CompTIA SY0-601 - CompTIA Security+ Exam 2023

An SLA or service level agreement is a type of third-party risk management policy that defines the expectations and obligations between a service provider and a customer. An SLA typically includes metrics and standards for measuring the quality and performance of the service, as well as penalties or remedies for non-compliance. An SLA can also specify the reporting requirements for data breaches or other incidents that may affect the customer’s security or privacy.

A red-team test is a type of security assessment that simulates a real-world attack on an organization’s network, systems, applications, and people. The goal of a red-team test is to evaluate the organization’s security posture, identify vulnerabilities and gaps, and test the effectiveness of its detection and response capabilities. A red-team test is usually performed by a group of highly skilled security professionals who act as adversaries and use various tools and techniques to breach the organization’s defenses. A red-team test is often conducted without the knowledge or consent of most of the organization’s staff, except for a few senior executives who authorize and oversee the exercise.

References: https://www.comptia.org/certifications/security#examdetails https://www.comptia.org/content/guides/comptia-security-sy0-601-exam-objectives https://cybersecurity.att.com/blogs/security-essentials/what-is-red-teaming

SSH is used to securely transfer files to the remote server and is required for SCP to work. Disabling SSH will prevent users from being able to use SCP to transfer files to the server. To enable SSH, the security engineer should modify the SSH configuration file (sshd.conf) and make sure that SSH is enabled. For more information on hardening systems and the security techniques that can be used, refer to the CompTIA Security+ SY0-601 Official Text Book and Resources.

A standard naming convention policy would provide guidelines on how to label new network devices as part of the initial configuration. A standard naming convention policy is a document that defines the rules and formats for naming network devices, such as routers, switches, firewalls, servers, or printers. A standard naming convention policy can help an organization achieve consistency, clarity, and efficiency in network management and administration.

References: https://www.comptia.org/certifications/security#examdetails https://www.comptia.org/content/guides/comptia-security-sy0-601-exam-objectives https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Network_Virtualization/PathIsolationDesignGuide/PathIsolationDesignGuide.pdf

Network and firewall logs should be analyzed to identify the impacted host in a cybersecurity incident involving a command-and-control server. A command-and-control server is a central server that communicates with and controls malware-infected devices or bots. A command-and-control server can send commands to the bots, such as downloading additional malware, stealing data, or launching attacks. Network logs can help to identify any suspicious or anomalous network traffic, such as connections to unknown or malicious domains, high-volume data transfers, or unusual protocols or ports. Firewall logs can help to identify any blocked or allowed traffic based on the firewall rules, such as connections to or from the command-and-control server, or any attempts to bypass the firewall. References:

https://cybersecurity.att.com/blogs/security-essentials/command-and-control-server-detection-methods-best-practices

https://www.howtogeek.com/726136/what-is-a-command-and-control-server-for-malware/

Tailgating is a physical security threat that occurs when an unauthorized person follows an authorized person into a restricted area without proper identification or authorization. It can cause unauthorized individuals to roam the hallways after gaining access through badge readers installed for building access.

The router is experiencing a resource exhaustion issue. The output from the command indicates that the CPU is consistently busy, with a 1-second average of 99 percent busy and a 1-minute average of 83 percent busy. This indicates that the router is struggling to keep up with the demands placed on it, potentially due to a high volume of traffic or other factors. As a result, web pages are experiencing long load times. This is an example of resource exhaustion, where the router's resources are being overwhelmed and are unable to meet the demands placed on them. A DDoS attack, memory leak, or buffer overflow would not typically cause the symptoms described in the scenario.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make a computer or network resource unavailable to its intended users. This is accomplished by overwhelming the target with a flood of traffic from multiple sources.

In the scenario described, the security analyst identified a source IP address and blocked it from communicating with the network. However, the attack was still ongoing and coming from a large number of different source IP addresses. This indicates that the attack was a DDoS attack.

Privilege escalation is an attack that allows an attacker to gain unauthorized access to a system or network. DNS poisoning is an attack that modifies the DNS records for a domain name, causing users to be redirected to a malicious website. A buffer overflow is an attack that occurs when a program attempts to store more data in a buffer than it is designed to hold.

Therefore, the most likely type of attack in the scenario described is a DDoS attack.

HSM stands for hardware security module, which is a physical device that is used to store and manage cryptographic keys in a secure and tamper-resistant manner. HSMs can provide high-performance encryption and decryption operations, as well as key generation, backup, and recovery. HSMs can also prevent unauthorized access or extraction of the keys, even by the cloud service provider or the HSM vendor. HSMs can enhance the protection of a critical environment that is used to store and manage encryption keys for a financial institution or any other organization that deals with sensitive data. References:

https://www.comptia.org/certifications/security

https://www.professormesser.com/security-plus/sy0-501/hardware-security-3/

A wildcard certificate is a type of SSL certificate that can secure multiple subdomains under one domain name by using an asterisk (*) as a placeholder for any subdomain name. For example, *.company.com can secure www.company.com, contactus.company.com, quotes.company.com, etc.  It can work for all the existing applications and any future applications that follow the same naming conventions, such as store.company.com. 

