CCSP Exam Prep Free – 50 Practice Questions to Get You Ready for Exam Day
Getting ready for the CCSP certification? Our CCSP Exam Prep Free resource includes 50 exam-style questions designed to help you practice effectively and feel confident on test day
Effective CCSP exam prep free is the key to success. With our free practice questions, you can:
Get familiar with exam format and question style
Identify which topics you’ve mastered—and which need more review
Boost your confidence and reduce exam anxiety
Below, you will find 50 realistic CCSP Exam Prep Free questions that cover key exam topics. These questions are designed to reflect the structure and challenge level of the actual exam, making them perfect for your study routine.
Which of the following would be a reason to undertake a BCDR test?
A. Functional change of the application
B. Change in staff
C. User interface overhaul of the application
D. Change in regulations
Suggested Answer: A
Community Answer: A
Any time a major functional change of an application occurs, a new BCDR test should be done to ensure the overall strategy and process are still applicable and appropriate.
What are third-party providers of IAM functions for the cloud environment?
A. AESs
B. SIEMs
C. DLPs
D. CASBs
Suggested Answer: D
Data loss, leak prevention, and protection is a family of tools used to reduce the possibility of unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information. SIEMs are tools used to collate and manage log data. AES is an encryption standard.
BCDR strategies do not typically involve the entire operations of an organization, but only those deemed critical to their business.
Which concept pertains to the amount of services that need to be recovered to meet BCDR objectives?
A. RSL
B. RTO
C. RPO
D. SRE
Suggested Answer: A
Community Answer: A
The recovery service level (RSL) measures the percentage of operations that would be recovered during a BCDR situation. The recovery point objective (RPO) sets and defines the amount of data an organization must have available or accessible to reach the determined level of operations necessary during a BCDR situation. The recovery time objective (RTO) measures the amount of time necessary to recover operations to meet the BCDR plan. SRE is provided as an erroneous response.
What is an often overlooked concept that is essential to protecting the confidentiality of data?
A. Strong password
B. Training
C. Security controls
D. Policies
Suggested Answer: B
Community Answer: B
While the main focus of confidentiality revolves around technological requirements or particular security methods, an important and often overlooked aspect of safeguarding data confidentiality is appropriate and comprehensive training for those with access to it. Training should be focused on the safe handling of sensitive information overall, including best practices for network activities as well as physical security of the devices or workstations used to access the application.
Which data state would be most likely to use TLS as a protection mechanism?
A. Data in use
B. Data at rest
C. Archived
D. Data in transit
Suggested Answer: D
Community Answer: D
TLS would be used with data in transit, when packets are exchanged between clients or services and sent across a network. During the data-in-use state, the data is already protected via a technology such as TLS as it is exchanged over the network and then relies on other technologies such as digital signatures for protection while being used. The data-at-rest state primarily uses encryption for stored file objects. Archived data would be the same as data at rest.
Which of the following is the MOST important requirement and guidance for testing during an audit?
A. Stakeholders
B. Shareholders
C. Management
D. Regulations
Suggested Answer: D
Community Answer: D
During any audit, regulations are the most important factor and guidelines for what must be tested. Although the requirements from management, stakeholders, and shareholders are also important, regulations are not negotiable and pose the biggest risk to any organization for compliance failure.
Tokenization requires two distinct _________________ .
A. Personnel
B. Authentication factors
C. Encryption keys
D. Databases
Suggested Answer: D
Community Answer: D
In order to implement tokenization, there will need to be two databases: the database containing the raw, original data, and the token database containing tokens that map to original data. Having two-factor authentication is nice, but certainly not required. Encryption keys are not necessary for tokenization. Two-person integrity does not have anything to do with tokenization.
Which component of ITIL pertains to planning, coordinating, executing, and validating changes and rollouts to production environments?
A. Release management
B. Availability management
C. Problem management
D. Change management
Suggested Answer: A
Release management involves planning, coordinating, executing, and validating changes and rollouts to the production environment. Change management is a higher-level component than release management and also involves stakeholder and management approval, rather than specifically focusing the actual release itself. Availability management is focused on making sure system resources, processes, personnel, and toolsets are properly allocated and secured to meet SLA requirements. Problem management is focused on identifying and mitigating known problems and deficiencies before they occur.
