CDPSE Practice Test 14 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Which TWO actions should be taken when decommissioning an old server containing PII?

Accepted Answer

Cryptographic erasure of the drives. Cryptographic erasure (Option B) is correct because destroying the encryption keys that protect the data renders the PII permanently unrecoverable, which is an approved media-sanitization method for encrypted drives under NIST SP 800-88. Physical destruction of the drives (Option D) is also correct because shredding, incinerating, or pulverizing the storage media guarantees the PII cannot be reconstructed, satisfying the strongest sanitization requirement for decommissioned hardware. Saving logs to a cloud bucket (Option A) does not sanitize the drives and may even increase PII exposure, moving data to a temporary folder (Option C) merely relocates the PII without removing it, and reformatting the partition (Option E) only removes file-system references, leaving recoverable data remnants on the disk.

Answer

Saving logs to a cloud bucket

Answer

Moving data to a temporary folder

Answer

Reformatting the partition

Question 2

Which THREE steps are vital when responding to a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR)?

Accepted Answer

Provide the requested data in a secure and usable format to the data subject.. Option C is correct because a DSAR response must deliver the requested personal data to the data subject in a secure, commonly usable format (e.g., CSV, PDF), ensuring confidentiality and portability. Option D is correct because the organization must locate and retrieve all relevant personal data across its systems, including databases, email, backups, and third-party processors, to fulfill the access request completely. Option E is correct because verifying the requester's identity is essential to prevent unauthorized disclosure of personal data to an impostor. Option A is not appropriate because publicly announcing the requester's identity would itself be a privacy breach and is not required by DSAR procedures. Option B is incorrect because deleting all data immediately is not a valid DSAR response and could destroy evidence or violate retention obligations.

Answer

Publicly announce the identity of the person requesting the data.

Answer

Delete all data immediately after the request is received.

Question 3

During a Data Mapping exercise, the CDPSE discovers that a legacy database stores PII in cleartext. The system is scheduled for decommissioning in 18 months. What is the most appropriate privacy risk mitigation strategy?

Accepted Answer

Apply field-level encryption or database transparent data encryption (TDE) as a compensating control.. Applying field-level encryption or transparent data encryption (TDE) is the most appropriate mitigation because it reduces the risk of cleartext PII exposure while the legacy system continues to operate for its remaining 18 months. It is a compensating control that addresses the specific risk (unauthorized disclosure of PII at rest) without disrupting business operations or forcing premature decommissioning. This aligns with the privacy principle of applying appropriate technical safeguards proportionate to the risk and the system's remaining lifecycle.

Answer

Accept the risk formally and do nothing until the system is shut down.

Answer

Anonymize all records in the database immediately.

Answer

Decommission the database immediately regardless of business impact.

Question 4

Which THREE items should be included in a Privacy Policy that aligns with global transparency requirements?

Accepted Answer

The purpose and legal basis for the processing of personal data.. Option A is correct because global transparency requirements such as GDPR Articles 13-14 mandate that a privacy policy disclose the purposes of processing and the legal basis (e.g., consent, contract, legitimate interest) for each processing activity. Option B is correct because these same provisions require informing data subjects of the retention period or, if that is not possible, the criteria used to determine how long personal data will be stored. Option D is correct because transparency obligations require informing data subjects of their rights, including the right of access (GDPR Article 15) and the right to erasure (Article 17), along with how to exercise them. Option C is not relevant because quarterly financial earnings are corporate financial disclosures, not personal data processing information, and belong in investor relations reports. Option E is not relevant and would be a serious security violation, since internal administrator passwords are confidential credentials that must never be published in a privacy policy or any public document.

Answer

The company's quarterly financial earnings report.

Answer

The internal passwords of the IT administrators.

Question 5

When configuring a Cloud Service Provider's (CSP) 'Storage Access' permissions, which configuration best supports the principle of data segregation?

Accepted Answer

Service-specific IAM policies. Service-specific IAM policies scope permissions to individual services and resources, so each workload or team only accesses the storage it needs — this is the direct implementation of data segregation in a CSP. By attaching narrowly scoped policies (e.g., allowing s3:GetObject only on a specific bucket prefix), the organization enforces logical separation between data domains. This aligns with the principle of least privilege and with segregation-of-duties requirements in privacy frameworks.

Answer

Global administrative access

Answer

Public read-only access

Answer

Wildcard permissions

Question 6

When using Talend Data Fabric for data life cycle management, what is the function of the 'Data Stewardship' component?

Accepted Answer

To allow manual intervention in data processing. In Talend Data Fabric, the Data Stewardship component is designed to bring human judgment into automated data pipelines — it provides workflows where data stewards can review, approve, correct, or reject records that automated rules flag as ambiguous or non-compliant. This manual intervention ensures data quality and policy compliance where automation alone is insufficient.

Answer

To create data maps

Answer

To automate deletion

Answer

To encrypt data

Question 7

In a federated learning architecture, how is the model trained without exposing the underlying local datasets?

Accepted Answer

By sending locally computed gradients to a central server. In federated learning, each participant trains a local model on its own data and sends only the computed gradients (or model updates) to a central server, which aggregates them into a global model. The raw local datasets never leave the participant's environment, so training occurs without exposing the underlying data.

Answer

By using homomorphic encryption for every data point

Answer

By moving all datasets to a centralized data lake

Answer

By anonymizing the data using k-anonymity

Question 8

Which TWO actions should be taken when performing a 'Privacy Impact Assessment' (PIA) on a new software tool?

