Financial CMA Exam Prep
Certified Management Accountant (Page 43 )

• 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.

• Why: Crisis management relies on established, repeatable procedures for responding to an incident (activation of the crisis team, escalation paths, communications, containment actions). This ensures a coordinated, timely, and auditable response.

• Why not the others:

• A single Construction Job can use multiple Machinery records.
• A single Machinery record may be used on multiple Construction Jobs.
• This is a many-to-many relationship, which Salesforce models using a junction object.
• The junction object can contain fields such as:

• Master-detail to Machinery
• Master-detail to Construction Job
• Date and cost fields

1. Start with the 48-bit MAC address.
2. Split it into two 24-bit halves.
3. Insert FF:FE between the halves, creating a 64-bit value.
4. Invert the U/L bit—the seventh bit from the left in the first MAC byte.

text 
MAC:       00:1A:2B:3C:4D:5E 
EUI-64:    02:1A:2B:FF:FE:3C:4D:5E

• FE80 is the prefix commonly used for an IPv6 link-local address, not part of the EUI-64 interface ID.
• The interface ID is not random.
• The MAC address is modified by inserting FF:FE and changing the U/L bit.

• Pay-as-you-go in Azure is an operating expense (OPEX) model, not an “elastic” expenditure model.
• Elastic or scalable terms describe capacity planning, not the cost category. The cost should be treated as OPEX since you pay for usage each month.
• The parallel question (Question 12) shows the correct approach is using an operational expenditure model.

• 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.

• A. Implement retries with exponential backoff

• C. Reduce the frequency and/or size of requests

• B. Use PutRecord instead of PutRecords — PutRecord sends one record per call and does not remove the underlying throughput limitation. It may increase request overhead.
• D. Use Amazon SNS instead — SNS is not a direct fix for Kinesis shard throttling and changes the required streaming architecture.
• E. Reduce KCL consumers — KCL consumers read from Kinesis; they do not solve producer-side PutRecords throttling.

• Workspace: Stores notebooks, libraries, jobs, and other project resources.
• Notebooks: Interactive documents containing code, queries, visualizations, and explanations. Common languages include Python, SQL, Scala, and R.
• Clusters: Groups of virtual machines that run Spark workloads. Clusters can be started, stopped, and automatically scaled.
• Data access: Databricks can read from services such as Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Blob Storage, and Azure SQL.
• Jobs: Automate notebooks or data-processing workflows on a schedule or in response to events.

• Alice is co-resident on the same physical host and exploits shared hardware (the processor cache) to infer secrets. This is the classic definition of a side-channel attack—information leakage through implementation details (like timing or cache behavior) rather than by breaking a protocol or injecting code.

• Observing cache timing or access patterns to deduce cryptographic keys or plaintext data from the victim VM.

• Man-in-the-cloud attack: targets cloud trust/auth, not local hardware sharing.
• SQL injection: exploits input to run SQL commands, not a VM/caching vector.
• Service hijacking: takes control of a service, not about covert data leakage via shared hardware.

• Notice phrases like “shared hardware resources,” “co-resident,” or “cache”—these indicate a side-channel vector.

• The explanation states that Traffic Analytics can be enabled by a user with one of these subscription-level roles:

• Question 34 — Network Contributor: Yes
• Question 35 — Owner: Yes
• Question 36 — Reader: Yes, according to the stated explanation and documentation

• A limited lifetime
• Permissions defined by an IAM role or policy
• The ability to access AWS APIs without using long-term IAM user credentials

• Amazon API Gateway — Builds and manages APIs; it does not generally issue AWS credentials for applications.
• IAM users — Usually use long-term credentials, which are less suitable for applications.
• IAM instance profiles — Provide temporary role credentials to applications running on EC2 instances, but are specifically tied to EC2. The broader requirement described is best met by AWS STS.

• Forecasting lets sales leaders predict revenue for upcoming fiscal periods, compare forecasts with targets, and review performance by salesperson or team.
• Opportunity Stages help determine the likelihood that opportunities will close. Each stage can have a probability, which contributes to forecast calculations.

• Sales Quotes: Used to present pricing or product proposals to customers; they do not provide revenue forecasting.
• Opportunity List View: Helps users filter and view opportunities, but it is not the forecasting tool.

• staff use the new system;
• transactions and reports are checked;
• problems are corrected;
• feedback is collected.

• Phased changeover: different parts or functions are introduced in stages, often according to a planned sequence.
• Pilot changeover: one representative department, branch or group acts as a test site before wider implementation.
• Parallel changeover: old and new systems operate at the same time.
• Direct changeover: the old system is stopped and the new one starts immediately.

