SDSI Practice Test 6 — 10 Questions

Question 1

You are designing an email security gateway deployment. What is the benefit of using Cisco Secure Email's 'Outbreak Filters'?

Accepted Answer

It provides predictive protection for zero-day threats. Cisco Secure Email's Outbreak Filters provide predictive protection for zero-day threats by using Cisco Talos threat intelligence and real-time reputation/behavioral analysis to catch malicious messages before signatures are available. They can hold suspicious messages for a short period while Talos analyzes them, then release or quarantine based on the verdict. This 'predictive' capability is what distinguishes Outbreak Filters from standard anti-spam or antivirus.

Answer

It blocks spam based on reputation

Answer

It archives email for compliance

Answer

It encrypts outgoing email

Question 2

What is the purpose of 'Microsegmentation' in a cloud-native architecture?

Accepted Answer

To reduce the attack surface by isolating workloads. Microsegmentation's core security purpose is to reduce the attack surface by isolating workloads from one another, so that a compromise of one workload cannot freely reach others. It enforces least-privilege east-west traffic policies at the workload level rather than relying on perimeter firewalls. This directly limits lateral movement and blast radius within a cloud-native environment.

Answer

To automatically scale services based on demand

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To provide high availability for the service

Answer

To optimize container scheduling

Question 3

Which Cisco solution is primarily designed to provide visibility and protection for SaaS applications like Office 365, Salesforce, and Slack?

Accepted Answer

Cisco Cloudlock. Cisco Cloudlock is a cloud access security broker (CASB) that provides visibility into and control over SaaS application usage, including Office 365, Salesforce, and Slack. It uses APIs to monitor user activity, detect data exfiltration, and enforce data loss prevention (DLP) policies specifically for cloud applications. Unlike network-based solutions, Cloudlock operates at the application layer, offering granular SaaS security without requiring traffic redirection.

Answer

Cisco Secure Workload

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Cisco Secure Firewall

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Cisco Umbrella

Question 4

When designing a secure remote access solution for a hybrid workforce, which Cisco AnyConnect feature should be prioritized to reduce the attack surface by verifying the posture of the device before granting access?

Accepted Answer

AnyConnect Posture Module.. The AnyConnect Posture Module is the component that performs endpoint posture assessment (hostscan) before or during VPN session establishment, checking for antivirus, firewall, OS patches, and other compliance criteria. It is the mechanism that reduces attack surface by ensuring only compliant devices are granted access, feeding results into DAP for enforcement.

Answer

IKEv2 protocol support.

Answer

Split-tunneling.

Answer

Dynamic Access Policies (DAP).

Question 5

When designing a secure management plane, why is it critical to use a dedicated Out-of-Band (OOB) network?

Accepted Answer

To prevent management plane saturation during a data plane DoS attack.. A dedicated Out-of-Band (OOB) management network physically or logically separates management traffic from production data traffic. When a data plane DoS attack saturates the production links, in-band management would become unreachable, preventing administrators from responding. OOB preserves management access so remediation can occur even under active attack.

Answer

To reduce the cost of cabling.

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To increase the throughput of user traffic.

Answer

To allow for DHCP-based addressing of management interfaces.

Question 6

Which THREE features of Cisco Secure Email help in mitigating email-based threats? (Select 3)

Accepted Answer

Cisco Threat Grid sandboxing. Cisco Threat Grid sandboxing (C) is correct because it detonates suspicious attachments and URLs in an isolated environment to observe malicious behavior and derive verdicts, which is a core defense against weaponized email content. Outbreak filters (D) are correct because they use real-time threat intelligence to quarantine or delay suspicious messages during the early hours of a new outbreak, before traditional signature-based antivirus can catch them. SenderBase reputation service (E) is correct because it evaluates the reputation of sending IP addresses and domains to block or throttle mail from known spam and malware sources at the connection level. DHCP snooping (A) and VLAN isolation (B) are Layer 2 network access controls for switches and are not email security features, so they do not belong in this scenario.