Accepted Answer

Evaluate potential risks to the rights and freedoms of individuals. A Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) is a structured process for identifying and mitigating privacy risks before deploying a new tool, so option D is correct: evaluating potential risks to the rights and freedoms of individuals is the core purpose of a PIA, aligning with GDPR-style risk analysis of how personal data processing may affect data subjects. Option E is also correct because documenting the data lifecycle from collection to destruction is a fundamental PIA activity — it maps what personal data is collected, why, how it is stored and shared, retention periods, and secure disposal, which is necessary to assess and mitigate privacy risks. The other options do not belong: deleting all historical databases (A) is a destructive, indiscriminate action unrelated to assessment, updating server firmware (B) is a routine patch-management task with no bearing on privacy risk evaluation, and purchasing the most expensive enterprise security suite (C) is a cost-driven procurement decision rather than a PIA step, since a PIA evaluates risks and controls rather than mandating a specific product.

Answer

Delete all historical databases

Answer

Update the server firmware version

Answer

Purchase the most expensive enterprise security suite

Question 9

Which THREE of the following are essential components of an effective privacy governance framework?

Accepted Answer

Clear privacy policies and standards.. An effective privacy governance framework requires clear privacy policies and standards (A) because they establish the binding rules, principles, and data-handling requirements that translate legal and regulatory obligations into operational direction for the organization. Defined privacy roles and responsibilities (B) are essential because governance depends on explicit accountability — such as assigning a Data Protection Officer, privacy stewards, and data owners — so that decision rights and duties are unambiguous. A formal mechanism for monitoring and auditing compliance (D) is also essential, since it provides ongoing assurance through audits, control testing, and metrics that verify policies are actually followed and enable corrective action. Options C and E do not belong: a list of IT hardware serial numbers is an asset-management detail, not a governance component, and annual tax filing documentation is a financial/tax artifact unrelated to privacy governance.

Answer

A list of all IT hardware serial numbers.

Answer

The organization's annual tax filing documentation.

Question 10

An organization is implementing a 'Privacy by Design' framework for a machine learning model used to predict customer churn. Which technique should be utilized to minimize privacy risk while maintaining model utility?

Accepted Answer

Differential privacy.. Differential privacy adds calibrated statistical noise to data or model outputs so that any individual's contribution cannot be inferred, while aggregate patterns — and therefore model utility — are preserved. It is a core Privacy by Design technique for ML because it provides a mathematical privacy guarantee (epsilon) rather than relying on policy alone. This directly balances privacy risk against churn-prediction accuracy.

Answer

Full deletion of all customer datasets.

Answer

Obfuscation of the model's source code.

Answer

Conversion of all data to unstructured formats.

Question 11

You are troubleshooting a Federated Learning model. Privacy leakage is occurring during model updates. Which parameter should you adjust to improve privacy?

Accepted Answer

Implement secure aggregation. Secure aggregation is the correct answer because it is the specific privacy-enhancing mechanism designed to prevent the aggregation server from inspecting individual client model updates during federated learning. Instead of transmitting raw gradients, clients encrypt their updates so the server can only compute the sum across many participants, thereby preventing privacy leakage from any single update. Adjusting learning rate, batch size, or epochs changes model training dynamics but does not protect the privacy of the update payload itself.

Answer

Change the learning rate

Answer

Increase the batch size

Answer

Decrease the number of epochs

Question 12

When evaluating a third-party vendor's privacy maturity, which document is most critical for the privacy practitioner to review during the due diligence process?

Accepted Answer

A SOC 2 Type II report or independent privacy audit report.. A SOC 2 Type II report or independent privacy audit report is the most critical document because it provides an independent assessment of the vendor's controls over a period of time, including privacy and security practices. This gives the privacy practitioner evidence of the vendor's privacy maturity and compliance. Stock performance, marketing brochures, and org charts do not provide assurance about privacy controls.

Answer

The vendor's public stock market performance.

Answer

The vendor's marketing brochure.

Answer

The vendor's internal organizational chart.

Question 13

An organization is building a privacy program. What indicates that the privacy strategy is aligned with business operations?

Accepted Answer

Privacy controls are integrated into business workflows.. Alignment between privacy strategy and business operations is demonstrated when privacy controls are embedded into day-to-day workflows rather than bolted on as a separate compliance layer. This integration shows that privacy is operationalized across business processes, making it sustainable and effective. It reflects the principle of privacy by design and demonstrates cross-functional ownership.

Answer

The privacy team has their own budget.

Answer

The policy is saved on a shared drive.

Answer

The DPO reports to the CEO once a year.

Question 14

When aligning privacy strategy with business objectives, what is the primary metric to demonstrate the value of a privacy program to stakeholders?

Accepted Answer

Reduction in privacy-related regulatory non-compliance fines.. Reduction in privacy-related regulatory non-compliance fines is the primary metric that demonstrates the value of a privacy program to stakeholders because it directly ties privacy efforts to financial risk mitigation and business outcomes. Stakeholders care about avoided costs and regulatory penalties, making this a quantifiable business value metric. Training sessions, tool spend, and patch counts are activity metrics, not outcome metrics.

Answer

Count of privacy training sessions completed.

Answer

Total spend on privacy software tools.

Answer

Number of privacy patches applied.

Question 15

You are managing data in a Kubernetes environment. What strategy should be used to support data minimization for ephemeral pods?

Accepted Answer

Use emptyDir for ephemeral storage. The emptyDir volume type in Kubernetes is created when a pod is assigned to a node and exists only for the lifetime of that pod. When the pod is deleted or evicted, the data in emptyDir is permanently destroyed, which directly supports data minimization by ensuring ephemeral data does not persist beyond its operational need. This aligns with privacy-by-design principles where temporary processing data is automatically purged without manual intervention.

Answer

Always use Persistent Volumes

Answer

Enable persistent logging

Answer

Configure snapshots for all pods