IIA IIA-ACCA Exam Prep
ACCA CIA Challenge Exam (Page 40 )

• The vulnerability scan identifies a vulnerability.
• The administrator verifies that the vulnerability is not present.
• Therefore, the scan produced a false positive.

• True positive: A vulnerability is reported and genuinely exists.
• False negative: A vulnerability exists, but the scan fails to detect it.
• True negative: No vulnerability exists, and the scan correctly reports no issue.

• B — Incorporate contextual output encoding/escaping: Encode untrusted data based on its context—HTML, attribute, JavaScript, or URL—so the browser treats it as data rather than executable code.
• D — Run untrusted HTML input through an HTML sanitization engine: Sanitization removes or neutralizes dangerous elements and attributes, such as script-related content, while preserving safe HTML where needed.

• A: Enabling client-side scripts does not prevent XSS. Script restrictions may reduce risk in some environments, but “enable” is not a general XSS control.
• C: Cookie inspection is unrelated to preventing injected scripts.
• E: The SameSite cookie attribute primarily helps mitigate CSRF, not XSS. It should not generally be described as an XSS prevention measure.

• Unsafe images: Requires image/content moderation before the image is processed.
• Hidden instructions embedded in images: These are indirect prompt injections contained in untrusted image content or extracted text, not necessarily in the user’s typed prompt.

• Group1 — security-enabled: Eligible.
• Group2 — mail-enabled and security-enabled: Eligible because it is still a security group.
• Group3 — Microsoft 365 group: Not eligible for group-based licensing.
• Group4 — Microsoft 365 group, not security-enabled: Not eligible.

• Deterrent control: The signs warning people they may be filmed discourage unauthorized or malicious behavior. They may prevent incidents by influencing behavior, but their primary purpose is to deter.
• Detective control: The CCTV system monitors and records activity so security personnel can identify suspicious or unauthorized actions.

• Preventive: Blocks or prevents an incident, such as a lock or access-control system.
• Corrective: Fixes or restores systems after an incident.
• Directive: Tells people what they must do, typically through policies or procedures.
• Compensating: Provides an alternative control when the preferred control cannot be used.

• Marketing users: Dynamic Forms can show all fields.
• Support users: Field visibility rules can display only the Support preference fields on the record page.
• Reporting: Both profiles can still report on all fields because Dynamic Forms controls page visibility, not the underlying field access.

• A — Two record types and page layouts: Page layouts can control field placement and editability, but they are less flexible for conditional field visibility and would not be the best fit here.
• C — Muting permission set: Permission-set muting is used with permission-set groups; it does not conditionally hide fields on a page.
• D — Field-Level Security: FLS would remove field visibility at the security level. If fields are hidden by FLS, users generally cannot report on or access those fields, conflicting with the requirement that both users report on all data.

• 25 — Traditional SMTP server-to-server mail delivery; often restricted and not the usual client submission port.
• 110 — POP3, used for retrieving email; normally unencrypted.
• 143 — IMAP, used for retrieving and synchronizing email; normally unencrypted.

• Feedback form: Captures opinions, not necessarily actual behavior; users may not respond.
• Questionnaire: Relies on memory and subjective judgments about usefulness.
• Interviews: Can provide valuable qualitative insights, but a sample of users may not represent overall usage accurately.

• ?? ?? ?? ??
• ?? NFS ?? SMB ?? ??
• ?? ???? ???
• ?? IP ??? ???? ?? ???
• ??? ?? ???? ?????

• B: ????? NFS ? Snowball Edge? ?? ?? ? AWS? ?? ? S3
• D: ????? NFS ? ????/Direct Connect ? File Gateway ? S3

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.

• Warehouse size: Larger warehouses use more credits per unit of time than smaller ones.
• Number of clusters: A multi-cluster warehouse can run multiple clusters, and each active cluster consumes credits. Therefore, increasing the maximum or active cluster count can increase consumption.

• Number of users: More users may cause more workload, but users themselves do not consume credits.
• Amount of data processed: Snowflake warehouses are not charged directly by the amount of data scanned. However, processing more data may cause the warehouse to run longer, indirectly increasing credits.

