection (SQLi): Attacks databases by inserting malicious SQL commands.
• Cross-site scripting (XSS): Injects scripts into web pages viewed by other users.
• Sideloading: Installing an application from outside the official app store. It may install unauthorized apps, but it does not generally unlock the operating system or enable restricted system features.

• 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.

python 
def add_integers(a, b): 
    return a + b

• Uses def to define a function.
• Accepts two parameters, a and b.
• Uses return to send their sum back to the caller.
• Uses indentation to define the function body.

python 
result = add_integers(3, 4) 
result is 7

Correct choices

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

Why

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

• Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed NoSQL database service. It stores and retrieves application data, but it does not provide the tools needed to build, test, and deploy predictive analytics models.
• Azure Machine Learning—including the historical Azure Machine Learning Studio—is designed for the machine-learning lifecycle:

• Guiding principles
• Governance
• Service value chain
• Practices
• Continual improvement

• Guiding principles: Recommendations that guide decisions and actions; they do not describe the entire system.
• Four dimensions: Perspectives used to ensure a balanced approach to service management.
• Service relationship: Describes cooperation between a service provider and service consumer, rather than the whole value-creation system.

• Espionage: Stealing information for intelligence or competitive purposes.
• Data exfiltration: Unauthorized removal or transfer of data.
• Nation-state attack: An attack sponsored or conducted by a government.
• Shadow IT: Technology or access methods used outside approved IT processes.

• If the Facebook user is new, Salesforce invokes createUser.
• If the user already exists, Salesforce can invoke updateUser.
• The handler can read the latest data from Facebook, such as name, email, or other profile attributes, and update the corresponding Salesforce user.

• B: A scheduled job is unnecessary and would not provide real-time synchronization during authentication.
• C: A Facebook signed request is not the standard mechanism for updating Salesforce user records in this authentication-provider setup.
• D: SAML Just-in-Time provisioning applies to SAML identity providers, not Facebook OAuth authentication.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Two VMs
• Distributed across two separate availability zones

• Which Security policy matches
• Which NAT rule/translation is selected
• Which PBF rule applies
• Which route is used

text 
test security-policy-match ... 
test nat-policy-match ... 
test pbf-policy-match ... 
test routing fib-lookup ...

• Replaces the verbal message — this describes non-verbal communication being used instead of words.
• Substitutes for verbal communication — similar; it means communicating without speech.
• Confuses the verbal message — this occurs when non-verbal signals contradict or obscure the spoken message.

bash 
docker run -it microsoft/azure-cli:0.10.17

• docker run starts an Azure CLI container; it does not automatically connect to the AKS cluster.
• The command does not run kubectl apply.
• The container would need the appropriate Kubernetes tools and AKS credentials.
• The device or container must obtain cluster credentials, typically using an AKS credential command, before running Kubernetes commands.

bash 
az aks get-credentials --resource-group <resource-group> --name <aks-cluster> 
kubectl apply -f myapp.yaml

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.

1. Which host originated the infection

1. Which remaining hosts are infected