SDSI AI Automation And Devsecops — 25 Questions

Question 1

In a DevSecOps pipeline, what is the primary purpose of integrating Cisco Secure Registry (if using Cisco Container Platform) or a similar container scanning tool?

Accepted Answer

Identify vulnerabilities in container images. Scanning containers during the build process ensures vulnerabilities are caught before deployment.

Answer

Optimize container performance

Answer

Scale container instances

Answer

Manage container networking

Question 2

You are designing an automated response workflow for Cisco Secure Firewall. Which Cisco tool should be used to create the orchestration playbooks?

Accepted Answer

Cisco Secure Orchestrator. Cisco Secure Orchestrator (Cisco XDR / Secure Response) provides the orchestration layer for automated workflows.

Answer

Cisco Smart Licensing Utility

Answer

Cisco Adaptive Security Device Manager

Answer

Cisco DNA Center

Question 3

Which AI-driven capability in Cisco Secure Endpoint (AMP) is primarily designed to reduce the alert fatigue of security operations teams by grouping related events?

Accepted Answer

Event Grouping. Cisco Secure Endpoint uses 'Orbital' and AI-based 'Event Grouping' to correlate alerts into incidents.

Answer

Static malware analysis

Answer

Dynamic sandboxing

Answer

Vulnerability assessment

Question 4

You are designing a CI/CD pipeline using Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics for automated threat hunting. Which architectural component must be integrated to facilitate automated response actions based on telemetry triggers?

Accepted Answer

Cisco Secure Response API. Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics integrates with the Cisco Secure Response (Threat Response) API to trigger automated responses based on policy violations.

Answer

Cisco ISE pxGrid Node

Answer

Cisco Stealthwatch Management Console CLI

Answer

Cisco DNA Center Assurance API

Question 5

When designing an automated security policy deployment for Cisco Secure Workload (formerly Tetration), which mechanism allows you to test policies in a simulation environment before applying them to production?

Accepted Answer

Policy Analysis mode. Cisco Secure Workload allows for 'Policy Simulation' or 'Policy Analysis' to validate the impact of rules before enforcement.

Answer

Agentless vulnerability scanning

Answer

Workload isolation testing

Answer

Inventory change management

Answer

Live enforcement mode

Question 6

Which Cisco security solution utilizes AI-based 'Cognitive Intelligence' to detect threats in encrypted traffic without decrypting the payload?

Accepted Answer

Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics. Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics (Stealthwatch) uses Cognitive Intelligence to analyze metadata and flow patterns in encrypted traffic.

Answer

Cisco Secure Firewall

Answer

Cisco Umbrella

Answer

Cisco Secure Email

Question 7

You are automating the lifecycle of Cisco Secure Firewall policies. Which tool should be selected to integrate security policy as code (SaC) into a GitHub Actions pipeline?

Accepted Answer

HashiCorp Terraform. Terraform, specifically the 'cisco-fmc' provider, is the industry standard for managing Cisco security infrastructure as code.

Answer

Cisco DNA Center GUI

Answer

Python native sockets

Answer

Cisco Defense Orchestrator Portal

Question 8

In a DevSecOps environment, you need to implement Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) rule updates via Ansible. Which approach ensures the highest level of security and idempotency?

Accepted Answer

Utilizing the cisco.fmc Ansible collection. Using the 'cisco.fmc' Ansible collection with structured tasks ensures idempotency by checking the state before applying changes.

Answer

Manually updating via FMC UI then exporting JSON

Answer

Pushing configuration snapshots via SCP

Answer

Executing raw REST API calls via shell scripts

Question 9

When designing a multi-cloud CI/CD security architecture, how should secrets (API keys for Cisco FMC) be managed to ensure compliance?

Accepted Answer

Use a dedicated Secret Management service. Secrets must be stored in a dedicated vault (like HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager) and never in code repositories.

Answer

Embed as environment variables in the build runner

Answer

Encrypt with base64 and store in Git

Answer

Hardcode in the Terraform provider block

Question 10

Which component of Cisco XDR (formerly Cisco SecureX) is critical for normalizing data from different Cisco security products to enable automated orchestration?

