CCSP Timed Practice Test 3 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A cloud security architect is designing a secure CI/CD pipeline for a containerized application deployed on a Kubernetes cluster. The pipeline must ensure that only approved images are deployed. Which TWO of the following controls should be implemented? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the Kubernetes admission controller to reject pods that use unsigned images.. Option B is correct because Kubernetes admission controllers can enforce policies such as rejecting pods that use unsigned images, ensuring only images with verified signatures are deployed. This directly addresses the requirement to deploy only approved images by validating image integrity at admission time.

Answer

Implement role-based access control (RBAC) to restrict who can push images to the registry.

Answer

Use network policies to restrict pod-to-pod communication.

Answer

Scan all container images for vulnerabilities in the CI pipeline.

Question 2

An administrator applies the above S3 bucket policy to a bucket named 'data-bucket' that contains sensitive logs. The policy is intended to allow uploads only over HTTPS. After applying, the administrator finds that uploads using the AWS CLI without HTTPS still succeed. What is the most likely reason?

Accepted Answer

The bucket's ACLs grant PutObject permission to the authenticated user, which takes effect before the bucket policy is evaluated.. Option C is correct because S3 bucket policies and ACLs are evaluated independently, and if an ACL grants PutObject permission to the authenticated user, that permission is effective even if a bucket policy denies the same action based on a condition like 'aws:SecureTransport'. The AWS CLI request without HTTPS still succeeds because the ACL allows the upload before the bucket policy's Deny statement is evaluated, as S3 evaluates all access control mechanisms and grants access if any applicable policy allows it, unless an explicit Deny is present in the same policy evaluation context. However, the bucket policy's Deny statement does not override the ACL's Allow because the ACL is a separate authorization mechanism that is evaluated first, and S3's authorization model grants access if any of the policies (ACL, bucket policy, user policy) allow the action, provided there is no explicit Deny from the same source.

Answer

The 'aws:SecureTransport' condition key is not supported for S3 bucket policies.

Answer

The policy does not apply to requests made by the AWS root account user.

Answer

The bucket policy has a syntax error; the Allow and Deny statements cannot be combined in the same policy.

Question 3

A company's security team is investigating an anomalous spike in outbound traffic from a cloud workload. The workload is a web server running in an IaaS environment. The team suspects data exfiltration. Which of the following is the BEST initial step to identify the source and type of traffic?

Accepted Answer

Enable VPC flow logs for the subnet hosting the workload and analyze the logs.. Option D is correct because VPC flow logs capture metadata about all IP traffic to and from network interfaces in a subnet, including source/destination IPs, ports, protocols, and packet/byte counts. Analyzing these logs allows the security team to identify the external destination IPs and ports involved in the anomalous outbound traffic, which is the fastest way to pinpoint the source workload and characterize the exfiltration pattern without disrupting service or requiring agent deployment.

Answer

Immediately isolate the workload by blocking all outbound traffic in the security group.

Answer

Deploy a host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS) agent on the workload.

Answer

Run a vulnerability scanner against the workload to identify possible entry points.

Question 4

Refer to the exhibit. A cloud security analyst is reviewing an S3 bucket policy. The bucket contains sensitive data and must only be accessible over HTTPS from the internal network (10.0.0.0/24). Which of the following correctly describes the behavior of this policy?

Accepted Answer

Requests from 10.0.0.0/24 over HTTPS are allowed; all other requests are denied.. The policy uses an explicit Deny for any request that is not using HTTPS (i.e., aws:SecureTransport is false) or does not originate from the 10.0.0.0/24 IP range. This Deny overrides the Allow statement, ensuring that only requests meeting both conditions (source IP 10.0.0.0/24 AND HTTPS) are permitted. Requests from 10.0.0.0/24 over HTTPS satisfy the Allow and are not caught by the Deny, so they are allowed; all other requests are denied.

Answer

Requests from 10.0.0.0/24 over HTTP are allowed because the Allow statement matches.

Answer

The policy is invalid because it combines Allow and Deny statements.

Answer

All requests from 10.0.0.0/24 are denied because the Deny statement applies to all actions.

Question 5

A cloud service provider (CSP) is undergoing a SOC 2 Type II audit. The auditor reviews the CSP's access control policies and identifies that user access reviews are performed quarterly. However, the auditor notes that there is no automated termination of access for terminated employees. Which TWO of the following control objectives are likely to be non-compliant based on this finding?

Accepted Answer

Least privilege principle. The lack of automated termination of access for terminated employees directly violates the least privilege principle (B), which requires that users have only the minimum access necessary to perform their job functions. Without automated deprovisioning, terminated employees retain access, creating a persistent risk of unauthorized data access or system compromise. This control objective is non-compliant because the CSP cannot ensure that access rights are promptly revoked when no longer needed.

Answer

Change management procedures

Answer

Encryption of data at rest

Answer

Physical access controls

Question 6

Drag and drop the steps for implementing a cloud data encryption strategy using a customer-managed key (CMK) in AWS KMS into the correct order.

Question 7

A company is designing a multi-tier application in the cloud. The web tier must automatically scale based on CPU utilization, while the database tier should remain fixed to maintain data consistency. Which architectural pattern best meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Horizontal auto-scaling for the web tier and a fixed database tier. Option A is correct because it separates the stateless web tier, which can safely scale horizontally using auto-scaling groups triggered by CPU utilization thresholds, from the stateful database tier, which must remain fixed to avoid consistency issues such as split-brain or replication lag. Horizontal scaling adds or removes identical web server instances without affecting session state, while a fixed database tier preserves ACID properties and prevents conflicts from concurrent writes across multiple database nodes.

Answer

Manual scaling for both tiers

Answer

Vertical scaling of all tiers

Answer

Single-tier architecture with auto-scaling

Question 8

Drag and drop the steps for responding to a security incident involving a compromised cloud VM into the correct order.

Question 9

A healthcare organization stores patient records in a cloud-based object storage service. To comply with HIPAA, they must ensure that data is encrypted at rest and that encryption keys are managed by the organization itself. Which key management approach should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Implement a Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) model with a hardware security module (HSM) in the cloud.. Option D is correct because HIPAA requires the organization to maintain control over encryption keys, and a Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) model with a hardware security module (HSM) in the cloud allows the healthcare organization to generate, store, and manage their own keys externally while using them for cloud-based encryption. This approach ensures that the cloud provider cannot access the keys, meeting the regulatory requirement for key management by the organization itself.

Answer

Use server-side encryption with S3-managed keys (SSE-S3).

Answer

Use server-side encryption with AWS KMS-managed keys (SSE-KMS).

Answer

Use client-side encryption with customer-supplied encryption keys (CSEKS).

Question 10

Drag and drop the steps for performing a cloud migration using the 'lift and shift' strategy into the correct order.