CISSP Practice Test 6 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A company's security team discovers that an employee inadvertently shared sensitive customer data via a public cloud storage link. The incident response team contains the breach and notifies affected customers. Which of the following risk management strategies would BEST prevent recurrence?

Accepted Answer

Deploy a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution that monitors and controls sharing of sensitive data.. Option C is correct because a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution provides automated, policy-based monitoring and control of sensitive data being shared via public cloud storage links. Unlike awareness training (which relies on human behavior) or blanket blocking (which hinders productivity), DLP can inspect content in real time using pattern matching, fingerprinting, or exact data matching to prevent unauthorized sharing before it occurs, directly addressing the root cause of inadvertent exposure.

Answer

Block all access to public cloud storage services from corporate devices.

Answer

Implement mandatory security awareness training focusing on data handling procedures.

Answer

Encrypt all sensitive data at rest and in transit to render shared data useless.

Question 2

An organization is developing a business continuity plan (BCP) for its critical IT systems. Which of the following is the FIRST step in the BCP process?

Accepted Answer

Conduct a business impact analysis (BIA) to prioritize critical business functions.. The first step in the BCP process is to conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to identify and prioritize critical business functions and their dependencies. Without the BIA, you cannot determine which systems require recovery strategies or what recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) are needed. The BIA provides the quantitative and qualitative basis for all subsequent BCP decisions.

Answer

Identify recovery strategies for critical systems.

Answer

Develop a testing schedule for the BCP.

Answer

Perform a risk assessment to identify potential threats.

Question 3

A company is decommissioning a data center and needs to dispose of hard drives that contained highly confidential financial data. Which of the following methods provides the HIGHEST assurance that data cannot be recovered?

Accepted Answer

Shredding the drives into small pieces. Shredding the drives into small pieces physically destroys the platters, making data recovery impossible regardless of the storage technology (e.g., HDD vs. SSD). This method provides the highest assurance because it eliminates any possibility of reading residual magnetic or solid-state data, even with advanced forensic tools like electron microscopy.

Answer

Overwriting the drives with multiple passes of random data

Answer

Degaussing the drives

Answer

Overwriting the drives with a single pass of zeros

Question 4

Which TWO of the following are key components of an Information Security Governance framework? (Select exactly 2)

Accepted Answer

Risk management processes. Risk management processes are a core component of an Information Security Governance framework because they provide the structured methodology for identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks to the organization's information assets. This aligns with the ISO/IEC 27001 standard, which mandates a risk-based approach to establishing, implementing, and maintaining an information security management system (ISMS). Without formal risk management, governance lacks the data-driven foundation to prioritize security investments and controls.

Answer

Incident response team structure

Answer

Penetration testing schedule

Answer

Vendor contract negotiation

Question 5

A company is considering outsourcing its customer support operations to a third-party vendor. Which of the following should be the PRIMARY risk management activity before finalizing the contract?

Accepted Answer

Conduct a thorough vendor risk assessment including security audits.. Before outsourcing critical operations, the primary risk management activity is to conduct a thorough vendor risk assessment, including security audits. This evaluates the vendor's security posture, compliance with standards (e.g., ISO 27001), and ability to protect sensitive customer data, directly addressing risks like data breaches or service disruptions before contractual obligations are locked in.

Answer

Negotiate a lower price to offset potential security investments.

Answer

Purchase cyber liability insurance to cover potential breaches.

Answer

Require the vendor to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

Question 6

During a risk assessment, a company identifies that its primary data center is located in a flood-prone area. The estimated annual loss expectancy (ALE) for a flood event is $500,000. Installing flood barriers costs $200,000 and reduces the ALE to $50,000. What is the net benefit of implementing the flood barriers?

Accepted Answer

$250,000. The net benefit is calculated as the reduction in ALE minus the cost of the control. The original ALE is $500,000, and after implementing flood barriers the ALE drops to $50,000, a reduction of $450,000. Subtracting the $200,000 cost of the barriers yields a net benefit of $250,000. This aligns with the CISSP risk management formula: Net Benefit = (ALE_old - ALE_new) - Cost_of_control.

Answer

$300,000

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$450,000

Answer

$200,000

Question 7

A small business wants to implement a security policy that balances protection with usability. Which of the following is the MOST important factor when developing the policy?

Accepted Answer

Aligning the policy with business objectives and risk appetite.. Option B is correct because a security policy must be aligned with the organization's business objectives and risk appetite to ensure it supports operations without imposing unnecessary restrictions. For a small business, this balance is critical—overly strict controls can hinder productivity, while weak controls increase risk. The policy should reflect the specific threats and tolerances of the business, not generic templates or compliance-only checklists.

Answer

Adopting a template from a similar organization to save time.

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Ensuring the policy is enforceable with technical controls.

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Basing the policy solely on regulatory compliance requirements.

Question 8

During a security audit, it is discovered that a company's data classification labels are inconsistently applied across different departments. Which of the following is the BEST long-term solution to ensure consistent data classification?

Accepted Answer

Implement automated data classification tools that apply labels based on content and context. Automated data classification tools use content inspection (e.g., regex patterns, keyword matching) and contextual analysis (e.g., file location, creator, metadata) to consistently apply labels across the enterprise. This eliminates human error and variability between departments, ensuring uniform enforcement of the classification policy without relying on manual interpretation or periodic training.

Answer

Conduct annual retraining on data classification policies

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Adopt a single classification level for all data to eliminate confusion

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Assign a data owner in each department to manually review and classify data

Question 9

A security engineer reviews the S3 bucket policy in the exhibit. What is the most significant security issue with this configuration?

Accepted Answer

The bucket allows public read access to all objects. The S3 bucket policy in the exhibit grants "Effect": "Allow" with "Principal": "*" and "Action": "s3:GetObject" on the bucket ARN. This configuration effectively makes all objects in the bucket publicly readable over the internet, which is a severe data exposure risk. Option C correctly identifies this as the most significant security issue because it violates the principle of least privilege and can lead to unauthorized access to sensitive data.

Answer

The resource ARN does not specify a version ID

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The policy does not enforce encryption in transit

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The policy lacks an explicit deny statement

Question 10

A data classification policy is shown. A database contains a field labeled 'SSN' that matches the pattern for 'employee_id'. What action should be applied to the SSN field?

Accepted Answer

Mask. The SSN field matches the pattern for 'employee_id', indicating it contains sensitive personally identifiable information (PII). Masking is the appropriate action because it preserves the data format for operational use (e.g., testing, analytics) while irreversibly obscuring the actual values, reducing exposure risk without breaking referential integrity. Encryption would still allow authorized decryption, which is unnecessary for fields that only need pattern matching, and blocking would prevent legitimate access to the field entirely.

Answer

None

Answer

Encrypt

Answer

Block