GRE GRE Test Exam Prep
Graduate Record Examination Test: Verbal, Quantitative, Analytical Writing (Page 11 )

• Which host first communicated with the suspected malicious source
• Whether that host initiated suspicious traffic or merely received it
• Which other hosts show evidence of infection, such as connections from the originating host
• Which hosts have no related suspicious activity and are therefore clean

• An outbound connection to a suspicious external address
• A downloaded or executed malicious file
• Later lateral connections from that host to other internal systems
• Firewall logs showing the direction and timing of the traffic

• BCP (Business Continuity Plan): Ensures the organization can continue its broader business operations during and after a disruption. It is broader than the IT-focused recovery required here.
• Communication plan: Defines how information is shared with employees, the public, and other stakeholders; it does not restore systems.
• IRP (Incident Response Plan): Handles and contains security incidents, such as malware or unauthorized access. A tornado is a disaster, not primarily a cybersecurity incident.

• IaaS: You deploy and manage virtual machines, including the operating system and installed software. Azure manages the physical datacenter, hosts, and networking infrastructure.
• PaaS: Azure manages the infrastructure and operating system, while you deploy and manage your application code. Examples include Azure App Service and Azure Functions.

• MFA adds an additional authentication factor, such as a phone notification or verification code.
• It helps prevent unauthorized sign-ins, even if a password is compromised.
• It does not encrypt, store, or protect credentials used by deployment processes.

• File1.png — Yes: User1 can apply Label1 with the Microsoft Purview Information Protection client. The client supports labeling image files such as .png in this scenario.

• Folder2 — No: Folder2 is the root folder. The client does not allow labeling the root folder itself. Although the client can label ordinary folders, selecting one applies the label to existing files and subfolders—not automatically to future files.

• File1.docx — Yes: .docx is a supported Microsoft Word file type, so User1 can apply Label1 to it.

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

• Understating expenses and liabilities
• Overstating profit
• Misleading users of the financial information
• Potentially breaching integrity, objectivity, and professional competence and due care

• The servers are powered on.
• The network is functioning.
• Devices can still reach the server network.

• ARP poisoning: Redirects or intercepts local network traffic; it usually affects communication paths rather than overwhelming a service.
• Jamming: Disrupts wireless or radio signals. It would not fit a system that remains accessible from devices on the server network.
• Kerberoasting: Attempts to crack service-account credentials from Kerberos tickets; it does not normally cause an immediate outage.

• How quickly the vendor must respond to an incident or request
• Target resolution times
• Availability or uptime requirements
• Performance metrics and penalties for not meeting them

• SOW (Statement of Work): Describes the project’s scope, tasks, deliverables, and timeline.
• MOA (Memorandum of Agreement): Documents a formal agreement to cooperate or perform specific activities.
• MOU (Memorandum of Understanding): Records a mutual understanding or intent, often less binding than a contract.

• A — Too infrequent: Formal strategies are often reviewed only every three to five years. This can make the organisation slow to respond to rapid changes in technology, competitors, regulation or customer needs.

• C — Relies on predicting the future: The approach assumes senior managers can make reasonably reliable forecasts and assumptions. In uncertain environments, these assumptions may quickly become invalid.

• E — Can restrict radical innovation: Formal planning tends to favour existing information, established objectives and incremental improvements. This may discourage experimental or highly innovative strategies that emerge from lower levels of the organisation.

• B concerns the difficulty of achieving competitive advantage through core competences when competing with focused specialists. It is not specifically a drawback of the formal top-down planning process.
• D is an activity organisations should undertake—continuous monitoring—not a drawback of the approach itself.

• A. IDS attack signatures: An IDS primarily detects suspicious network activity; it is not the best control for scanning uploaded documents for malware.
• C. Load balancer: Distributes traffic among servers and improves availability, but does not inspect files for malware.
• D. WAF: Protects web applications against attacks such as SQL injection and command injection. It may help secure the upload function, but malware scanning is the key requirement here.

• Microservices: An application design approach that divides software into small services; it does not specifically reduce the number of operating systems.
• Containerization: Uses isolated containers that share the host OS kernel—best match.
• Virtualization: Creates separate virtual machines, and each typically requires its own guest OS, so it does not minimize OS instances as effectively.
• Infrastructure as code: Automates deployment and management of infrastructure; it does not describe the architecture being used.

• Employees can use approved devices from remote locations or worldwide offices.
• Users do not need to carry or insert extra hardware.
• It helps prevent account takeovers from unknown devices.