• Disable default accounts: Default or unused accounts may have known usernames or predictable settings, making them targets. They should be disabled, removed, or securely configured.
• Remove unnecessary services: Every running service creates potential vulnerabilities. Removing services the server does not need reduces exploitable entry points.

• Add the server to the asset inventory: Important for asset management, but not a hardening step.
• Document default passwords: Default passwords should be changed or eliminated—not documented for continued use.
• Send server logs to the SIEM: Valuable for monitoring and detection, but generally performed as part of logging/monitoring configuration.
• Join the server to the corporate domain: May be necessary operationally, but does not itself harden the server.

• Tracking who accessed or changed customer information
• Detecting unauthorized activity
• Supporting accountability and investigations
• Providing evidence for compliance and incident response

• Single sign-on not enabled: SSO improves convenience and centralized authentication, but it is not essential for access control.
• Complex passwords not required: This weakens authentication, but other controls may reduce the risk.
• Security baseline not consistently applied: A concern, but it is less specific and less immediately damaging than having no activity records at all.

• Base table — the table containing common inherited fields
• Parent table — the table directly extended by the child
• Other tables in the hierarchy

• 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.

• Explain questions from the exam page
• Check whether the stated answer is technically correct
• Compare answer choices and eliminate distractors
• Clarify Azure AI concepts and terminology
• Point out when an answer key appears unreliable or when an image is missing

• Economy: Obtaining inputs at the lowest appropriate cost.
• Efficiency: Making the best use of resources, such as staff, money, and equipment.
• Effectiveness: Achieving the intended objectives or outcomes.

DAX 
Blue Sales = 
CALCULATE( 
    [Total Sales], 
    KEEPFILTERS('Product'[Color] = "Blue") 
)

• CALCULATE evaluates [Total Sales] after applying an additional filter.
• 'Product'[Color] = "Blue" restricts the calculation to blue products.
• KEEPFILTERS ensures the existing filter context is preserved. For example, filters for year, region, or customer remain active. If Color is already filtered, the blue condition is applied as an intersection rather than replacing the existing filter.
• Avoid ALL, because it removes filters and would not maintain the existing context.

• Wireshark captures packets and allows you to examine their contents, potentially revealing usernames and passwords sent without encryption.
• Netcat creates network connections and can send or receive data, but it is not primarily a packet-analysis tool.
• Nessus scans for known vulnerabilities and configuration issues; it generally would not prove that credentials are visible in transit.
• Nmap performs network discovery and port/service scanning, not detailed packet-content inspection.

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

• Customer information must not be revealed ? PII Detection
• Malicious instructions embedded in images/documents must be blocked ? Prompt Shields

• If the question allows multiple selections, choose PII Detection and Prompt Shields.
• If it requires one selection specifically for the image-based threat, choose Prompt Shields.

• up ? down ? up
• Often happens rapidly or intermittently

• Faulty or loose cable or connector
• Failing transceiver, NIC, or switch port
• Speed/duplex or auto-negotiation problems
• Power or hardware instability
• Layer 1 interference

• Nothing plugged in: the port is simply down
• Latency: does not directly trigger err-disable
• shutdown: administratively disables the port, but that is not the same as an automatically detected err-disabled condition

• Authentication: Verifies who the user is.
• Authorization: Determines what the authenticated user is allowed to access.
• Accounting: Records login activity and resource usage.

• CIA: Confidentiality, integrity, and availability—the core security objectives.
• ACL: Access Control List; rules that permit or deny traffic or access.
• PEM: A format and standard commonly associated with encoded certificates and keys.

• Information sources: Collect security-related data, such as network packets, system logs, audit records, or application events.
• Analysis: Examines the collected data to identify suspicious activity, attacks, or policy violations.
• Response: Takes or recommends action, such as generating alerts, logging the event, or supporting a protective response.

• Virus signatures: Primarily associated with antivirus or antimalware tools.
• Security agent deployment: Usually handled by endpoint-management or endpoint-security platforms.
• Vulnerability scanning: Performed by vulnerability-assessment tools, although a SIEM may ingest their results.