ISO/IEC has established international standards for many aspects of computing and any processes or procedures related to information technology.
Which ISO/IEC standard has been established to provide a framework for handling eDiscovery processes?
A. ISO/IEC 27001
B. ISO/IEC 27002
C. ISO/IEC 27040
D. ISO/IEC 27050
Suggested Answer: D
Community Answer: D
ISO/IEC 27050 strives to establish an internationally accepted standard for eDiscovery processes and best practices. It encompasses all steps of the eDiscovery process, including the identification, preservation, collection, processing, review, analysis, and the final production of the requested data archive. ISO/IEC 27001 is a general security specification for an information security management system. ISO/IEC 27002 gives best practice recommendations for information security management. ISO/IEC 27040 is focused on the security of storage systems.
What concept does the "D" represent with the STRIDE threat model?
A. Data loss
B. Denial of service
C. Data breach
D. Distributed
Suggested Answer: B
Community Answer: B
Any application can be a possible target of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. From the application side, the developers should minimize how many operations are performed for non-authenticated users. This will keep the application running as quickly as possible and using the least amount of system resources to help minimize the impact of any such attacks.
You are working for a cloud service provider and receive an eDiscovery order pertaining to one of your customers.
Which of the following would be the most appropriate action to take first?
A. Take a shapshot of the virtual machines
B. Escrow the encryption keys
C. Copy the data
D. Notify the customer
Suggested Answer: D
Community Answer: D
When a cloud service provider receives an eDiscovery order pertaining to one of their customers, the first action they must take is to notify the customer. This allows the customer to be aware of what was received, as well as to conduct a review to determine if any challenges are necessary or warranted. Taking snapshots of virtual machines, copying data, and escrowing encryption keys are all processes involved in the actual collection of data and should not be performed until the customer has been notified of the request.
Deviations from the baseline should be investigated and __________________.
A. Revealed
B. Documented
C. Encouraged
D. Enforced
Suggested Answer: B
Community Answer: B
All deviations from the baseline should be documented, including details of the investigation and outcome. We do not enforce or encourage deviations.
Presumably, we would already be aware of the deviation, so ג€revealingג€ is not a reasonable answer.
Which of the following threat types involves an application that does not validate authorization for portions of itself after the initial checks?
A. Injection
B. Missing function-level access control
C. Cross-site request forgery
D. Cross-site scripting
Suggested Answer: B
Community Answer: B
It is imperative that an application perform checks when each function or portion of the application is accessed, to ensure that the user is properly authorized to access it. Without continual checks each time a function is accessed, an attacker could forge requests to access portions of the application where authorization has not been granted.
Which of the following statements best describes a Type 1 hypervisor?
A. The hypervisor software runs within an operating system tied to the hardware.
B. The hypervisor software runs as a client on a server and needs an external service to administer it.
C. The hypervisor software runs on top of an application layer.
D. The hypervisor software runs directly on ג€bare metalג€ without an intermediary.
Suggested Answer: D
Community Answer: D
With a Type 1 hypervisor, the hypervisor software runs directly on top of the bare-metal system, without any intermediary layer or hosting system. None of these statements describes a Type 1 hypervisor.
Humidity levels for a data center are a prime concern for maintaining electrical and computing resources properly as well as ensuring that conditions are optimal for top performance.
Which of the following is the optimal humidity level, as established by ASHRAE?
A. 20 to 40 percent relative humidity
B. 50 to 75 percent relative humidity
C. 40 to 60 percent relative humidity
D. 30 to 50 percent relative humidity
Suggested Answer: C
Community Answer: C
The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recommends 40 to 60 percent relatively humidity for data centers.
None of these options is the recommendation from ASHRAE.
Security is a critical yet often overlooked consideration for BCDR planning.
At which stage of the planning process should security be involved?