• Geotagging: Restricts access based on location, which could interfere with remote work and travel.
• Smart cards: Require additional physical equipment and card readers.
• Time-based logins: Limit access according to time but do not strongly bind access to an authorized user device.

• C — Custom buttons display at the top and bottom of a page: Correct. In Salesforce Classic, buttons can appear in the page’s button areas, including the top and bottom of record pages.
• D — Custom buttons are available for Person Accounts: Correct. Person Accounts use the Account object, so Account custom buttons can be available on Person Account layouts.
• E — Custom buttons can reference an external app: Correct. A URL custom button can launch or navigate to an external application or website.

• A: JavaScript custom buttons are a Salesforce Classic feature and are not supported in Lightning Experience. They do not enhance Lightning Experience.
• B: The User object does not generally support custom buttons in the same way standard business objects do.

• Packet capture: Collects and analyzes network traffic; it does not describe the scan type.
• Privilege escalation: Attempts to gain higher permissions after obtaining access.
• System enumeration: Identifies systems, services, or resources, but is not specifically defined by the lack of credentials.
• Passive scan: Observes traffic without actively probing systems. A vulnerability scan is generally an active assessment.

• 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.

• Domain controllers, because the requirement specifically excludes them. However, note that both member servers and domain controllers run Windows Server, so OS targeting alone cannot distinguish them unless the targeting option allows selecting the relevant server role/version. In the usual exam interpretation, target the applicable server OS category.
• Client computers, because they run a client Windows operating system.

• Domain: Targets membership in a domain, not the computer’s operating-system type.
• Security Group: Would require creating and maintaining a group containing all member servers, increasing administrative effort.
• Environment Variable: Not designed to reliably identify member servers.

• A — Correct: Identify the data required by Salesforce, its dependencies, and how it should be validated. Verification scripts help confirm record counts, relationships, field mappings, and data integrity after migration.
• D — Correct: Use a full sandbox and perform trial migrations using realistic—or appropriately masked—legacy data. This exposes transformation, volume, dependency, and integration issues before production cutover.
• B — Less appropriate: Phased user migration and parallel operation primarily address user adoption and rollout risk, not the technical risks of data migration.
• C — Less appropriate: Although sandbox testing and integration testing are valuable, the option emphasizes test-data generation rather than validating the migration with representative legacy data. “A full sandbox for all systems” may also be impractical.

• Determining ISP-assigned address space: Usually involves public reconnaissance, such as WHOIS or regional Internet registry information.
• Bypassing DNS sinkholing: Would require evidence that malicious domains are resolving outside the organization’s sinkhole controls.
• Achieving initial access: DNS log entries alone do not demonstrate compromise or entry.
• Exfiltrating data: DNS tunneling generally involves repeated queries containing encoded or unusually long data, not merely internal host discovery.

1. Discovery tries the SSH probe first.
2. SSH fails.
3. Discovery tries SNMP, which succeeds.
4. Discovery records SNMP as the preferred service for that IP.
5. Future discoveries try SNMP first.

• Classification identifies the type of device, such as a server, router, or printer.
• Credential affinity remembers which credentials work for a device.
• MID Server affinity associates a device or network with a particular MID Server.
• IP service affinity specifically controls the preferred discovery protocol or service.

• Unfamiliar locations or IP addresses
• Anonymous or malicious IP addresses
• Leaked credentials
• Unusual sign-in behavior

• Periodic vulnerability assessments: Identify technical weaknesses but do not establish governance or ensure risks are managed.
• Established information security metrics: Help measure performance and report status, but measurement alone does not make governance effective.
• Advanced security technologies: Support security operations, but governance is primarily about direction, accountability, decision-making, and alignment with business objectives.

• Accept: Acknowledges the risk without taking additional action.
• Transfer: Shifts the risk or financial impact to another party, such as an insurer.
• Mitigate: Reduces the likelihood or impact through controls like patching, MFA, or segmentation.
• Avoid: Eliminates the activity that creates the risk.

• Reduce the training data: Usually makes overfitting worse.
• Add hyperparameters: Hyperparameters already control training; simply adding them does not solve the problem. Proper tuning could help, but that is not what the option states.
• Increase training time: More training can worsen overfitting if the model is already memorizing the training data.

• Restrict a port to a defined number of MAC addresses
• Use statically assigned or “sticky” MAC addresses
• Shut down or restrict the port when violations occur

• Load balancer: Distributes application traffic; it does not protect switch MAC tables.
• IPS: May detect suspicious network activity, but is not the primary control for limiting switch MAC entries.
• NGFW: Filters traffic at the network boundary; it does not directly prevent MAC table flooding on access switches.

