SSCP ISC Systems Security Certified Practitioner Free Practice Exam Questions (2025 Updated)

If Incident Handling is underway an incident has potentially been identified. At that point all use of the system should stop because the system can no longer be trusted and any changes could contaminate the evidence. This would include all System Development Activity.

Every organization should have plans and procedures in place that deals with Incident Handling.

Employees should be instructed what steps are to be taken as soon as an incident occurs and how to report it. It is important that all parties involved are aware of these steps to protect not only any possible evidence but also to prevent any additional harm.

It is quite possible that the fraudster has planted malicous code that could cause destruction or even a Trojan Horse with a back door into the system. As soon as an incident has been identified the system can no longer be trusted and all use of the system should cease.

Shon Harris in her latest book mentions:

Although we commonly use the terms “event” and “incident” interchangeably, there are subtle differences between the two. An event is a negative occurrence that can be observed, verified, and documented, whereas an incident is a series of events that negatively affects the company and/ or impacts its security posture. This is why we call reacting to these issues “incident response” (or “incident handling”), because something is negatively affecting the company and causing a security breach.

Many types of incidents (virus, insider attack, terrorist attacks, and so on) exist, and sometimes it is just human error. Indeed, many incident response individuals have received a frantic call in the middle of the night because a system is acting “weird.” The reasons could be that a deployed patch broke something, someone misconfigured a device, or the administrator just learned a new scripting language and rolled out some code that caused mayhem and confusion.

When a company endures a computer crime, it should leave the environment and evidence unaltered and contact whomever has been delegated to investigate these types of situations. Someone who is unfamiliar with the proper process of collecting data and evidence from a crime scene could instead destroy that evidence, and thus all hope of prosecuting individuals, and achieving a conviction would be lost.

Companies should have procedures for many issues in computer security such as enforcement procedures, disaster recovery and continuity procedures, and backup procedures. It is also necessary to have a procedure for dealing with computer incidents because they have become an increasingly important issue of today’s information security departments. This is a direct result of attacks against networks and information systems increasing annually. Even though we don’t have specific numbers due to a lack of universal reporting and reporting in general, it is clear that the volume of attacks is increasing.

Just think about all the spam, phishing scams, malware, distributed denial-of-service, and other attacks you see on your own network and hear about in the news. Unfortunately, many companies are at a loss as to who to call or what to do right after they have been the victim of a cybercrime. Therefore, all companies should have an incident response policy that indicates who has the authority to initiate an incident response, with supporting procedures set up before an incident takes place.

This policy should be managed by the legal department and security department. They need to work together to make sure the technical security issues are covered and the legal issues that surround criminal activities are properly dealt with. The incident response policy should be clear and concise. For example, it should indicate if systems can be taken offline to try to save evidence or if systems have to continue functioning at the risk of destroying evidence. Each system and functionality should have a priority assigned to it. For instance, if the file server is infected, it should be removed from the network, but not shut down. However, if the mail server is infected, it should not be removed from the network or shut down because of the priority the company attributes to the mail server over the file server. Tradeoffs and decisions will have to be made, but it is better to think through these issues before the situation occurs, because better logic is usually possible before a crisis, when there’s less emotion and chaos.

The Australian Computer Emergency Response Team’s General Guidelines for Computer Forensics:

Keep the handling and corruption of original data to a minimum.

Document all actions and explain changes.

Follow the Five Rules for Evidence (Admissible, Authentic, Complete, Accurate, Convincing).

• Bring in more experienced help when handling and/ or analyzing the evidence is beyond your knowledge, skills, or abilities.

Adhere to your organization’s security policy and obtain written permission to conduct a forensics investigation.

Capture as accurate an image of the system( s) as possible while working quickly.

Be ready to testify in a court of law.

Make certain your actions are repeatable.

Prioritize your actions, beginning with volatile and proceeding to persistent evidence.

Do not run any programs on the system( s) that are potential evidence.

Act ethically and in good faith while conducting a forensics investigation, and do not attempt to do any harm.

The following answers are incorrect:

help-desk function. Is incorrect because during an incident, employees need to be able to communicate with a central source. It is most likely that would be the help-desk. Also the help-desk would need to be able to communicate with the employees to keep them informed.

system imaging. Is incorrect because once an incident has occured you should perform a capture of evidence starting with the most volatile data and imaging would be doen using bit for bit copy of storage medias to protect the evidence.

risk management process. Is incorrect because incident handling is part of risk management, and should continue.

