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CISA Practice Question: Migrating its applications to a public IaaS cloud
A company is migrating its applications to a public IaaS cloud. What is the primary concern for protecting data in this environment?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often focus on encryption or patching as the universal answer for data protection, but in an IaaS shared responsibility model, the primary concern is controlling network access because the cloud provider does not manage the customer's virtual network boundaries.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Properly configuring security groups and access control lists (ACLs) to limit network access.
In an IaaS public cloud, the customer retains responsibility for securing the network layer, including virtual firewalls. Security groups (stateful) and ACLs (stateless) are the primary mechanisms to enforce least-privilege network access, which directly protects data from unauthorized exposure over the network. This aligns with the shared responsibility model where the provider secures the physical infrastructure, but the customer must control traffic to their instances.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Regularly patching the operating system and applications.
Why it's wrong here
Patching reduces known vulnerabilities but misconfigurations are a more common issue in cloud deployments.
- ✗
Using only hardened virtual machine images from the provider.
Why it's wrong here
Hardened images reduce vulnerabilities but do not address network-level access controls.
- ✗
Ensuring encryption keys are stored in the cloud provider's key management service.
Why it's wrong here
Key management is important but misconfigurations of security groups are more frequently exploited.
- ✓
Properly configuring security groups and access control lists (ACLs) to limit network access.
Why this is correct
Misconfigured security groups can expose resources to the internet, leading to unauthorized access. This is the top risk in IaaS.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CISA practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISACA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CISA exam.