Answer

DHCP snooping

Answer

VLAN isolation

Question 7

Which THREE factors are required to ensure the successful deployment of a Zero Trust microsegmentation architecture? (Choose THREE)

Accepted Answer

A centralized, automated enforcement policy engine. Option B is correct because Zero Trust microsegmentation depends on a centralized, automated enforcement policy engine (e.g., a policy controller/management plane) that consistently translates identity- and context-based rules into allow/deny decisions across all workloads without manual per-host configuration. Option C is correct because you cannot segment what you cannot see: complete visibility into every communication flow (east-west and north-south, typically via flow logs, packet inspection, or agents) is required to baseline legitimate traffic and detect anomalies. Option D is correct because identifying and classifying all workloads (by application, owner, sensitivity, and tags/labels) is the prerequisite for defining meaningful microsegmentation policies and grouping assets into segments. Option A is not correct because a flat network architecture is the opposite of what microsegmentation requires — it removes the internal boundaries that segmentation is meant to create. Option E is not correct because shared administrative credentials violate Zero Trust least-privilege and per-identity authentication principles, increasing lateral movement risk rather than enabling secure deployment.

Answer

A flat network architecture

Answer

Shared administrative credentials for all servers

Question 8

Which THREE of the following are best practices for securing a CI/CD pipeline itself?

Accepted Answer

Scan the pipeline code for vulnerabilities. Option B is correct because scanning the pipeline's own code (e.g., Jenkinsfiles, GitLab CI YAML, GitHub Actions workflows) with SAST/SCA tools detects injection flaws, insecure plugin usage, and vulnerable dependencies before they can be exploited to compromise builds. Option C is correct because isolated, ephemeral build runners (fresh containers or VMs destroyed after each job) prevent cross-job contamination, credential persistence, and lateral movement if a build is compromised. Option D is correct because a dedicated secret management service (e.g., HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault) provides encrypted storage, access control, auditing, and rotation of credentials instead of hardcoding them in pipeline files or environment variables. Option A is wrong because granting root access to all developers violates least privilege and massively expands the attack surface. Option E is wrong because unencrypted communication channels expose credentials, artifacts, and source code to interception; TLS should be enforced everywhere.

Answer

Allow root access to all developers

Answer

Use unencrypted communication channels

Question 9

Which design principle should be followed when implementing micro-segmentation in a data center?

Accepted Answer

Implement identity-based segmentation at the workload level.. Micro-segmentation is designed to enforce least-privilege east-west traffic controls at the granularity of individual workloads, not network topology. Identity-based segmentation at the workload level ties policy to the workload's identity (labels, tags, service accounts, or attributes) rather than to mutable network constructs like IP addresses or VLANs. This allows policies to follow the workload across hosts, clusters, and clouds, which is the core design principle behind Cisco Secure Workload, ACI, and zero-trust architectures.

Answer

Keep all servers in the same VLAN for simplicity.

Answer

Segment based only on IP addresses.

Answer

Disable all firewalls for maximum performance.

Question 10

Which TWO methods are used by Cisco Stealthwatch to detect anomalies in network traffic?

Accepted Answer

Behavioral baseline modeling of host and network patterns.. Cisco Stealthwatch detects anomalies primarily through behavioral baseline modeling (option C), which learns normal host and network communication patterns over time and then flags deviations such as unusual traffic volumes, new peer connections, or atypical protocol usage. It also relies on analysis of NetFlow, IPFIX, and other flow telemetry (option D), since flow records exported by routers and switches provide the scalable metadata Stealthwatch uses for visibility and threat detection. These two methods work together: flow telemetry supplies the data, and behavioral baselining turns it into anomaly alerts. Signature-based matching for every packet (A) and deep packet inspection of every payload byte (B) describe intrusion prevention or full-packet inspection approaches, not Stealthwatch's flow-based analytics. Manual input of all known malicious IP addresses (E) is not a detection method, as Stealthwatch does not depend on manually enumerating every bad IP.

Answer

Signature-based matching for every packet.

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Deep packet inspection of every payload byte.

Answer

Manual input of all known malicious IP addresses.