350-701 Hard Questions — 25 Difficult Questions

Question 1

A financial company has a data center with Cisco FTD firewalls in a high-availability pair. They use Cisco ISE for network access control and Cisco Stealthwatch for network visibility. Recently, they deployed a new web application that is accessed by both internal employees and external customers. The application uses HTTPS on port 443. After deployment, the security team notices that the FTD is dropping some HTTPS sessions that appear legitimate. The drops are inconsistent and seem to occur only during peak hours. The FTD logs show the drop reason as 'TCP state violation'. The team has verified that the web server and clients are configured correctly. The Stealthwatch reports show no anomalies. What is the most likely cause and solution?

Accepted Answer

Configure TCP state bypass on the FTD for the web server traffic. The 'TCP state violation' drops during peak hours indicate that the FTD's stateful inspection engine is seeing TCP segments that do not match the expected state machine, likely due to asymmetric routing or session timeouts under load. Configuring TCP state bypass for the web server traffic disables stateful inspection for those flows, allowing the firewall to forward packets based on ACLs alone without tracking TCP states, which resolves the issue without compromising security for legitimate traffic.

Answer

Enable SSL decryption to inspect the encrypted traffic

Answer

Increase the TCP timeout values on the FTD to accommodate longer sessions

Answer

Block all traffic to the web server except from trusted IPs

Question 2

Which THREE are characteristics of Cisco Stealthwatch?

Accepted Answer

Can integrate with Cisco ISE for automated threat response. Option A is correct because Cisco Stealthwatch can integrate with Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) via pxGrid or REST API to enable automated threat response. When Stealthwatch detects anomalous behavior, it can trigger ISE to enforce policy changes such as quarantining an endpoint or dynamically applying a security group access control list (SGACL), closing the loop between detection and remediation.

Answer

Acts as a next-generation firewall

Answer

Functions as an intrusion prevention system (IPS)

Question 3

A network administrator is configuring Cisco ASA with FirePOWER services. The administrator wants to inspect SSL traffic but is concerned about certificate pinning in modern applications. Which action should the administrator take to ensure that SSL inspection does not break applications that use certificate pinning?

Accepted Answer

Create an SSL decryption rule to exclude traffic from applications known to use certificate pinning. Option C is correct because certificate pinning hardcodes the expected certificate or public key within an application. If the ASA decrypts and re-encrypts the traffic using a different certificate (even one signed by a trusted CA), the pinned certificate will not match, causing the application to reject the connection. By creating an SSL decryption rule that excludes traffic from applications known to use certificate pinning, the administrator avoids breaking those applications while still inspecting other SSL traffic.

Answer

Configure SSL inspection to bypass all traffic to avoid any issues

Answer

Install a custom root CA on all clients and configure the ASA to use that CA

Answer

Use a decryption policy that decrypts the traffic but does not re-encrypt

Question 4

A network administrator is configuring IKEv2 on a Cisco router and wants to ensure that the router does not initiate connections but only responds to incoming IKEv2 requests. Which configuration command should be applied?

Accepted Answer

crypto ikev2 passive. The 'crypto ikev2 passive' command configures the router to only respond to incoming IKEv2 requests and never initiate its own IKEv2 connections. This is essential for scenarios where the router must act as a responder only, such as in hub-and-spoke VPN topologies where the hub should not initiate tunnels.

Answer

crypto ikev2 no initiate

Answer

crypto ikev2 limit max-incoming-sa 10

Answer

crypto ikev2 limit max-negotiations 10

Question 5

A multinational corporation is migrating its on-premises data center to a public cloud provider. The security policy requires that all traffic between cloud VPCs and the on-premises network must be inspected by a next-generation firewall (NGFW) deployed in the cloud. The on-premises network uses BGP for dynamic routing. Which design meets the requirement while minimizing latency and administrative overhead?

Accepted Answer

Deploy a transit VPC with an NGFW instance and configure BGP dynamic routing between the transit VPC, other VPCs, and the on-premises network.. Option A is correct because a transit VPC with an NGFW instance allows centralized traffic inspection while using BGP dynamic routing to exchange routes between the transit VPC, other VPCs, and the on-premises network. This design minimizes administrative overhead by avoiding static route management and reduces latency by keeping inspection within the cloud, rather than hair-pinning traffic on-premises. BGP enables automatic failover and route propagation, meeting the dynamic routing requirement.

Answer

Use AWS Transit Gateway with static routes pointing to the NGFW instance for inspection.

