USMLE STEP2 Exam Prep
Step2 (Page 15 )

1. Convert text and images into numerical embeddings.
2. Store or compare those embeddings.
3. Retrieve the most semantically similar items.

• Embedding model: Best for similarity search and retrieval.
• Generation model: Best for producing new text or other content from multimodal input.

• B. Versioned configuration files — Infrastructure is defined in machine-readable files and tracked in version control, allowing repeatable provisioning and change history.
• D. Docker files — Assuming “Doctor files” is a typo for Dockerfiles, a Dockerfile declaratively defines how to build a container image and is commonly considered infrastructure/configuration as code.

• A. Cloned virtual machine images — These are prebuilt infrastructure artifacts, but cloning an image is not itself a code-based infrastructure definition.
• C. Change management database records — A CMDB records information about infrastructure; it does not define or provision that infrastructure.

• netstat: Shows local network connections and listening ports, but not which WAN path carries the traffic.
• nslookup: Resolves domain names to IP addresses.
• ping: Tests reachability and latency but does not show the route.

• Leaf switches provide access ports for servers, users, and other devices.
• Spine switches provide the backbone between leaf switches.
• Every leaf switch connects to every spine switch, creating a predictable, full-mesh fabric between the two layers.
• Leaf switches do not connect directly to other leaf switches, and spine switches do not connect directly to other spine switches.

• A: Adding both a spine and leaf is unnecessary for simply adding access ports.
• B: It focuses on uplink speed, not the scalable topology.
• D: A single spine connection creates a bottleneck and a single point of failure.

• A. IDS attack signatures: An IDS primarily detects suspicious network activity and usually does not provide dedicated file-upload malware scanning. It is generally detective rather than preventive.
• C. Load balancer: Distributes traffic among servers and improves availability; it does not inspect documents for malware.
• D. WAF: Helps block web-application attacks such as SQL injection, command injection, and XSS. Although a WAF may inspect upload requests, malware detection in PDF files is more directly addressed by antivirus or content-scanning functionality.

• Users logging in more frequently than average
• Logins occurring during non-business hours
• Patterns that may indicate compromised credentials or suspicious access

• Login History: Shows individual login attempts and basic details, but does not provide behavioral analysis or averages.
• Login Inspector: Used to troubleshoot or inspect a specific login attempt, rather than analyze organization-wide patterns.
• Login Report: May provide reportable login information, but it is not the specialized tool for forensic behavioral analysis.

• Identity provider (IdP): Authenticates users and asserts their identity.
• Service provider (SP): The application being accessed—in this case, Salesforce/the employee portal.
• Identity store: A directory that stores user identities, such as Active Directory.
• Authentication store: A system used to validate credentials.

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

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

• Low usage during the first three weeks
• Very high usage during the last week

• High availability: Keeps services running despite failures.
• High latency: Means slow response times; it is not a benefit.
• Load balancing: Distributes traffic across resources but does not specifically address scaling resources up and down.

• Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates define the virtual machines and related Azure resources declaratively. You can deploy the same template repeatedly, ensuring consistent VM sizes, networking, storage, extensions, and other infrastructure settings.

• PowerShell DSC extension applies and maintains the required Windows configuration inside each VM. DSC is state-based: if a setting changes or becomes incorrect, DSC can bring it back to the desired configuration.

• Azure Pipelines deployment groups organize deployment targets, but they do not primarily enforce ongoing VM configuration.
• Custom Script Extension runs setup scripts, but it is generally less maintainable and does not continuously enforce configuration like DSC.
• Pipeline stage templates reuse pipeline workflow definitions; they do not configure the VMs themselves.

• Create and manage approved IT services as products
• Control which users can deploy those products
• Apply governance, permissions, and constraints
• Use and manage infrastructure-as-code templates, such as AWS CloudFormation templates

• AWS Resource Explorer: Helps find and browse AWS resources; it does not govern IaC deployments.
• AWS Organizations: Manages accounts, consolidated billing, and organization-wide policies.
• AWS Systems Manager: Provides operational management, such as patching, automation, and parameter storage, but it is not primarily used to catalog and govern IaC-based service deployments.

• Training or coaching
• Mentoring
• Additional support or resources
• Targeted performance improvement plans

• A: Recognition may be appropriate, but awards do not address identified gaps.
• C: Rotating schedules does not necessarily improve the specific competencies that are missing.
• D: Assessment results should be handled sensitively, but keeping them entirely private prevents useful feedback and development discussions.

• Restarting the device: May fix software glitches, but would not usually make cable orientation matter.
• Swollen battery: A safety concern, but it would not typically cause recognition only in one cable orientation.
• Failing cable: Possible, but less likely because the problem occurs with this particular device and not other devices of the same type.