Accepted Answer

Unified Data Model. The 'Cisco XDR Unified Data Model' normalizes disparate logs into a standard format for correlation and automation.

Answer

Cloud-native storage

Answer

Local management agent

Answer

Packet inspection engine

Question 11

What is the primary benefit of 'Shift Left' security in a DevSecOps pipeline?

Accepted Answer

Reduced remediation costs. Shifting security to the beginning of the development cycle lowers remediation costs and reduces risk exposure.

Answer

Automated hardware deployment

Answer

Increased development speed

Answer

Elimination of security teams

Question 12

In DevSecOps, what is the role of an 'Artifact Repository' such as Artifactory in relation to security?

Accepted Answer

Store and secure immutable build artifacts. Storing immutable, scanned, and signed artifacts ensures that the code deployed is exactly what was tested.

Answer

Manage user identities

Answer

Monitor real-time network traffic

Answer

Execute live security testing

Question 13

You are implementing automated policy enforcement for Cisco Secure Access by Duo. Which API allows you to programmatically manage users and authentication settings?

Accepted Answer

Duo Admin API. The Duo Admin API is the standard for managing users, policies, and authentication programmatically.

Answer

Duo Web SDK

Answer

Duo Auth API

Answer

Duo Telemetry API

Question 14

Which Cisco technology should be included in an automated design to ensure 'Zero Trust' access for remote developers accessing internal development servers?

Accepted Answer

Cisco Secure Access. Cisco Secure Access (or Duo with VPN) provides the identity-centric access control required for Zero Trust.

Answer

Cisco Catalyst Center

Answer

Cisco IOS-XE

Answer

Cisco Webex

Question 15

In the context of AI-driven security, what does 'False Positive Reduction' primarily achieve?

Accepted Answer

Improved analyst efficiency. It minimizes unnecessary alerts, allowing security teams to focus on high-fidelity, real threats.

Answer

Increased hardware throughput

Answer

Lower bandwidth consumption

Answer

Faster packet forwarding

Question 16

When designing an automated remediation workflow for Cisco Secure Firewall, what is the specific function of the 'Cisco Secure Firewall REST API' in the context of threat intelligence feeds?

Accepted Answer

Dynamic update of Network Objects. The API allows for dynamic injection of IP or Domain lists into 'Network Objects' which are used in policy rules.

Answer

Encryption key rotation

Answer

Automated firmware flashing

Answer

Traffic scrubbing

Question 17

When utilizing Cisco DevNet tools for security, which Python library is the standard for interacting with the Cisco FMC API efficiently?

Accepted Answer

fmcapi. The 'fmcapi' library (a community-supported wrapper) is the industry standard for interacting with FMC in Python scripts.

Answer

requests_cisco

Answer

cisco_py

Answer

fmc_sdk

Question 18

You are integrating Cisco Umbrella into a CI/CD pipeline. Which API is most appropriate for programmatically blocking domains discovered by your automated security scan?

Accepted Answer

Umbrella Destinations API. The Umbrella 'Destinations API' allows for the automated management of destination lists (blocked domains).

Answer

Umbrella Provisioning API

Answer

Umbrella Reporting API

Answer

Umbrella Log Management API

Question 19

What is the primary role of a 'Security Policy Engine' (e.g., Cisco Secure Firewall) within an automated data center architecture?

Accepted Answer

Centralized policy enforcement. To enforce consistent security policies automatically across physical and virtual workloads.

Answer

Application load balancing

Answer

Server virtualization

Answer

DNS resolution

Question 20

In an AI-enhanced security design, what is 'Supervised Learning' primarily used for?

Accepted Answer

Classification of malicious vs. benign data. Supervised learning models are trained on labeled datasets to classify new, incoming traffic or files as 'malicious' or 'benign'.

Answer

Predicting hardware failure

Answer

Automated documentation generation

Answer

Unsupervised clustering of anomalies