ISC2 ISSMP Exam Prep
Information Systems Security Management Professional (Page 13 )

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.

• A) configure matching hold and delay timers

• B) configure matching key-strings

• C) configure matching priority values

• D) configure unique virtual IP addresses

• 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.

• Answer: False. Agents and managers CAN create knowledge articles from Community questions.

• Why: In ServiceNow, a Community question can be converted into a Knowledge article using the Create Knowledge (or Convert to Knowledge) action. This allows what customers asked to become a reusable article for others.

• How it works (high level):

• Permissions: This ability depends on having the right roles/permissions (e.g., agents or knowledge managers). If you don’t see the option, check your role assignments or the knowledge-management configuration.

• Quick take: If a question in Community is valuable for others, a trained agent can turn it into a Knowledge article, making it available for self-service.

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.

• 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.

• Use a field on Account to show the aggregated yearly shipments (a Roll-Up Summary).
• A Master-Detail relationship between Shipment and Account is required for Roll-Up Summary to work (and to ensure access is governed by the parent Account).
• OWD and the relationship type determine what users can see. If you want to restrict shipment-level access while still showing a summary on Account, Private OWD on Shipment plus Master-Detail helps, because access to shipments is controlled by the Account record.

• A (Public OWD on Shipment with Process Builder and a Lookup to Account): Not ideal. Public access would expose shipments broadly, and a lookup cannot support a built-in roll-up summary.
• B (Private OWD on Shipment, Roll-Up Summary, Master-Detail to Account): Best answer. Private shipments, but because of Master-Detail, access and the roll-up are tied to the Account. The Account can show the yearly total via a Roll-Up Summary field.
• C (Controlled by Parent on Shipment, Trigger, Master-Detail): Master-Detail is correct, but using a trigger is unnecessary for a straightforward roll-up; roll-ups are the standard, maintainable solution.
• D (Private OWD on Shipment, Trigger, Lookup to Account): More complex and not as efficient; no automatic roll-up, and lookup breaks the ease of summarizing by Account.

• 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.

• The question asks why some tasks appear locked in the HR Guided Setup Module’s Task view.
• The options are:

• C) They require other tasks to be completed first. In guided setup flows, tasks are usually gated by prerequisites to ensure proper sequencing and data/configuration dependencies. You typically unlock a task only after the necessary preceding tasks are finished.

• A) Elevated roles can restrict access in some contexts, but guided setup tasks are commonly gated by prerequisites rather than solely by role.
• B) Deprecation isn’t the general pattern for “locked” tasks in the guided setup.
• D) A plugin activation could unlock certain features, but the common gating mechanism is task dependencies, not plugin state.

• The page shows the answer as D, but based on how HR Guided Setup usually works, the more accurate reason is typically C (prerequisites). If you’re studying, treat C as the conceptual answer and be aware the listed key may be incorrect. If you want, I can walk through each option in more detail.

• On-prem you generalize and capture the VM as a VHD.
• Upload the VHD to Azure with Add-AzVhd.
• Register the VHD as an image in Azure with Add-AzImage (or New-AzImage) so it appears as a selectable image.
• Create new VMs from that image (e.g., with New-AzVM -Image ...).

• Assign users or their team an appropriate security role.
• Ensure the role has the required table privileges, such as read, create, write, and append.
• Share the app with that security role in the app designer.

• Dynamics administration center: Used for environment and service administration, not routine app access configuration.
• Manage Roles: Not the specific Dataverse area used to define app and data permissions.
• Security Roles: Define what users can access and which operations they can perform.

• A Storage Gateway File Gateway provides an on-premises NFS/SMB file share that's backed by objects in S3. This is exactly what you need to migrate an NFS workload: applications continue using NFS, while the actual data moves to and is stored in S3.
• It can cache frequently accessed data locally for performance, while uploads go to an S3 bucket.
• Why the other options aren’t suitable:

• Answer: D) Shadow IT

• Why: Shadow IT is when employees use unsanctioned tools or bypass IT controls (like the VPN) to access services, often without IT oversight. It’s an internal behavior, not an external attacker’s activity.