Code signing is a cryptographic process that allows software developers to digitally sign their code. This ensures that the code has not been tampered with since it was signed and that it came from a trusted source.

Testing input validation on the user input fields is important for preventing malicious code from being entered into a system. However, it does not address the authenticity of the code itself.

Performing static code analysis on the software can help to identify security vulnerabilities. However, it cannot guarantee that the code has not been tampered with.

Ensuring secure cookies are used is important for preventing unauthorized access to user data. However, it does not address the authenticity of the code itself.

Therefore, the most appropriate option to ensure the authenticity of the code created by the company is to perform code signing on the software.

Here are some additional benefits of code signing:

It can help to prevent malware from being installed on users' computers.

It can help to protect intellectual property.

It can help to improve user trust.

OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) is a non-profit organization that provides resources and guidance for improving the security of web applications. It publishes a list of the most common web application vulnerabilities, such as injection, broken authentication, cross-site scripting, etc., and provides recommendations and best practices for preventing and mitigating them

An internet proxy is a server that acts as an intermediary between a client and a destination server on the internet. It can restrict web access and monitor the websites that employees visit by filtering the requests and responses based on predefined rules and policies, and logging the traffic and activities for auditing purposes

Federation is an access management concept that allows users to authenticate once and access multiple applications or services that trust the same identity provider. Open authentication is a standard protocol that enables federation by allowing users to use their existing credentials from one service to access another service. The company is most likely using federation and open authentication to safeguard intranet accounts and grant access to multiple sites based on a user’s intranet account. For example, the company could use an identity provider such as Azure AD or Keycloak to manage the user identities and credentials for the intranet account, and then use open authentication to allow the users to access other company-owned websites without having to log in again. References:

https://www.keycloak.org/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/hybrid/connect/whatis-fed

Reputation is the perception or opinion that customers, partners, investors, etc., have about a company or its products and services. It can affect the revenue and profitability of a company after a network breach, even if no intellectual property or customer information was stolen, because it can damage the trust and confidence of the stakeholders and reduce their willingness to do business with the company

Badges are physical security controls that provide a way to identify and authenticate authorized individuals who need to access a building or a restricted area. Badges can also be used to track the entry and exit times of people and monitor their movements within the premises. Badges can help deter unauthorized access by requiring people to present a valid credential before entering or leaving the office. Badges can also help prevent tailgating, which is when an unauthorized person follows an authorized person through a door or gate. Badges can be integrated with other security systems, such as locks, alarms, cameras, or biometrics, to enhance the level of protection.

An evil-Twin attack is a type of wireless network attack that involves setting up a rogue access point that mimics a legitimate one. It can trick users into connecting to the rogue access point instead of the real one, and then intercept or modify their traffic, steal their credentials, launch phishing pages, etc. It is the most likely cause of the issue that users are experiencing slow speeds, unable to connect to network drives, and required to enter their credentials on web pages when working in the section of the building that is closest to the parking lot, where an external access point could be placed nearby.

Availability zones are the most appropriate cloud feature to address the concern of resiliency in case a cloud provider’s data center or network connection goes down. Availability zones are physically separate locations within an Azure region that have independent power, cooling, and networking. Each availability zone is made up of one or more data centers and houses infrastructure to support highly available, mission-critical applications. Availability zones are connected with high-speed, private fiber-optic networks. Azure services that support availability zones fall into two categories: Zonal services – you pin the resource to a specific zone (for example, virtual machines, managed disks, IP addresses), or Zone-redundant services – platform replicates automatically across zones (for example, zone-redundant storage, SQL Database). To achieve comprehensive business continuity on Azure, build your application architecture using the combination of availability zones with Azure region pairs. You can synchronously replicate your applications and data using availability zones within an Azure region for high-availability and asynchronously replicate across Azure regions for disaster recovery protection.

An intrusion prevention system (IPS) is the best solution to implement on the company’s network to detect and prevent suspicious attempts to access company resources. An IPS is a network security technology that continuously monitors network traffic for malicious or anomalous activity and takes automated actions to block or mitigate it. An IPS can also alert the system administrators of any potential threats and provide detailed logs and reports of the incidents. An IPS can help the company to improve its security posture and prevent data breaches, unauthorized access, or denial-of-service attacks. References:

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cyberpedia/what-is-an-intrusion-prevention-system-ips

https://www.forcepoint.com/cyber-edu/intrusion-prevention-system-ips

MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) is a method of verifying a user’s identity by requiring two or more factors or attributes that belong to different categories. The categories are something you know (such as a password or a PIN), something you have (such as a token or a smart card), something you are (such as a fingerprint or an iris scan), something you do (such as a gesture or a voice command), and somewhere you are (such as a location or an IP address). In this case, the user enters a password (something you know) and then receives an authentication code (something you have) to log in to a workstation.