Answer

Create a site-to-site VPN between each VPC and the on-premises network, and configure the NGFW on-premises.

Answer

Use AWS Direct Connect to connect all VPCs to the on-premises network and place the NGFW on-premises.

Question 6

A security team suspects that malware is exfiltrating data by encoding it in DNS queries. Which Cisco security solution is specifically designed to analyze DNS traffic for malicious activity?

Accepted Answer

Cisco Umbrella. Cisco Umbrella is a cloud-delivered security solution that provides DNS-layer security by intercepting and analyzing DNS queries. It can detect and block DNS-based data exfiltration techniques, such as DNS tunneling, by inspecting DNS request patterns and comparing them against threat intelligence feeds. This makes it the correct choice for analyzing DNS traffic for malicious activity.

Answer

Cisco Firepower NGFW

Answer

Cisco Stealthwatch

Answer

Cisco Email Security Appliance

Question 7

A security engineer is configuring Cisco Web Security Appliance (WSA) to block access to social media sites during business hours. The company wants to allow access to LinkedIn for the HR department. Which policy configuration approach should the engineer use?

Accepted Answer

Create a time-based access policy to block social media during business hours, and an identity-based policy to allow LinkedIn for HR.. Option A is correct because Cisco WSA uses a hierarchical policy model where time-based access policies control when traffic is allowed or blocked, and identity-based policies (using authentication or IP ranges) provide granular exceptions for specific user groups like HR. By combining a time-based policy to block social media during business hours and an identity-based policy to allow LinkedIn for HR, the engineer achieves the requirement without over-permitting access. This approach leverages WSA's ability to evaluate multiple policy types in order, ensuring the HR exception takes precedence for LinkedIn traffic.

Answer

Enable HTTPS decryption and block social media based on content.

Answer

Create a global URL filtering policy to block social media and add an exception for LinkedIn.

Answer

Configure Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to block social media posts.

Question 8

You are a security engineer for a multinational corporation with 5,000 employees. The company uses Cisco Umbrella for DNS-layer security, Cisco Web Security Appliance (WSA) for proxy services in the data center, and Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) for email security. Recently, the security team has received multiple reports of users receiving phishing emails that bypass the ESA. The emails contain links to malicious websites that are also not blocked by Umbrella or WSA. Upon investigation, you find that the phishing emails use newly registered domains (less than 24 hours old) and the malicious websites are hosted on cloud infrastructure with frequently changing IP addresses. The company's current security policies rely on signature-based detection and static blocklists. Which action should you take to most effectively mitigate these threats?

Accepted Answer

Deploy Cisco Threat Response to enable automated threat hunting and blocking across all security products.. Option A is correct because Cisco Threat Response (CTR) provides integrated threat hunting and automated blocking across Cisco security products, including Umbrella, WSA, and ESA. This enables the security team to correlate indicators of compromise (IoCs) from phishing emails and newly registered domains, then automatically block them across all layers, addressing the dynamic nature of the threat (fast-flux hosting and newly registered domains) that signature-based and static blocklists cannot handle.

Answer

Configure the WSA to block all domains registered within the last 30 days.

Answer

Enable Data Loss Prevention (DLP) on the ESA to scan email content for sensitive data.

Answer

Increase the frequency of signature updates on the ESA and WSA to every hour.

Question 9

Which TWO configuration steps are required to enable Cisco AMP for Endpoints to use the Threat Grid appliance for file analysis?

Accepted Answer

Configure the AMP connector policy to submit files to the on-premises Threat Grid appliance.. Option A is correct because the AMP for Endpoints connector policy must be configured to submit files to the on-premises Threat Grid appliance. This directs the endpoint connector to send suspicious files to the local Threat Grid for dynamic analysis instead of the public cloud. Option C is correct because the Threat Grid appliance must be registered in the AMP cloud as a private analysis provider, which creates a secure tunnel (using TLS) between the AMP cloud and the on-premises appliance, enabling file submission and result retrieval.

Answer

Enable SSL decryption in the AMP connector policy.

Answer

Ensure the firewall allows inbound traffic to the Threat Grid appliance from the internet.

Answer

Install the Cisco Threat Grid Connector on each endpoint.

Question 10

In a Cisco TrustSec deployment, security group tags (SGTs) are used to represent user and device roles. These tags must be propagated across the network. Which protocol is used to carry SGT information in Ethernet frames?