• Not these:

• Quick note: This creates risk due to lack of visibility and control. Mitigations include a defined approved-tools list, enforcing VPN usage, device management, and continuous monitoring.

• 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.

• What it says: you can add a cost when you adjust inventory, and that cost is posted automatically to a specific GL account.
• Reality: yes, you can adjust both quantity and value via an inventory adjustment journal. The cost on the journal line affects the inventory value.

• The general ledger postings are not arbitrary. the actual accounts used are determined by your item posting group and the system’s posting definitions. In practice, the adjustment debits/credits the appropriate inventory-related accounts (e.g., Inventory asset and a related offset such as an adjustment or COGS account) based on configuration.
• So, the cost change does not go to a single “manual” GL account you pick per line unless your posting setup maps to that account.

• The concept is true (you can adjust cost and have GL impact), but the claim that it posts to a single, specific GL account is oversimplified—the accounts come from your posting configuration.

• Developed and maintained independently
• Deployed without changing the entire application
• Scaled separately based on demand
• More resilient when another service has problems

• A: Functional testing is useful, but it is not the main practice described.
• B: Automation helps deployment, but the scenario focuses on architectural decomposition.
• C: Multiple locations improve availability, not application modularity.

• The correct answer is D: All of the above.

• Snowflake Web Interface (UI): You can create and manage Virtual Warehouses from the UI (resize, suspend/resume settings, etc.).
• SQL commands: You can create and alter warehouses with DDL like CREATE WAREHOUSE and ALTER WAREHOUSE.
• Data integration tools: ETL/ELT tools can create/manage warehouses by connecting to Snowflake and issuing the appropriate commands or using their config to specify a warehouse.

• 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.

• The mapping and resolution of endpoint identities (EIDs) to their location (RLOCs) in an SD-Access fabric is handled by the control plane using the LISP protocol.
• Why not the others:

• 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.

• The Scrum Guide specifies four required events: Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective. These events enable transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
• The other items listed are not mandatory under Scrum:

• Improve QA testing efficiency: A prototype may help discover defects early, but that is not its greatest benefit.
• Decrease time allocated for user testing and review: Prototyping usually requires additional user involvement and review, not less.
• Minimize scope changes: Prototypes can actually reveal new requirements or cause scope changes. However, discovering those changes early is beneficial.

• Automation handles repetitive tasks, and orchestration coordinates responses across tools (SIEM, SOAR, EDR, etc.).
• This allows the security team to process more events with the same number of people, improving throughput and response times.
• Analysts can focus on more complex tasks like investigation and threat hunting instead of manual triage.

• It increases complexity: automation can reduce complexity when well-implemented; complexity is not the main intended benefit.
• It removes technical debt: automation/OR focuses on current incident response efficiency, not primarily on architectural debt.
• It adds additional guard rails: governance is important but not the core value of automation/orchestration within a SIEM.

• The missing piece is to configure an event source mapping between the DynamoDB stream and the Lambda function. Enabling DynamoDB Streams alone doesn’t trigger the function—you must wire the stream to Lambda so events invoke the function.
• Note that changing StreamViewType (A) only affects what data is delivered (e.g., NEW_IMAGE) and does not trigger invocations. Options C and D are not required for invocation: you don’t need SNS, and increasing the timeout won’t enable the trigger.

• Incidents & alerts — see how the phishing activity was detected, correlated, and investigated.
• Threat Explorer — search for the malicious messages, recipients, URLs, attachments, and campaign activity.
• Email and collaboration reports — assess how many users or messages were affected.
• Remediation details — verify whether messages were quarantined, removed, or otherwise contained.

• Microsoft 365 admin center — general tenant administration.
• Microsoft Entra admin center — identity and access management.
• Exchange admin center — mail-flow and Exchange configuration, rather than full phishing-incident investigation.