A. Scope definition
B. Requirements gathering
C. Analysis
D. Risk assessment
Suggested Answer: A
Community Answer: A
Defining the scope of the plan is the very first step in the overall process. Security should be included from the very earliest stages and throughout the entire process. Bringing in security at a later stage can lead to additional costs and time delays to compensate for gaps in planning. Risk assessment, requirements gathering, and analysis are all later steps in the process, and adding in security at any of those points can potentially cause increased costs and time delays.
Which of the cloud cross-cutting aspects relates to the ability for a cloud customer to easily remove their applications and data from a cloud environment?
A. Reversibility
B. Availability
C. Portability
D. Interoperability
Suggested Answer: A
Reversibility is the ability for a cloud customer to easily remove their applications or data from a cloud environment, as well as to ensure that all traces of their applications or data have been securely removed per a predefined agreement with the cloud provider.
Modern web service systems are designed for high availability and resiliency. Which concept pertains to the ability to detect problems within a system, environment, or application and programmatically invoke redundant systems or processes for mitigation?
A. Elasticity
B. Redundancy
C. Fault tolerance
D. Automation
Suggested Answer: C
Community Answer: C
Fault tolerance allows a system to continue functioning, even with degraded performance, if portions of it fail or degrade, without the entire system or service being taken down. It can detect problems within a service and invoke compensating systems or functions to keep functionality going. Although redundancy is similar to fault tolerance, it is more focused on having additional copies of systems available, either active or passive, that can take up services if one system goes down.
Elasticity pertains to the ability of a system to resize to meet demands, but it is not focused on system failures. Automation, and its role in maintaining large systems with minimal intervention, is not directly related to fault tolerance.
Which of the cloud cross-cutting aspects relates to the ability to reuse or move components of an application or service?
A. Availability
B. Interoperability
C. Reversibility
D. Portability
Suggested Answer: B
Community Answer: D
Interoperability is the ease with which one can move or reuse components of an application or service. This is maximized when services are designed without specific dependencies on underlying platforms, operating systems, locations, or cloud providers.
When reviewing the BIA after a cloud migration, the organization should take into account new factors related to data breach impacts. One of these new factors is:
A. Many states have data breach notification laws.
B. Breaches can cause the loss of proprietary data.
C. Breaches can cause the loss of intellectual property.
D. Legal liability can’t be transferred to the cloud provider.
Suggested Answer: D
Community Answer: D
State notification laws and the loss of proprietary data/intellectual property pre-existed the cloud; only the lack of ability to transfer liability is new.
Which of the cloud cross-cutting aspects relates to the oversight of processes and systems, as well as to ensuring their compliance with specific policies and regulations?
A. Governance
B. Regulatory requirements
C. Service-level agreements
D. Auditability
Suggested Answer: D
Community Answer: A
Auditing involves reports and evidence that show user activity, compliance with controls and regulations, the systems and processes that run and what they do, as well as information and data access and modification records. A cloud environment adds additional complexity to traditional audits because the cloud customer will not have the same level of access to systems and data as they would in a traditional data center.
Which of the following roles is responsible for gathering metrics on cloud services and managing cloud deployments and the deployment processes?
A. Cloud service business manager
B. Cloud service operations manager
C. Cloud service manager
D. Cloud service deployment manager
Suggested Answer: D
The cloud service deployment manager is responsible for gathering metrics on cloud services, managing cloud deployments and the deployment process, and defining the environments and processes.
Which of the cloud deployment models offers the most control and input to the cloud customer as to how the overall cloud environment is implemented and configured?
A. Public
B. Community
C. Hybrid
D. Private
Suggested Answer: D
Community Answer: D
A private cloud model, and the specific contractual relationships involved, will give a cloud customer the most level of input and control over how the overall cloud environment is designed and implemented. This would be even more so in cases where the private cloud is owned and operated by the same organization that is hosting services within it.
C. As many systems throughout the organization as possible
D. A process for version control
Suggested Answer: C
Community Answer: C
The more systems that be included in the baseline, the more cost-effective and scalable the baseline is. The baseline does not deal with breaches or version control; those are the provinces of the security office and CMB, respectively. Regulatory compliance might (and usually will) go beyond the baseline and involve systems, processes, and personnel that are not subject to the baseline.