Accepted Answer

IEEE 802.1Q with SGT encapsulation (Cisco proprietary). Cisco TrustSec uses SGTs to enforce role-based access control. To propagate SGT information across the network, Cisco developed a proprietary extension to IEEE 802.1Q that embeds the SGT into the Ethernet frame header, specifically using the CMD (Cisco MetaData) field. This allows switches and routers to enforce security policies based on the SGT without requiring additional encapsulation overhead.

Answer

MPLS

Answer

VXLAN

Answer

GRE

Question 11

Which THREE of the following are features of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) that can be used to enforce network access control?

Accepted Answer

Profiling. Profiling is a core ISE feature that uses passive and active fingerprinting techniques (e.g., DHCP, HTTP, SNMP, NetFlow) to identify endpoint attributes such as operating system, device type, and MAC vendor. This identity context allows ISE to enforce granular access policies based on the device class, such as blocking IoT sensors from reaching critical servers.

Answer

Application visibility

Answer

NetFlow analysis

Question 12

Refer to the exhibit. An engineer has configured the ACL on the GigabitEthernet0/0 interface. Which of the following is true about the effect of this ACL?

Accepted Answer

It blocks traffic sourced from 10.0.0.0/8 entering G0/0, but allows other traffic.. The ACL is applied inbound on GigabitEthernet0/0 with a single deny statement for source IP 10.0.0.0/8. Since ACLs have an implicit deny any at the end, traffic from the 10.0.0.0/8 range is blocked, but all other IP traffic is implicitly permitted because the explicit deny only matches that source range. This makes option B correct.

Answer

It blocks all IP traffic from entering G0/0 because of the deny statement.

Answer

It permits all traffic because the ACL is misconfigured.

Answer

It blocks traffic destined to 10.0.0.0/8 entering G0/0, but allows other traffic.

Question 13

A company uses FMC to manage FTD devices. After deploying a new intrusion policy, the analyst sees that no events are generated for a known vulnerability, even though the policy includes a rule for it. The analyst checks and the rule is enabled and the policy is applied. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The access control policy before the intrusion policy is blocking traffic.. Option C is correct because in a Cisco Firepower deployment, the access control policy (ACP) is evaluated before the intrusion policy. If the ACP is configured to block traffic matching the vulnerability's characteristics, the traffic never reaches the intrusion policy for inspection, so no intrusion events are generated even if the intrusion rule is enabled and applied.

Answer

The rule is configured to 'Drop and Generate Events' but the device is in inline tap mode.

Answer

The device has not been rebooted after policy deployment.

Answer

The intrusion policy rule has a false-positive suppression.

Question 14

An engineer is troubleshooting traffic drops on a Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) device. The traffic is allowed by the access control policy but is being dropped. Which feature should the engineer check to identify the cause of the drop?

Accepted Answer

Use the 'capture' command with trace option to see packet flow and drop reason.. Option C is correct because the 'capture' command with the 'trace' option on Cisco FTD provides a detailed, packet-level analysis of how traffic is processed through the firewall pipeline. It shows each step (e.g., ingress, routing, access control, NAT, egress) and explicitly states the drop reason, such as 'action-drop' due to intrusion prevention, URL filtering, or security intelligence, even when the access control policy appears to allow the traffic. This is the only option that directly identifies the specific cause of a drop in the data path.

Answer

Check the 'show access-list' output for the hit count.

Answer

Check the 'show route' output for routing issues.

Answer

Check the 'show conn' output for the connection state.

Question 15

During a security audit, a penetration tester discovers that a Cisco ASA firewall is configured with a rule that permits traffic from the inside interface with a source IP address in the RFC 1918 range to the outside interface. The rule uses the 'inspect' command for HTTP and FTP. Which potential vulnerability does this configuration introduce?

Accepted Answer

The firewall may allow IP spoofing if antispoofing is not enabled. Option D is correct because the configuration permits traffic from RFC 1918 private IP addresses on the inside interface to the outside interface without any explicit antispoofing or Unicast Reverse Path Forwarding (uRPF) check. This allows an attacker on the inside network to spoof source IP addresses that appear to come from the inside subnet, bypassing the firewall's intended security boundary. Without antispoofing, the ASA will not verify that the source IP actually belongs to the inside network, enabling IP spoofing attacks.

Answer

FTP inspection permits anonymous login commands

Answer

The configuration allows traffic without network address translation (NAT)

Answer

The HTTP inspection may allow SQL injection attacks to bypass the firewall

Question 16

Which TWO of the following are true about MACsec?