• The target API uses HTTPS, so Mule must validate the server’s TLS certificate.
• The TLS configuration is set to None, meaning no custom truststore is configured.
• Mule therefore uses the JRE’s default truststore to determine whether the target certificate is trusted.
• If the issuing CA certificate is in that truststore, the TLS handshake can succeed.
• If it is absent—or the certificate is otherwise invalid—the request fails with a TLS/handshake error.

• 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:

• The correct answer is “Think and work holistically” (Option B).

• Focus on value: ensures outcomes matter to stakeholders, but isn’t specifically about end-to-end delivery.
• Optimize and automate: about efficiency and performance, not the holistic view.
• Collaborate and promote visibility: about teamwork and sharing information, not the end-to-end scope.

• The standard Enterprise Architecture domains are: Business, Data, Application, Technology (BDAT).

• A: Business, strategy, application and technology — includes business and application/tech but uses “strategy” instead of data.
• B: Zachman, TOGAF, Cobit, and Heath architectures — names frameworks, not domains.
• C: Business, data, infrastructure and technology — has business, data, and technology; lacks a distinct application domain (uses “infrastructure” instead).
• D: Process, database, software and technology — covers data (database), application (software), and technology, but omits business.

• The four BDAT domains (business, data, application, technology) is the conventional model you should study.
• None of the options perfectly lists all four BDAT domains. The closest are C (if you map infrastructure to technology) and D (data/application/technology but no business).

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.

• Network Security Groups (NSGs) control network traffic to and from Azure resources.
• By applying NSGs to the web tier and the database tier (subnets or NICs), you can:

• NSGs provide the necessary granularity (source/destination, port, protocol) to enforce the desired traffic patterns between tiers.
• For easier management you can use separate subnets for each tier or, optionally, use Application Security Groups to simplify rule management.

• S3 Versioning stores all versions of an object. If an object is overwritten or deleted, you can recover the previous version using its version ID.
• This protects against accidental deletion or overwriting because the original data remains accessible as an older version.
• How to enable:

• Practical notes:

• S3 Lifecycle rules: automate moving/expiring data, not specifically protection against deletion.
• S3 bucket policies: control access but don’t inherently preserve previous data.
• S3 server-side encryption: protects data at rest, not against deletion/overwrite.

• Storage accounts: storage1, storage2, and storage3
• Log Analytics workspace: Analytics3

• Azure Backup reports can send the AzureBackupReports diagnostic log to eligible storage accounts. The storage account’s subscription and region do not have to match the Recovery Services vault, so all three listed storage accounts are valid.
• The Log Analytics workspace must be in the same region as the Recovery Services vault for this configuration. Vault1 and Analytics3 are both in West Europe, making Analytics3 the valid workspace.

• The correct answer is A: CCTV recordings are not regularly reviewed.

• CCTV is a monitoring/control mechanism. If recordings aren’t reviewed, security events (break-ins, policy violations, equipment tampering) can go undetected and unaddressed.
• Regular review is essential for deterrence, incident response, and forensic evidence. Without it, the entire CCTV control provides little value.

• B (records deleted after one year) affects forensic availability, but it’s a data-retention issue rather than the ongoing effectiveness of the surveillance program.
• C (footage not recorded 24x7) creates gaps in coverage, which is a concern, but regular review of available footage still supports detection; 24x7 coverage is a separate policy/perimeter issue.
• D (cameras not in break rooms) is more about privacy and space planning than core data-center security monitoring.

• Answer: D. Select an IdP

• Why: To reduce the number of credentials across multiple SaaS apps, implement a single sign-on approach via an Identity Provider. The first step is choosing the IdP; once selected, you can enable SAML (A) or OAuth as supported by apps. Password vaulting (C) is not a true SSO solution, and B is not the foundational step.

• Server — provides services or resources
• Endpoint — a user device connected to the network
• Ethernet — a networking technology, not a filtering device
• Firewall — filters and controls traffic

• Why: A multi-modal embedding model maps both text and images into a shared vector space, enabling cross-modal similarity and retrieval (e.g., find images matching a text query or text matching an image).