Which of the following standards primarily pertains to cabling designs and setups in a data center?
A. IDCA
B. BICSI
C. NFPA
D. Uptime Institute
Suggested Answer: B
The standards put out by Building Industry Consulting Service International (BICSI) primarily cover complex cabling designs and setups for data centers, but also include specifications on power, energy efficiency, and hot/cold aisle setups.
In order to prevent cloud customers from potentially consuming enormous amounts of resources within a cloud environment and thus having a negative impact on other customers, what concept is commonly used by a cloud provider?
A. Limit
B. Cap
C. Throttle
D. Reservation
Suggested Answer: A
A limit puts a maximum value on the amount of resources that may be consumed by either a system, a service, or a cloud customer. It is commonly used to prevent one entity from consuming enormous amounts of resources and having an operational impact on other tenants within the same cloud system. Limits can either be hard or somewhat flexible, meaning a customer can borrow from other customers while still having their actual limit preserved. A reservation is a guarantee to a cloud customer that a certain level of resources will always be available to them, regardless of what operational demands are currently placed on the cloud environment. Both cap and throttle are terms that sound similar to limit, but they are not the correct terms in this case.
SOC Type 1 reports are considered "restricted use," in that they are intended only for limited audiences and purposes.
Which of the following is NOT a population that would be appropriate for a SOC Type 1 report?
A. Current clients
B. Auditors
C. Potential clients
D. The service organization
Suggested Answer: C
Potential clients are not served by SOC Type 1 audits. A Type 2 or Type 3 report would be appropriate for potential clients. SOC Type 1 reports are intended for restricted use, where only the service organization itself, current clients, or auditors would have access to them.
Having a reservation in a cloud environment can ensure operations continue in the event of high utilization across the cloud.
Which of the following would NOT be a capability covered by reservations?
A. Performing business operations
B. Starting virtual machines
C. Running applications
D. Auto-scaling
Suggested Answer: D
Community Answer: D
A reservation will not guarantee auto-scaling is available because it involves the allocation of additional resources beyond what a cloud customer already has provisioned. Reservations will guarantee minimal resources are available to start virtual machines, run applications, and perform normal business operations.
Which of the cloud deployment models is used by popular services such as iCloud, Dropbox, and OneDrive?
A. Hybrid
B. Public
C. Private
D. Community
Suggested Answer: B
Popular services such as iCloud, Dropbox, and OneDrive are all publicly available and are open to any user for free, with possible add-on services offered for a cost.
With an API, various features and optimizations are highly desirable to scalability, reliability, and security.
What does the REST API support that the SOAP API does NOT support?
A. Acceleration
B. Caching
C. Redundancy
D. Encryption
Suggested Answer: B
Community Answer: B
The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) does not support caching, whereas the Representational State Transfer (REST) API does. The other options are all capabilities that are either not supported by SOAP or not supported by any API and must be provided by external features.
For optimal security, trust zones are used for network segmentation and isolation. They allow for the separation of various systems and tiers, each with its own security level.
Which of the following is typically used to allow administrative personnel access to trust zones?
A. IPSec
B. SSH
C. VPN
D. TLS
Suggested Answer: C
Virtual private networks (VPNs) are used to provide administrative personnel with secure communication channels through security systems and into trust zones.
They allow staff who perform system administration tasks to have access to ports and systems that are not allowed from the public Internet. IPSec is an encryption protocol for point-to-point communications at the network level, and may be used within a trust zone but not to give access into a trust zone. TLS enables encryption of communications between systems and services and would likely be used to secure the VPN communications, but it does not represent the overall concept being asked for in the question. SSH allows for secure shell access to systems, but not for general access into trust zones.
What masking strategy involves the replacing of sensitive data at the time it is accessed and used as it flows between the data and application layers of a service?
A. Active
B. Static
C. Dynamic
D. Transactional
Suggested Answer: C
Community Answer: C
Dynamic masking involves the live replacing of sensitive data fields during transactional use between the data and application layers of a service. Static masking involves creating a full data set with the sensitive data fields masked, but is not done during live transactions like dynamic masking. Active and transactional are offered as similar types of answers but are not types of masking.