• Amazon EC2 instances — ???????? ?? ?? ??????? CPU, memory ??? instance size ???????? ???????
• AWS Lambda functions — memory configuration ?????????? ???????
• Amazon EBS volumes — volume type ?? size optimize ???? ???????
• ??????? ECS workloads — resource configuration ? cost optimization-?? ???????

• Memory ? compute usage ?????????? ???? custom code ????? ???? development ? maintenance ??????
• Cost allocation tags ???? ????? ??? ?????? ???? ??????? ???; inefficient resource ??????? ?? recommendation ???? ???
• CloudTrail resource ???? ?? API activity ??????, resource utilization ????

DAX 
Sales % of Total = 
DIVIDE( 
    [Total Sales], 
    CALCULATE( 
        [Total Sales], 
        ALLSELECTED(Products) 
    ) 
)

DAX 
Total Sales = 
SUM(Sales[SalesAmount])

Why ALLSELECTED is required

• The numerator, [Total Sales], is evaluated for the current product.
• ALLSELECTED(Products) removes the current product’s visual filter when calculating the denominator.
• It preserves filters applied at the report, page, or slicer level.

Why not ALL(Products)?

DAX 
CALCULATE([Total Sales], ALL(Products))

1. Search & Intelligence in the Microsoft 365 admin center — No

1. Audit in the Microsoft Defender portal — Yes

1. Audit in the Microsoft Purview portal — Yes

• B — Notify affected business units: Notification should follow an initial determination of scope and impact; otherwise, the organization may communicate incomplete or inaccurate requirements.
• C — Assess noncompliance risk: Risk assessment requires understanding the regulation’s requirements first.
• D — Inform senior management: Management should be informed, but with a clear summary of the regulation’s impact, risks, and recommended actions.

• Due diligence: Investigating and evaluating a third party before entering into or continuing a business relationship.
• Attestation: An independent party provides assurance about an organization’s claims or controls. A SOC 2 examination is an example of an attestation engagement, but the analyst requesting and reviewing the report is performing due diligence.
• Internal audit: Reviews the organization’s own internal controls.
• Penetration testing: Actively tests systems for exploitable vulnerabilities.

• Report on the discount approval time for quotes

• Dashboard of opportunity stage duration

• Lead conversion trends measure lead-generation effectiveness, not opportunity closing time.
• Campaign ROI evaluates marketing performance, not delays in the sales process.

• HTTPS: Secure web traffic, not general command-line server administration.
• SNMPv3: Secure network monitoring and management, not interactive server login.
• RDP: Provides graphical remote desktop access. It can be secure, but it is not the direct replacement for Telnet in this scenario.
• SMTP: Used to send email.

Recommended process

1. Access each switch’s terminal.
2. Use help to identify available commands.
3. Use the MAC table command, such as:

text 
   show mac-address-table

1. Use VLAN information, such as:

text 
   show vlan

1. Use interface information, such as:

text 
   show ip interface brief

1. Record each device’s:

• Liability accounts (2000–2999) would incorrectly require dimensions, although they should have none.
• Expense accounts (6000–6998) would incorrectly require Customer, which should be optional.
• Account 6999 needs a separate rule because it requires all four dimensions, including Customer.

• 2000–2999: no dimensions
• 4000–4999: Department and Division required; Project and Customer optional
• 6000–6998: Department, Division, and Project required; Customer optional
• 6999: Department, Division, Project, and Customer required

• Process Builder: Automates actions based on record changes; it does not create interactive user forms.
• Approval Process: Routes records for approval and captures approval decisions.
• Outbound Message: Sends information to an external system; it does not provide a user interface.

• Share of overall contribution: part of the organization’s total contribution is allocated to the supplying division.
• Dual pricing: the supplying division may record a higher transfer price while the receiving division records a lower price, with central accounts absorbing the difference.
• A centrally imposed price range: this may allow the transfer price to be set above variable cost, helping the supplying division recover fixed costs.

• Atomicity: a write fully succeeds or does not appear.
• Consistency: table state remains valid.
• Isolation: concurrent operations do not corrupt one another.
• Durability: committed changes persist.