• Blue team: Defends systems, monitors activity, and responds to attacks.
• Purple team: Coordinates red- and blue-team activities to improve defenses.
• White team: Oversees or manages the exercise, including rules and scope.

• Two-part tariff pricing: $10 per unit
• Dual pricing: $20 per unit

Two-part tariff pricing

Dual pricing

• Division X, the seller, is credited with the market price: \(\$20\)
• Division Y, the buyer, is charged the marginal cost: \(\$10\)

• Espionage: Stealing information for intelligence or competitive purposes.
• Data exfiltration: Unauthorized removal or transfer of data.
• Nation-state attack: A sophisticated attack sponsored by a government.
• Shadow IT: Unapproved technology or access methods used by employees.

• VM CPU, memory, disk, and network usage
• Storage transactions and latency
• App Service response time
• Database DTU or CPU utilization

• Azure Traffic Analytics analyzes network traffic flows and security patterns; it is not the general infrastructure metrics tool.
• Azure Activity Log records subscription-level control-plane operations, such as resource creation, deletion, or configuration changes.
• Azure Advisor provides recommendations about cost, security, reliability, performance, and operational excellence, but it is not the primary tool for investigating live metrics.

• principal represents the source or initiating system.
• principal.port is the source port.
• target represents the destination system.
• target.port is the destination port.

text 
principal.port = 5555

• network.ApplicationProtocol = HTTP identifies HTTP traffic but not the backdoor specifically.
• target.port = 5555 finds traffic going to port 5555, rather than originating from it.
• network.ip_protocol = TCP is too broad because many services use TCP.

• CSIRT: A Computer Security Incident Response Team that handles and coordinates incident response.
• CVSS: A scoring system used to rate the severity of vulnerabilities.
• SOAR: Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response technology used to automate security workflows.

• A: My Domain is required for many SSO configurations, but if SSO works, it is unlikely to be the cause of losing the target record.
• B: HTTP-POST is a valid SAML binding and does not inherently prevent redirection.
• D: An incorrect Federation ID generally causes authentication or user-matching failure—not successful login to the home page.

1. Clear principles and boundaries — Employees have freedom, but decisions must remain within clear organizational values, policies and limits.
2. High degree of freedom — Managers are trusted to make decisions rather than seeking continual approval from senior management.
3. Frontline customer responsibility — Customer-facing managers should be empowered to manage customer relationships and respond quickly to needs.
4. Transparent and ethical information — Information should be openly available and used honestly, supporting trust and informed decision-making.

• Accept: Acknowledging the risk without taking additional action.
• Transfer: Shifting the risk’s impact to a third party, such as through insurance or outsourcing.
• Mitigate: Reducing the likelihood or impact of the risk through security controls.
• Avoid: Eliminating the activity or process that creates the risk.

• Active-active routers: Provide redundant Internet connections/devices. Both can operate, so traffic can fail over or be load-balanced.
• Active-active firewalls: Avoid a single firewall becoming a failure point while maintaining security inspection.
• Load balancers: Distribute requests across multiple web servers. If one server fails, traffic can go to the other.
• Redundant power supplies: A server with separate power supplies should connect to independent power sources or circuits.
• UPS A and UPS B: Provide backup power and redundancy. Ideally, each power supply is connected to a different UPS.
• SONET ring: A ring topology provides alternate paths if a fiber link or segment fails.

• 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.

• 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.

• You can configure different pre-shared keys for different device groups.
• All cameras could use one key.
• All scanners could use another key.
• Each key can be associated with an appropriate role or access policy.

• 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.

• Portfolio definition cycle — establishes and maintains the portfolio strategy, objectives, and management framework.
• Portfolio delivery cycle — coordinates and monitors the delivery of change initiatives, ensuring the portfolio remains aligned with strategic objectives and delivers value.

• Practice — a structured area of portfolio management activity, such as risk management or resource management.
• Technique — a method used to perform an activity; it is not the term for portfolio delivery itself.
• Principle — a guiding rule for effective portfolio management.

• DB1 (500 TB): Azure Data Box Heavy

• Virtual machines: Azure Migrate

• Tactics: The attacker’s overall goal, such as gaining persistence or exfiltrating data
• Techniques: The methods used to achieve that goal
• Procedures: The specific implementation or sequence of actions

• IP addresses and hash values: Useful indicators, but they can change quickly.
• Indicators of compromise: TTPs may help identify IOCs, but their main value is describing behavior.
• Tools: Attackers can replace tools or use legitimate administrative utilities.

• 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.