• What it does: Enables efficient similarity search using a vector database or nearest-neighbor indexing.

• Why the other options aren’t suitable:

• Quick implementation note: you’d typically pair the embeddings with a vector store (e.g., ANN index) and possibly fine-tune on domain data for better alignment across modalities.

• 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.

• This is a lookup relationship. Salesforce does not cascade access from a child (Opportunity) to its parent (Account) via implicit sharing.
• To view the Account, the user must have explicit access to the Account (via its OWD/sharing, or object permissions).

• The user has Read/View (or higher) on Account via profile/permission set.
• Manual sharing or a sharing rule grants that Account to the user.
• The Account is exposed by a broader permission like View All/Modify All on Account.
• Role hierarchy with Grant Access Using Hierarchies could grant access to Accounts owned by others, if applicable.

• 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.

• Geo-redundant storage (GRS) replicates data to a secondary Azure region, but the secondary copy is normally unavailable for read access.
• RA-GRS provides geo-replication and read-only access to the secondary region, satisfying all requirements.
• Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) replicates data across availability zones within the same Azure region, not separate geographic regions.
• Locally redundant storage (LRS) keeps copies within a single datacenter or region and does not provide geographic resiliency.

• 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.

• Amazon Kendra is a managed enterprise search service that can index content stored in S3 and support natural-language queries to find text inside documents (PDFs, Word files, etc.).

• Rekognition analyzes images/videos, not document text search.
• Polly is a text-to-speech service.
• Lex is a chatbot service.

• Create a Kendra index.
• Add a data source of type S3 and point it to your bucket (with an IAM role that allows access).
• Configure/document conversion if needed, then index the data.
• Use the Kendra API or console to run natural-language queries against your indexed documents.

• Cross-account access is typically implemented with an IAM role. You create a role in the target account (where the resources live) and configure a trust policy that allows principals from the source account to assume that role.
• Users in the source account then assume the role (via Switch Role in the console or STS:AssumeRole) and receive temporary credentials with the role’s permissions to access the resources.

• IAM group: Groups exist inside a single account; they don’t grant cross-account access.
• IAM tag: Tags are metadata and do not grant access.
• IAM Access Analyzer: It analyzes and identifies public or cross-account access but does not grant access itself.

• 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.

• D. Provide public endpoints to store and retrieve data

• E. Manage the infrastructure layer and the operating system

• Classifying data
• Configuring access permissions, such as IAM policies
• Selecting or configuring available encryption options, depending on the requirement

• Event | search "error"
• Event | where EventType == "error"
• search in (Event) "error"

• The 99.99% availability SLA for VMs is achieved when you run VMs across two or more Availability Zones.
• Two VMs in a single Availability Zone do not meet the 99.99% target (their SLA is lower, e.g., around 99.95% or less depending on configuration).

• Deploy at least two VMs across two different Availability Zones (one VM in each zone, or both in two zones with a load balancer).
• This provides the required zone redundancy and the 99.99% SLA.

• Why: Table.Profile returns a per-column profile that includes statistics such as count, null count, distinct count, and standard deviation. It also provides min/max and average where applicable, which matches the requested metrics (Count, Average, Null count, Distinct count, Standard deviation).
• Syntax: Table.Profile(table as table, optional additionalAggregates as nullable list) as table
• How it helps: After running Table.Profile on your table, you can extract the per-column stats you need and display them in your semantic model or report.

• The connecting host keeps the private key securely.
• The destination host stores the corresponding public key in its authorized keys.
• Authentication can occur without a person entering credentials each time.
• SSH also provides encrypted communication and host authentication.

• Biometric: Requires a human user and is difficult to automate.
• Smart card: Often requires user interaction or card access.
• Hard-coded password: Unsafe because passwords stored in scripts or applications can be exposed, reused, or difficult to manage securely.