• Source: on-premises SQL Server Database1
• Destination: Fabric Warehouse Warehouse1
• Connectivity: on-premises data gateway

• Dataflow Gen1: Primarily for Power Query transformations and isn’t the best Fabric-native choice for this copy operation.
• KQL queryset: Queries data; it does not orchestrate copying from SQL Server.
• Notebook: Could perform custom code-based movement, but it is unnecessary and less direct than a pipeline.

• Correct answer: D – Do not enable default administrative accounts to ensure accountability.

• A – Do not use encryption methods … backups and sensitive information: Encryption helps protect data; not using it increases risk, not reduces insider threats.
• B – Do not allow administrators to use unique accounts during installation: We actually want unique admin accounts, not the opposite.
• C – Do not control the access to administrators and privileged users: Failing to control access directly enables misuse.

• Multi-pass wipe: Overwrites the drive’s existing data multiple times, making recovery much more difficult while preserving the drive’s functionality.
• Single-pass wipe: May be sufficient in some modern sanitization standards, but is presented here as less secure than multiple overwrites.
• Degaussing: Uses a strong magnetic field to disrupt data. It can render the drive unusable or unreliable, reducing its resale value.
• Pinning: Is not an appropriate data-sanitization method.

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

• Correct answer: A. System characterization

• Why the other options are not correct:

• The VPN gateway is in VirtualNetworkA.
• Gateway transit is configured on the peering associated with the VNet that contains the gateway—here, VirtualNetworkA.
• A peered VNet may use the remote gateway through the appropriate peering option, but this does not automatically update an existing P2S client’s routes.
• The Windows 10 workstation’s P2S VPN client package was created before VirtualNetworkB was peered, so it may not have a route for VirtualNetworkB.

Why B works

• AWS KMS keys are Regional resources. A normal customer managed key in Region A cannot be used directly in Region B.
• A customer managed multi-Region KMS key (MRK) has related key replicas in both Regions. The replicas share key material and key ID, although each has a Regional ARN.
• With client-side encryption, the application encrypts the data before storing it in S3. Cross-Region replication then copies already-encrypted objects, so S3 does not need to decrypt and re-encrypt them with a different Regional key.

Why the other choices are weaker

• A and C: SSE-S3 uses Amazon-managed S3 keys, not the required customer managed KMS key.
• D: SSE-KMS can work only if the solution creates and configures the appropriate KMS key or multi-Region key replica in each Region. As written, it says to create a customer managed KMS key in each Region, which implies separate keys—not the same KMS key. Replication also requires additional KMS permissions and destination encryption configuration.

• Whether a user has a console password
• Password age and last password change
• Whether MFA is enabled
• Access key status
• Access key creation date and last-use information
• Access key age, which helps audit rotation

• IAM Access Analyzer identifies unintended access to resources; it does not report credential age or rotation.
• AWS Artifact provides AWS compliance documents and agreements, not details about your IAM users.
• AWS Audit Manager helps collect evidence for audits, but it is not the direct tool for viewing IAM credential rotation details.

• 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.

• Strongest encryption algorithms: Choose the strongest available encryption and integrity options, typically AES with the largest key size and a secure integrity algorithm.
• Encrypt all traffic: Select tunnel mode rather than transport mode. Tunnel mode encrypts the entire original IP packet, which is appropriate for a site-to-site VPN between branch networks.
• Secret-password authentication: Configure a pre-shared key (PSK) on both VPN concentrators. The key must match at both ends.

• 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.

• 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. Create a new AMI or copy the existing AMI while specifying EBS encryption and an appropriate AWS KMS key.
2. This creates an encrypted AMI backed by encrypted EBS snapshots.
3. Copy the encrypted AMI to the destination Region, using a KMS key available there.
4. Launch the application stack from the encrypted AMI.

• B: AWS KMS does not encrypt an existing unencrypted AMI in place. You must create an encrypted copy.
• C: AWS Certificate Manager manages TLS certificates, not EBS or AMI encryption.
• D: Enabling encryption by default affects newly created EBS volumes and snapshots; it does not encrypt an existing unencrypted AMI during copying.

• I can’t view the images, so I can’t tell which table is labeled as A in your screenshot. But here’s how to decide:

• How to identify the fact table:

• How to identify the surrogate key in the Patient table:

• Relationship:

• Custom domains
• 10 GB storage per web app
• Each app runs on dedicated compute
• Load balancing between instances is included
• Costs minimized

• Answer: A (Standard)

• Why:

• Note: In App Service, multiple apps in the same plan share compute resources. If you truly need isolation per app, you’d typically use separate App Service Plans, which increases cost beyond a single Standard plan.

• A separate scope using a /32 subnet: A /32 identifies one host, but it is not a practical DHCP scope for this purpose.
• A static IP within the DHCP range: This can cause an IP address conflict if DHCP assigns that address to another device.
• SLAAC: Used for automatic IPv6 address configuration, not for assigning a predictable IPv4 address through DHCP.