DLP solutions can aid in deterring loss due to which of the following?
A. Device failure
B. Randomization
C. Inadvertent disclosure
D. Natural disaster
Suggested Answer: C
Community Answer: C
DLP solutions may protect against inadvertent disclosure. Randomization is a technique for obscuring data, not a risk to data. DLP tools will not protect against risks from natural disasters, or against impacts due to device failure.
Which of the following is considered an internal redundancy for a data center?
A. Power distribution units
B. Network circuits
C. Power substations
D. Generators
Suggested Answer: A
Community Answer: A
Power distribution units are internal to a data center and supply power to internal components such as racks, appliances, and cooling systems. As such, they are considered an internal redundancy.
Which United States law is focused on accounting and financial practices of organizations?
A. Safe Harbor
B. GLBA
C. SOX
D. HIPAA
Suggested Answer: C
Community Answer: C
The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act is not an act that pertains to privacy or IT security directly, but rather regulates accounting and financial practices used by organizations. It was passed to protect stakeholders and shareholders from improper practices and errors, and it sets forth rules for compliance, regulated and enforced by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The main influence on IT systems and operations is the requirements it sets for data retention, specifically in regard to what types of records must be preserved and for how long.
Which of the following is considered an administrative control?
A. Keystroke logging
B. Access control process
C. Door locks
D. Biometric authentication
Suggested Answer: B
A process is an administrative control; sometimes, the process includes elements of other types of controls (in this case, the access control mechanism might be a technical control, or it might be a physical control), but the process itself is administrative. Keystroke logging is a technical control (or an attack, if done for malicious purposes, and not for auditing); door locks are a physical control; and biometric authentication is a technological control.
Which component of ITIL involves the creation of an RFC ticket and obtaining official approvals for it?
A. Problem management
B. Release management
C. Deployment management
D. Change management
Suggested Answer: D
Community Answer: D
The change management process involves the creation of the official Request for Change (RFC) ticket, which is used to document the change, obtain the required approvals from management and stakeholders, and track the change to completion. Release management is a subcomponent of change management, where the actual code or configuration change is put into place. Deployment management is similar to release management, but it’s where changes are actually implemented on systems. Problem management is focused on the identification and mitigation of known problems and deficiencies before they are able to occur.
Above and beyond general regulations for data privacy and protection, certain types of data are subjected to more rigorous regulations and oversight.
Which of the following is not a regulatory framework for more sensitive or specialized data?
A. FIPS 140-2
B. FedRAMP
C. PCI DSS
D. HIPAA
Suggested Answer: A
Community Answer: A
The FIPS 140-2 standard pertains to the certification of cryptographic modules and is not a regulatory framework. The Payment Card Industry Data Security
Standard (PCI DSS), the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are all regulatory frameworks for sensitive or specialized data.
The WS-Security standards are built around all of the following standards except which one?
A. SAML
B. WDSL
C. XML
D. SOAP
Suggested Answer: A
Community Answer: B
The WS-Security specifications, as well as the WS-Federation system, are built upon XML, WDSL, and SOAP. SAML is a very similar protocol that is used as an alternative to WS.XML, WDSL, and SOAP are all integral to the WS-Security specifications.
The goals of SIEM solution implementation include all of the following, except:
A. Dashboarding
B. Performance enhancement
C. Trend analysis
D. Centralization of log streams
Suggested Answer: B
Community Answer: B
SIEM does not intend to provide any enhancement of performance; in fact, a SIEM solution may decrease performance because of additional overhead. All the rest are goals of SIEM implementations.
Clustered systems can be used to ensure high availability and load balancing across individual systems through a variety of methodologies.
What process is used within a clustered system to ensure proper load balancing and to maintain the health of the overall system to provide high availability?
A. Distributed clustering
B. Distributed balancing
C. Distributed optimization
D. Distributed resource scheduling
Suggested Answer: D
Community Answer: D
Distributed resource scheduling (DRS) is used within all clustered systems as the method for providing high availability, scaling, management, workload distribution, and the balancing of jobs and processes. None of the other choices is the correct term in this case.
