USMLE STEP2 Exam Prep
Step2 (Page 45 )

• If the hashes match, the software has likely not changed.
• If they differ, the software was modified or corrupted.

• Encryption: Protects confidentiality by making data unreadable; it does not primarily verify that software was unchanged.
• Baselines: Establish expected configurations or states, but hashing is the specific method for checking file integrity.
• Tokenization: Replaces sensitive data with non-sensitive tokens and is unrelated to software integrity.

• User-generated content: precisa ser coletado, filtrado, anonimizado e rotulado.
• Moderation logs: podem conter dados inconsistentes, informações pessoais e decisões que precisam ser revisadas.
• Content moderation guidelines: são regras ou orientações, não dados diretamente utilizáveis para medir o comportamento do modelo.

• LastName: Required.
• FirstName: Optional.
• AccountId: Optional; a Contact may be associated with an Account later or remain private, depending on organization settings.
• Name: A compound display field made from first and last name; it isn’t entered as a separate field.

• Allow only approved MAC addresses
• Limit the number of learned addresses
• Shut down or restrict a port when a violation occurs

• Load balancer: Distributes application traffic; it does not protect switch MAC tables.
• IPS: May detect some attack traffic, but it is not the direct control for limiting MAC addresses on switch ports.
• NGFW: Filters routed network traffic, while this attack targets Layer 2 switch behavior.

• A. Remove rows where Sales[Status] is Canceled

• E. Remove Sales[Canceled Date]

• B: Removing Sales_Date would remove information users need—the date portion.
• C: Changing Delivery_Time to Integer could alter its meaning or precision and is not necessarily safe.
• D: Splitting the date/time column creates additional columns rather than simply removing unnecessary data.

• The ERSPAN source is the device or interface whose traffic is being copied.
• The ERSPAN destination is the device receiving the encapsulated copy and forwarding it to the traffic analyzer.
• The local monitor session number is locally significant. Therefore, the source and destination do not need matching session IDs such as 47 or 48.
• The erspan-id identifies the ERSPAN stream and must correspond between the source and destination configuration.

• On-premises resources, such as an existing database
• Cloud resources, such as Azure services or virtual machines
• Connectivity that allows the application to use both environments

• Public cloud: resources are entirely provided through a public cloud provider.
• Private cloud: resources are dedicated to one organization, typically on-premises or privately hosted.

• NAT traversal: Helps WAN Edge, vSmart, and vManage devices discover how to reach one another through NAT.
• Initial orchestration: Authenticates and introduces devices when they first join the SD-WAN fabric.
• Connection brokering: Provides information that allows devices to form their required control connections, after which the vBond is generally not in the data path.

• WAN Edge: Forwards user traffic and forms secure tunnels.
• vSmart: Controls the overlay control plane and distributes routes and policies.
• vManage: Provides centralized management, configuration, and monitoring.

• MTTC: Time required to contain or limit the incident’s impact — best match.
• MTTR: Time required to remediate or recover from the incident; this may include eradication, restoration, and cleanup, which goes beyond merely stopping spread.
• MTTD: How long it takes to discover the incident.
• MTBF: Average time between failures, generally a reliability metric.

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

• SAS (Serial Attached SCSI):

• SSD (solid-state drive):

• Undefined or blank values
• Relationship matching problems
• Duplicate or conflicting keys
• Errors when querying the model

• Normalize all values to upper- or lowercase in the source query or Power Query.
• Add an index or surrogate key when values that differ only by case must remain distinct.

• Future costs — Only costs occurring in the future can be affected by the investment decision. Past costs are sunk and irrelevant.
• Incremental costs — These are additional costs caused by choosing the investment. They are relevant because they differ between alternatives.
• Cash flows — Capital investment decisions are based on future cash inflows and outflows, usually discounted to present value.

• Committed costs have already been agreed or incurred and generally cannot be changed by the decision.
• Unavoidable costs will arise regardless of which option is selected, so they do not affect the choice.

• 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.

• Determine the project budget — Budget development is a separate cost-management activity.
• Develop a communication plan — This belongs to project communications planning, not schedule completion.
• Establish baselines — Baselines are created after the schedule and related plans have been developed and approved. They formally capture the approved plan.