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• What the scenario asks: You have a Power BI semantic model that pulls from multiple sources (Azure SQL Database and SharePoint Online), must support a single dataset for three reports, keep data current (daily refresh by 7 AM PT), and apply RLS to limit sales data by region. You need to choose a storage mode for the tables.

• Correct choice: Dual storage mode.

• Why Dual fits:

• Key concepts:

• Exploitability
• Attack complexity
• Required privileges
• User interaction
• Impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability

• CVE: Identifies and tracks a specific vulnerability; it does not primarily measure severity.
• OSINT: Open-source intelligence gathered from publicly available sources.
• SOAR: Security orchestration, automation, and response technology used to automate security workflows.

• The correct setting to configure is the Enrollment Status Page (ESP) profile.
• Why: ESP tracks the enrollment progress and logs during Autopilot provisioning. You can enable log collection within the ESP policy so that, if ESP times out, the user can collect and share the logs with support.
• Optional enhancement: In the ESP policy (or the Autopilot diagnostics settings), you can enable:

• Automatic enrollment settings: control how devices auto-enroll, not log collection.
• Windows Autopilot deployment profile: controls deployment steps but not ESP log collection.
• Device configuration profile: applies settings but doesn’t provide ESP log collection mechanics.

• 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.

• Separate accounts/domains create a strong administrative boundary between non-production and production.
• Separate projects provide distinct IAM boundaries, billing, quotas, service accounts, and resources.
• Developers can receive permissions in the development project without automatically gaining access to production.
• Production administrators can be restricted from development resources, supporting separation of duties and least privilege.

• A: Creates excessive project fragmentation without being required by the stated requirement.
• C: Keeps development and production under one account and does not clearly separate administrative duties.
• D: Uses one account and only two projects; it provides some project isolation but weaker organizational separation.

• IaaS provides virtualized infrastructure, including VMs, disks, and networking. You manage the guest operating system and software installed on the VM.
• PaaS provides a managed platform for deploying applications without managing the underlying VMs or operating systems. Examples include Azure App Service and Azure Functions.

• 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.

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.

• 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.

• 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:

• 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.

• runParallel is defined as async, so it returns a Promise.
• To use the result, you attach a then handler (or use await inside another async function).

• A: “Async runParallel() .then(data);” is invalid. “async” is a keyword for function declarations, not something you put in front of a call, and you’d need a function as the then-argument.
• B: “runParallel().done(function(data){return data;});” .done is not standard in native Promises (it exists in some libraries). Without a compatible library, this won’t work.
• C: “runParallel().then(data);” is invalid because then expects a function as its argument; data is not a function.
• D: “runParallel().then(function(data){ return data; });” is valid (or equivalently, runParallel().then(data => data);).

• The robust, standard option is D.
• B could work only with a library that provides .done; otherwise it’s not reliable.

• The inference container image or built-in algorithm
• The location of model artifacts in Amazon S3
• IAM permissions through the execution role
• Optional environment variables and networking settings

1. Create AWS::SageMaker::Model
2. Create an AWS::SageMaker::EndpointConfig that references the model
3. Create AWS::SageMaker::Endpoint that references the endpoint configuration

• AWS::SageMaker::Endpoint hosts a model but does not define the model itself.
• AWS::SageMaker::NotebookInstance provides a development environment.
• AWS::SageMaker::Pipeline orchestrates ML workflow steps.

• 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.

• What the dataflow options mean:

• Why C fits best:

• 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.

• The correct answer: B) Synthetic identity theft.

• Synthetic identity theft involves creating a new, forged identity by combining information from multiple real people (e.g., names, dates of birth, SSNs) to commit fraud.
• In the scenario, Adam “created a new identity by obtaining information from different victims,” which matches the idea of synthesizing data to form a fake person.

• Medical identity theft: using someone’s medical information to obtain care or services.
• Tax identity theft: using someone’s personal info to file fraudulent tax returns.
• Social identity theft: impersonating someone to deceive others socially or publicly.

• Look for phrases like “create a new identity” or “combine information from multiple people” to identify synthetic identity theft.

• Correct answer: Power BI dataset

• The scenario says the data model already contains several measures and you want to create a report from the existing data with minimal development. Reusing a published Power BI dataset lets you inherit the existing measures and data model, so you don’t have to recreate them.
• How to do it: In Power BI Desktop, use the connector Power BI datasets (Get Data > Power BI datasets) and connect to the existing dataset, then build visuals using the pre-defined measures.
• Why the other options are less suitable:

• VPC: A logically isolated virtual network in a cloud environment; it describes networking, not shared application access.
• NFV: Replaces dedicated network appliances with virtualized network functions.
• SaaS: A cloud service model in which users consume an application without managing its infrastructure. It could describe how the application is delivered, but the question emphasizes serving multiple user groups, which points to multitenancy.

• 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.