• A user connects with their Google account.
• Google associates the user’s SSH key with that identity.
• IAM roles determine whether they can log in.
• Access can be tied to a specific employee for auditing.
• Removing the IAM role removes their login access.

• compute.osLogin: regular OS login access
• compute.osAdminLogin: OS login with administrative privileges, typically including sudo

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enable-oslogin=TRUE

Why this is correct

• Each user authenticates with their own Google account.
• Google manages the user’s SSH key association.
• IAM controls who can access instances.
• Access can be audited by user identity, so security can determine who accessed a VM.
• Granting the role to a Google group avoids managing permissions individually.

Why the others don’t apply

• A: A shared private key is difficult to distribute securely and cannot reliably identify which employee used it.
• B: Manually collecting and deploying keys on every instance is operationally inefficient and complicates auditing.
• D: A project-wide shared key has the same identity and key-management problems as option A. It also does not provide per-user accountability.

1. Create a temporary Onboarding OU.
2. Move the new account into it.
3. Move the restrictive SCPs from the organization root to the Production OU.
4. Allow the account to update AWS Config.
5. Move the account into Production after onboarding.

• An SCP attached at the organization root applies to every account and OU beneath it.
• An SCP attached to the Production OU applies only to accounts in that OU.
• Therefore, moving the restrictive SCP from the root to Production temporarily exempts the onboarding account without weakening the policies for existing production accounts.
• Once onboarding is complete, moving the account into Production subjects it to the normal restrictions.

• A — If there is no demand, there should be no production.

• B — Not all sales equal profit.

• C — Stocking up on inventory is bad for business.

• D — All costs, except materials, are considered fixed.

• E — Departments should operate at full capacity regardless of bottlenecks.

• B: Developer Edition has limited user, storage, and data-volume capacity, making realistic community testing difficult.
• C: A Developer Edition org cannot contain sandboxes, so it cannot provide separate environments for development, integration, and UAT.
• E: A standalone Developer Edition org is not part of the production org’s deployment path, so change sets cannot be used to deploy from it directly to that production org. The team would need Metadata API, Salesforce CLI, or another deployment method.

• 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.

• Identified risks
• Risk owners or responsible parties
• Likelihood and impact
• Risk response plans
• Current status
• Risk thresholds or trigger conditions

• Risk tolerance: The amount and type of risk an organization is willing to accept; it is not primarily a tracking document.
• Risk transfer: Moving the financial or operational impact of a risk to another party, such as through insurance or outsourcing.
• Risk analysis: The process of evaluating a risk’s likelihood and impact.

• 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.

Correct reasoning

• Create storage5 as a General-purpose v2 (StorageV2) account.
• Configure Blob object replication from storage5 to an existing compatible storage account.
• The destination must support object replication—typically another StorageV2 or premium block blob account.
• Blob versioning must be enabled on both accounts.
• Blob change feed must be enabled on the source account.
• The accounts must meet Azure’s object-replication requirements, including being in supported regions and having compatible configuration.

• Honeypots: Decoy systems or services made to attract attackers. Legitimate users should not interact with them, so activity there is a strong indicator of malicious behavior.
• DNS sinkholes: Redirect requests for known malicious domains to a controlled internal system. This can reveal infected hosts attempting to contact command-and-control infrastructure.

• Tokenization: Replaces sensitive data with non-sensitive tokens.
• CI/CD: Automates software development, testing, and deployment.
• Threat modeling: Identifies and analyzes potential threats before or during system design.
• Data obfuscation: Makes data harder to understand or interpret.

• A — Capacity: The system must handle all current records and anticipated future records. A system that cannot cope with volume will quickly become ineffective.
• C — Accuracy: Academic records are critical, so the new system must be at least as accurate as the existing system and comparable systems. Poor accuracy could cause serious administrative and reputational problems.
• D — Integration: Linking with the university’s financial systems supports consistency and avoids duplicate data entry, especially for registration, deregistration and fee-related transactions.

• B — Parallel running: This is a useful implementation and risk-control technique, but it is not an essential feature of the system itself. It may also be expensive and time-consuming.
• E — Internet access for all information: This creates significant confidentiality and security risks. External access might be needed for selected services, but unrestricted access to all information is not essential and would be inappropriate for student records.

• A: It allows for branching and merging...

• C: It allows multiple engineers to work against the same code and configuration files and manage differences and conflicts.