Accepted Answer

It uses IEEE 802.1AE standard. MACsec is defined by the IEEE 802.1AE standard, which specifies a security protocol for providing data confidentiality, integrity, and origin authenticity at Layer 2. It operates directly on Ethernet frames, encrypting the payload while preserving the frame header for transparent forwarding. This makes option B correct because the standard is the foundational reference for MACsec.

Answer

It requires a PKI

Answer

It provides data confidentiality only

Answer

It is used for WLAN security

Question 17

Refer to the exhibit. An administrator notices that DNS responses larger than 512 bytes are being dropped. Which configuration change should be made to allow larger DNS responses?

Accepted Answer

Increase the message-length maximum under the DNS map. The correct answer is D because DNS inspection on Cisco ASA/Firepower devices uses a DNS map to enforce a default maximum message length of 512 bytes, which aligns with the original DNS specification (RFC 1035). To allow larger DNS responses (e.g., those using EDNS0, which can exceed 512 bytes), you must increase the message-length maximum under the DNS map. This change permits the firewall to reassemble and forward DNS packets that exceed the default limit without dropping them.

Answer

Remove the DNS inspection policy

Answer

Add an access-list to permit the traffic

Answer

Disable the set connection advanced-options command

Question 18

Refer to the exhibit. A network engineer applies a zone-based firewall policy to a router. Users in the INSIDE zone report they can access HTTP servers on the OUTSIDE zone but cannot resolve DNS names or access MS-SQL servers. What does the policy do to DNS and MS-SQL traffic?

Accepted Answer

They are dropped because the BAD_TRAFFIC class explicitly drops them.. The correct answer is B because the zone-based firewall policy explicitly defines a class map (BAD_TRAFFIC) that matches DNS (UDP/53) and MS-SQL (TCP/1433) traffic and applies the 'drop' action. Since the policy-map uses a 'class-default' action of 'inspect' for GOOD_TRAFFIC, any traffic not matching GOOD_TRAFFIC but matching BAD_TRAFFIC is dropped before inspection can occur. The users' symptoms confirm that DNS and MS-SQL are being dropped, while HTTP (matched by GOOD_TRAFFIC) is inspected and allowed.

Answer

They are allowed because no 'inspect' action is applied to the class.

Answer

They are inspected and allowed through the firewall.

Answer

They are dropped because they do not match the GOOD_TRAFFIC class.

Question 19

A security engineer is troubleshooting an issue where a known malicious file (SHA-256: 3a7c...f9e) is not being detected by Cisco Secure Endpoint on a Windows 10 endpoint. The file was downloaded from the internet. The policy has the 'File Reputation' setting set to 'Use cloud lookup', and the 'Exploit Prevention' module is enabled. The endpoint is connected to the internet and can reach the AMP cloud. What is the most likely reason for the missed detection?

Accepted Answer

The endpoint was offline when the file was first written to disk, so the cloud lookup was skipped.. Option A is correct because Cisco Secure Endpoint's 'File Reputation' with 'Use cloud lookup' requires the endpoint to be online at the moment the file is written to disk. If the endpoint was offline during that critical window, the connector cannot perform the SHA-256 cloud lookup against the AMP cloud, and the file is not evaluated for maliciousness. The file remains undetected until a subsequent scan or event triggers a new lookup, which may not happen automatically.

Answer

Windows Defender Real-time Protection is interfering with the AMP connector.

Answer

The Exploit Prevention module is blocking the cloud lookup process.

Answer

The AMP cloud license has expired for the organization.

Question 20

During a cloud migration, an administrator notices that a workload in Azure is generating outbound traffic that is being blocked by the cloud security group. The workload requires connectivity to a specific SaaS application (Office 365) using TLS. The security group denies all outbound traffic except to specific IP ranges. Which action should the administrator take?

Accepted Answer

Add the Office 365 IP ranges and FQDNs to the allowed list. Option C is correct because the administrator needs to allow outbound traffic to Office 365, which uses TLS over TCP/443. Since the security group denies all outbound traffic except to specific IP ranges, the most direct and secure method is to add the published Office 365 IP ranges and FQDNs to the allowed list. This ensures the workload can reach the SaaS application without bypassing security controls or introducing additional latency.

Answer

Implement a proxy server

Answer

Use Azure Private Link

Answer

Disable the security group temporarily