Cisco 300-740 - Designing and Implementing Secure Cloud Access for Users and Endpoints (SCAZT)

Rule 1 is a “deny all” rule placed at the top of the access control policy. Because Cisco firewalls process rules sequentially from top to bottom, Rule 1 is blocking all traffic—including RDP (Rule 2) and HTTPS (Rule 3). To allow specific traffic, the “deny all” catch-all rule should be placed last so that the specific allow rules are evaluated first.

SCAZT Section 3 (Network and Cloud Security, Pages 69–74) discusses rule hierarchy and clearly states that allow rules must precede any general deny policies to ensure intended traffic is matched correctly. This best practice is essential when dealing with multi-cloud access control.

The Secure Cloud Analytics alert indicates suspicious heartbeat-based connections from an internal server (ip-10-201-0-16) to multiple suspicious IPs over UDP/port 53 (DNS). This behavior suggests command-and-control (C2) activity or botnet communications.

B: Alerting the incident response (IR) team is a critical next step in escalating a verified threat as per SCAZT Section 6 (Threat Response, Pages 114–117).

D: Blocking the identified malicious IPs on perimeter firewalls or network access control devices is an appropriate containment step to disrupt communication.

Reinstallation (A/E) is premature without a full forensic investigation. Validating IDS logs (C) is useful but not immediate response-focused compared to actions B and D.

Cisco Telemetry Broker (CTB) is designed to act as an intermediary that filters, enriches, and routes telemetry data—such as NetFlow, Syslog, and SNMP—across various tools. It optimizes resource usage by preventing overload and ensures only relevant telemetry is forwarded to appropriate analytics platforms.

The SCAZT guide (Section 5: Visibility and Assurance, Pages 93–95) describes CTB’s role in applying filters and transformations to raw telemetry data to enhance visibility and reduce noise.

The policy includes three rules under the Apps scope. Rule #1 allows HR to communicate with IT on TCP port 23 (Telnet), but it is marked as “Default.” Rule #2 denies the same HR-to-IT Telnet traffic and is marked as “Absolute,” which takes precedence over any default rule. In Cisco Secure Workload (Tetration), an “Absolute” rule will override both “Default” and inherited rules. Therefore, even though there’s an allow in Rule #1, the deny in Rule #2 prevents HR from using Telnet to connect to IT.

The Cisco SAFE architecture uses the concept of Secure Domains as foundational blocks. These domains represent areas of the network (e.g., Branch, Data Center, Cloud, Edge) that require specific security controls. Each domain aligns with controls across visibility, segmentation, threat protection, and identity services.

In Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC), access control policies are processed top-down—meaning the first matching rule is applied, and the remaining are ignored. Based on the exhibit, Rule 4 (Access Controlled Groups) is likely being shadowed by a broader rule above it that permits web traffic. To ensure restricted users are denied access to mobile phone shopping categories, Rule 4 must be moved to the top of the rule hierarchy.

Cisco SCAZT (Section 5: Visibility and Assurance, Pages 94–97) describes best practices for rule ordering and inspection logic. Moving the specific block rule (Rule 4) higher ensures it's enforced before general allow rules are evaluated.

The Zero Trust model relies on the principle of "never trust, always verify" and includes continuous verification based on real-time data. According to SCAZT Section 1 (Cloud Security Architecture, Pages 14–17), user and device behavior are key elements for continuous verification. Behavioral analytics evaluates deviations from typical activity, such as time of login, geolocation, access frequency, and resource usage to adapt trust levels dynamically. This is central to adaptive access control and risk-based authentication.

To integrate Cisco Webex with Duo SSO using the Duo Access Gateway, the engineer must:

E: Add Cisco Webex as a new SAML application to Duo.

C: Configure the Webex application settings, including Entity ID, Assertion Consumer Service URL, and signing requirements.

Uploading XML metadata (Option A) is typically used when importing IdP settings, not for Duo application configuration. JSON (Option B) is not used in SAML-based Duo app configurations.

The Secure Cloud Analytics alert log shows multiple SSH connections on port 22 from diverse and geographically distributed IP addresses targeting a single GCP instance (www-gcp-east-4c). According to the Cloud Analytics alert logic described in SCAZT (Section 6: Threat Response, Pages 113–116), this behavior indicates “Geographically Unusual Remote Access.” It typically triggers when a host receives connections from countries not normally associated with the network’s usage profile. This is often linked to reconnaissance or brute-force SSH attempts.