• B: Build automation and infrastructure provisioning are handled by CI/CD and automation tools, not by version control alone.
• D: User Stories and backlogs are managed by project-management tools.
• E: Version control stores and tracks code, but it does not itself ensure that developers write effective unit tests.

• Maximum response and resolution times
• Expected uptime or availability
• Performance requirements
• Escalation procedures
• Consequences for failing to meet requirements

• SOW: Defines a project’s scope, tasks, deliverables, and schedule.
• MOA: Documents specific responsibilities agreed upon by two parties.
• MOU: Records a general understanding or intent to cooperate.

• 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

• Regression predicts continuous numeric outcomes, such as house price, temperature, or sales amount.
• Linear regression assumes the target can be estimated from a linear relationship between the input features and the target.
• In Azure Machine Learning, you use a labeled dataset containing:

• Classification predicts a category or class, such as “spam” or “not spam.”
• Clustering groups similar records without a known label; it is an unsupervised learning technique.

• The listener uses a virtual IP address shared by the availability-group replicas.
• Floating IP, also called Direct Server Return (DSR), allows the SQL Server nodes to respond using the listener’s IP address rather than their individual VM IP addresses.
• This is required for the availability-group listener to function correctly with an Azure internal load balancer.

• Remote and global work: Access is based on the approved device, not a specific office or geographic location.
• Seamless login: Users may not need to repeatedly enter credentials on a recognized device.
• Limited equipment: It uses devices employees already have rather than requiring separate hardware.

• Geotagging: Restricts access based on location and may prevent legitimate remote work.
• Smart cards: Require issuing and managing additional physical equipment.
• Time-based logins: Limit access by time and do not provide a seamless authentication experience.

• 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.

• CHAP: Uses a challenge-response exchange, so the password is not directly transmitted.
• IPsec: Provides authentication, integrity, and encryption for IP communications.
• EAP: An authentication framework that supports stronger methods, such as certificates or token-based authentication.

• Limiting the number of MAC addresses allowed on a switch port
• Restricting ports to specific known MAC addresses
• Taking an action—such as dropping frames or shutting down the port—when the limit is exceeded

• Load balancer: Distributes application traffic; it does not protect switch MAC tables.
• IPS: May detect some attack traffic, but is not the primary control for switch-port MAC limits.
• NGFW: Filters network traffic at the firewall, but does not directly control MAC addresses learned by a switch.

• desktopwidth:i:1280
• desktopheight:i:1024

• Connection information: Controls connection-related settings, not the desktop resolution.
• Scaling plan: Controls when session hosts start, stop, or scale based on demand.
• Session behaviour: Controls behavior such as disconnect or logoff handling.
• Display settings: Specifically controls RDP display properties, making it the appropriate choice.

• T?o m?t Systems Manager Automation runbook d? ch?y l?nh kh?i d?ng l?i ?ng d?ng trên các EC2 instance.
• T?o m?t Amazon EventBridge rule ph?n ?ng khi CloudWatch alarm chuy?n sang tr?ng thái ALARM.
• Ð?t Automation runbook làm target c?a EventBridge rule.

1. Log c?a ?ng d?ng du?c ghi vào CloudWatch Logs.
2. CloudWatch alarm phát hi?n nhi?u l?i liên quan d?n vi?c restart.
3. Alarm chuy?n sang tr?ng thái ALARM.
4. EventBridge nh?n s? ki?n thay d?i tr?ng thái này.
5. EventBridge g?i Systems Manager Automation runbook.
6. Runbook restart ?ng d?ng trên các EC2 instance, không restart c? instance.

• A: SNS không tr?c ti?p g?i Systems Manager Automation runbook nhu m?t target native.
• B: Lambda có th? th?c hi?n vi?c restart, nhung ph?i t? x? lý vi?c xác d?nh instance và ch?y l?nh t? xa.
• C: Lambda ch? làm trung gian d? g?i runbook, không c?n thi?t vì EventBridge có th? g?i runbook tr?c ti?p.

• Load balancer: Distributes application traffic; it does not protect switch MAC tables.
• IPS: May detect some attack traffic, but it is not the primary control for switch-port MAC learning.
• NGFW: Protects at network boundaries but does not directly limit MAC addresses learned on access ports.

• Existing expected ROI: 15%
• New project ROI: 14%
• Cost of capital: 12%

• Project return = 14%
• Cost of capital = 12%
• It earns 2% more than the cost of capital, so it should increase shareholder value.