• Link-local — FE80::/10; valid only on the local link/subnet and not routed by routers.
• Multicast — FF00::/8; identifies a group of interfaces rather than a private address range.
• Global unicast — 2000::/3; publicly routable IPv6 addressing.

• The type of change: standard, normal, or emergency
• The risk, impact, and complexity
• The change model being used

• A standard change may be pre-authorized through its change model.
• A normal change may require assessment and approval by an appropriate change authority.
• An emergency change may be authorized by an emergency change authority, often using an expedited process.

• Change authorities are not only needed for emergency changes.
• They are not assigned only when a change is deployed.
• They are not only required for normal changes.

• Data loss prevention (DLP): Helps detect or prevent unauthorized data transfers, but does not directly protect data on a stolen, powered-off laptop.
• Operating system hardening: Reduces vulnerabilities and attack surface, but does not adequately protect stored data if the device is stolen.
• Boot security: Helps prevent unauthorized operating systems or boot media from loading. It supports device security but is not the primary solution for protecting the data itself.

• Owner, Contributor, and Network Contributor provide sufficient management permissions.
• Reader can view Traffic Analytics data but cannot enable or configure it.

• Resources that do not need internet access should remain on private network segments.
• Internet-facing access should be restricted to systems that require it.
• Access should be explicitly allowed rather than broadly exposed.

• A: A single administrator with access to core functions may violate least privilege if that access is broader than necessary.
• B: Inspecting traffic supports monitoring and defense, but does not itself limit privileges.
• C: Updating routing configurations supports availability and connectivity, not least privilege.

• Import: Copies data into the Power BI model. It requires scheduled or manual refresh, so it may not meet the two-minute requirement.
• Live connection: Connects to an existing Power BI semantic model or Analysis Services model; it is not the appropriate choice for connecting directly to the Azure SQL database in this scenario.

• Issuer: Identifies the party issuing a SAML message—usually the identity provider in the assertion. It is not the Salesforce-specific identifier the architect should provide for differentiating Salesforce.
• Identity Provider Login URL: The endpoint where users are sent to authenticate.
• SAML identity location: Determines where the user identity is found in the SAML assertion, such as the subject or an attribute.

• Existing measures
• Relationships
• Calculated columns
• Tables and fields
• Existing transformations in the model

• SharePoint folder: Reconnects to the source files. You would likely need to recreate the model and measures.
• Power BI dataflows: Primarily provide reusable data preparation and storage, but they do not automatically provide the existing semantic model and measures.
• Excel workbook: Connects directly to the source file and would also require rebuilding the model and measures.

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

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

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Customers may boycott V’s products.
• Supermarket customers may stop buying from V.
• Investors may view V as having higher legal, ethical and reputational risk.
• V could face fines, lawsuits, contract losses and higher costs.
• Expected future profits may fall.

• An Adj-SID does not necessarily need manual configuration.
• It can often be dynamically allocated by the router, although manual configuration may also be possible.
• The adjacency information is advertised through the IGP, such as IS-IS or OSPF.

• It is identified by an Adj-SID.
• It represents a particular adjacency of a node.
• Its meaning is generally local to the advertising node; unlike a Node-SID, it is not a globally reusable instruction across the network.

• Discovers sensitive data in Amazon S3 buckets
• Uses machine learning and pattern matching to identify data such as personally identifiable information (PII)
• Helps assess S3 security and privacy risks
• Generates findings for potentially sensitive or exposed data

• Amazon Detective: Investigates security findings and performs root-cause analysis.
• Amazon GuardDuty: Detects threats and suspicious activity across AWS accounts and workloads.
• AWS IAM Access Analyzer: Identifies resources that are accessible from outside their intended trust zone, such as publicly accessible S3 buckets.

• Accept: Acknowledging the risk without taking additional action.
• Mitigate: Reducing the likelihood or impact through controls, such as patching or employee training.
• Avoid: Eliminating the activity or condition that creates the risk.
• Transfer: Shifting the consequences—usually financial—to another party, such as an insurer.

• SharePoint search: Finds documents based on search terms, but it does not reliably identify every 32-character account number for DLP enforcement.
• A hunting query in Microsoft 365 Defender: Used for security investigations, not for defining sensitive content in a DLP policy.
• Azure Information Protection: Uses classification and labeling; it does not automatically identify this specific account-number pattern unless configured with a matching sensitive information type.
• RegEx pattern matching: Best suited for structured identifiers with a known format, such as account numbers, employee IDs, or policy numbers.

• VLAN 10 for data
• VLAN 20 for voice

• A: Describes physical trunking or logical switch ports, not an SVI.
• B: An SVI can provide management access, but that is only one use—not the best description here.
• D: SVI use is not related to running out of physical ports.