• Business
• People
• Governance
• Platform
• Security
• Operations

• Sustainability
• Performance efficiency
• Reliability

• STIX: A standardized format for exchanging cyber-threat intelligence.
• OVAL: A language and framework for describing and assessing system vulnerabilities and configuration issues.
• Threat intelligence feed: Provides current indicators or threat information, but is not specifically a reference for common application exploitation techniques.
• CVE: A catalog of publicly disclosed vulnerabilities, identified by unique CVE numbers.

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.

• transform() — modifies every element in an array
• filter() — keeps elements matching a condition
• exists() — checks whether any element matches
• aggregate() — reduces array elements to one result

sql 
SELECT transform(scores, x -> x * 2) 
FROM student_scores;

• A is incorrect because higher-order functions are mainly useful for nested or complex data.
• B is incorrect because they do not convert logic into Python.
• D is incorrect because their purpose is not to fix slow built-in functions, but to process arrays or maps with custom logic.

• 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.

• Row counts
• Minimum and maximum values for columns
• Distinct-value information
• Other characteristics used for optimization

• 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.

• Distinct values = 69

• Unique values = 4

• 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.

• D — Value analysis: Correct. It examines an existing product to identify ways of reducing its cost while still providing the required functions, quality and reliability.
• E — Kaizen costing: Correct. It involves making continuous, small improvements and cost reductions while the product is already in production.

• Functional analysis: It is not limited to minimizing the cost of the originally defined functions. It examines what functions are required and how they can be provided at the lowest overall cost.
• Value engineering: Usually applies to the design and development of a new product, rather than being a fundamental redesign of existing organisational processes. That description is closer to business process re-engineering.
• Target costing: The target cost is generally established during the product development stage, before production begins. It is not continuously reset while the product is in production.

• One physical NIC is active and carries traffic.
• Another NIC remains on standby.
• If the active uplink fails, traffic switches to the backup uplink.
• This provides redundancy without requiring special switch-side link aggregation configuration.

• Balance-SLB: Distributes traffic based on source load balancing; not the default.
• Balance-TCP: Uses dynamic TCP traffic balancing and generally requires appropriate network-switch configuration.
• No Uplink Bond: Incorrect because vs0 is normally configured with redundant uplinks.

• IKE (Internet Key Exchange) negotiates the IPsec security association, including:

• ESP (Encapsulating Security Payload) protects the data after negotiation by providing encryption and optionally authentication.
• AH provides authentication and integrity but does not encrypt traffic.
• TLS is used for protocols such as HTTPS, not for negotiating IPsec parameters.

• How quickly the vendor must respond to incidents or requests
• Availability or uptime requirements
• Resolution time targets
• Performance expectations and penalties for failing to meet them

• SOW (Statement of Work): Describes the work, deliverables, scope, and schedule.
• MOA (Memorandum of Agreement): Documents an agreement in which parties commit to specific responsibilities.
• MOU (Memorandum of Understanding): Records a general intention to cooperate; it may not be legally binding.

• The connected switch
• The switch’s port/interface
• Device and port descriptions
• Sometimes VLAN or management information

• IKE: Establishes security associations for IPsec VPNs.
• VLAN: Defines logical network segmentation; it does not identify a physical switch port.
• netstat: Displays local network connections and statistics, not the upstream switch and port.

• Data owners: Decide who should have access and approve the access rules.
• Business process owners: May help define business requirements, but normally do not enforce technical permissions.
• Security steering committee: Provides governance and direction; it does not manage individual access rights.
• Security administrators: Apply and enforce the approved access controls.

• B. Deploy to a SageMaker endpoint: This is needed for SageMaker-hosted models, not for a model intended to be used directly in Amazon Bedrock.
• C. Register with SageMaker Model Registry: SageMaker Model Registry is unrelated to invoking custom models in Bedrock.
• D. Grant access in Bedrock: Access permissions may be necessary, but they do not replace the required provisioned capacity.

• 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

1. Open the Offenses tab

1. Open the offense details

1. Review contributing events

1. Analyze the attack chain

1. Investigate the assets

1. Validate and respond