• Flexible schemas: common data lakes often support flexible or schema-on-read data.
• Open-source formats: common data lakes commonly use open formats such as Parquet.
• Scalable storage: cloud data lakes already provide scalable storage.

• Business risks
• Potential financial, operational, legal, or reputational impact
• How governance reduces risk to organizational objectives
• How much risk the organization is willing to accept

• Data Cloud combines data from multiple systems.
• It resolves and organizes that data into a unified customer view.
• That unified view enables downstream actions such as personalized campaigns, segmentation, analytics, and activation.

• A = core platform value
• D = a resulting business use case or benefit

• Microsoft Foundry is an enterprise platform for developers, data scientists, and IT teams.
• It supports the full AI application lifecycle: selecting models, connecting enterprise data, developing, evaluating, deploying, monitoring, and scaling solutions.
• It can include visual tools and low-code experiences, but it is not primarily designed to enable business users to build complete generative AI solutions independently.

• B: You still need to select and configure an appropriate model.
• C: Business users may participate through visual tools, but they are not the primary target audience.
• D: Foundry includes low-code tools, but it is not fundamentally a low-code-only platform.

• B: Extending credit to customers increases receivables, so more cash is tied up in working capital.
• C: Replacing obsolete inventory does not reduce the overall inventory investment; it simply changes its composition.
• D: Paying suppliers earlier reduces payables. This uses cash and therefore increases the funds tied up in working capital.

• Microsoft manages the physical datacenter, hardware, and virtualization.
• You manage the virtual machine’s operating system, installed software, configuration, and data.
• You choose the VM size, storage, networking, and scaling options.

• SaaS: You consume a complete application managed by the provider, such as Microsoft 365.
• PaaS: You deploy applications without managing the underlying operating system or VM infrastructure, such as Azure App Service.

• Accept terms of use
• Enter a temporary code or credentials
• Provide basic registration information

• Enterprise authentication — Authenticates organizational users, often with centralized identity services; it is not specifically designed for temporary guest access.
• Ad hoc network — A temporary device-to-device network, not an authentication process.
• WPA3 — A wireless security standard. It protects Wi-Fi access but does not provide the web-based temporary access workflow described here.

• The load balancer provides the listener’s frontend IP address.
• The active SQL Server node must also respond to that same listener IP.
• Enabling Floating IP allows the listener IP to be preserved and handled correctly by the active replica.
• Without it, SQL connections may be sent to a node that cannot correctly claim the listener address.

• A health probe for the SQL Server port
• A load-balancing rule using the listener port
• Floating IP enabled on that rule

• A hypervisor allows multiple virtual machines to run on one physical server.
• Each VM can have its own operating system, so the customer can consolidate Windows, Linux, and Unix servers.
• A Type 2 hypervisor runs on a host operating system and can be deployed on local hardware, helping address data privacy and avoiding ongoing public-cloud charges.

• Containers share the host operating system’s kernel.
• They are well suited to consolidating applications, but they generally cannot independently run a mix of unrelated kernels such as Windows, Linux, and Unix on one host.

• A local network gateway represents an on-premises network—its address space and VPN device information—for an Azure Site-to-Site VPN connection.
• It does not control which connection types are allowed between Azure web servers and database servers.
• It is also unnecessary when both server groups are in the same Azure virtual network.

• 10 minutes have elapsed, or
• 20 MB of accounting data has accumulated

• Least privilege: Limits users to only the access necessary for their job.
• Background checks: Help identify potentially risky individuals before employment.
• Separation of duties: Ensures that one person cannot complete a sensitive process alone, reducing fraud and abuse.

• Install unauthorized or unapproved applications
• Access system areas normally restricted
• Add features unavailable in the default software
• Modify the device’s operating system

• SQL injection (SQLi): Attacks databases by inserting malicious SQL commands.
• Cross-site scripting (XSS): Injects malicious scripts into web pages viewed by users.
• Sideloading: Installs an application from outside the official app store, but it does not necessarily remove the phone’s operating-system restrictions.