Reference(s) used for this question:

Harris, Shon (2012-10-25). CISSP All-in-One Exam Guide, 6th Edition (Kindle Locations 21468-21476). McGraw-Hill. Kindle Edition.

and

Harris, Shon (2012-10-25). CISSP All-in-One Exam Guide, 6th Edition (Kindle Locations 21096-21121). McGraw-Hill. Kindle Edition.

and

NIST Computer Security incident handling http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-12/800-12-html/chapter12.html

An investigator's notebook cannot be used as evidence is court. It can only be used by the investigator to refresh his memory during a proceeding, but cannot be submitted as evidence in any form.

The following answers are incorrect:

When the investigator is unwilling to testify. Is incorrect because the notebook cannot be submitted as evidence in any form.

When other forms of physical evidence are not available. Is incorrect because the notebook cannot be submitted as evidence in any form.

If the defense has no objections. Is incorrect because the notebook cannot be submitted as evidence in any form.

It is important to have ways to measure the success of the plan and tests against the stated objectives. Therefore, results must be quantitatively gauged as opposed to an evaluation based only on observation. Quantitatively measuring the results of the test involves a generic statement measuring all the activities performed during BCP, which gives the best assurance of an effective plan. Although choices A and B are also quantitative, they relate to specific areas, or an analysis of results from one viewpoint, namely the accuracy of the results and the elapsed time.

Source: Information Systems Audit and Control Association, Certified Information Systems Auditor 2002 review manual, Chapter 5: Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity (page 269).

Selecting and Alternate Site would not be done within the initial BIA. It would be done at a later stage of the BCP and DRP recovery effort. All of the other choices were steps that would be conducted during the BIA. See below the list of steps that would be done during the BIA.

A BIA (business impact analysis ) is considered a functional analysis, in which a team collects data through interviews and documentary sources; documents business functions, activities, and transactions ; develops a hierarchy of business functions; and finally applies a classification scheme to indicate each individual function’s criticality level.

BIA Steps

1. Select individuals to interview for data gathering.

2. Create data-gathering techniques (surveys, questionnaires, qualitative and quantitative approaches).

3. Identify the company’s critical business functions.

4. Identify the resources these functions depend upon.

5. Calculate how long these functions can survive without these resources.

6. Identify vulnerabilities and threats to these functions.

7. Calculate the risk for each different business function.

8. Document findings and report them to management.

Reference(s) used for this question:

Harris, Shon (2012-10-18). CISSP All-in-One Exam Guide, 6th Edition (p. 905-909). McGraw-Hill. Kindle Edition.

In this step, your main objective is to examine and analyze what has occurred and focus on determining the root cause of the incident.

Recovery is incorrect as recovery is about resuming operations or bringing affected systems back into production

Containment is incorrect as containment is about reducing the potential impact of an incident.

Triage is incorrect as triage is about determining the seriousness of the incident and filtering out false positives

Full Backup/Archival Backup - Complete/Full backup of every selected file on the system regardless of whether it has been backup recently.. This is the slowest of the backup methods since it backups all the data. It’s however the fastest for restoring data.

Incremental Backup - Any backup in which only the files that have been modified since last full back up are backed up. The archive attribute should be updated while backing up only modified files, which indicates that the file has been backed up. This is the fastest of the backup methods, but the slowest of the restore methods.

Differential Backup - The backup of all data files that have been modified since the last incremental backup or archival/full backup. Uses the archive bit to determine what files have changed since last incremental backup or full backup. The files grows each day until the next full backup is performed clearing the archive attributes. This enables the user to restore all files changed since the last full backup in one pass. This is a more neutral method of backing up data since it’s not faster nor slower than the other two

Easy Way To Remember each of the backup type properties:

Backup Speed Restore Speed

Full 3 1

Differential 2 2

Incremental 1 3

Legend: 1 = Fastest 2 = Faster 3 = Slowest

Source:

KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Page 69.

and

http://www.proprofs.com/mwiki/index.php/Full_Backup,_Incremental_%26_Differential_Backup

All businesses are driven by records. Even in today's electronic society businesses generate mountains of critical documents everyday. Invoices, client lists, calendars, contracts, files, medical records, and innumerable other records are generated every day.

Stop and ask yourself what happens if your business lost those documents today.

Valuable papers business insurance coverage provides coverage to your business in case of a loss of vital records. Over the years policy language has evolved to include a number of different types of records. Generally, the policy will cover "written, printed, or otherwise inscribed documents and records, including books, maps, films, drawings, abstracts, deeds, mortgages, and manuscripts." But, read the policy coverage carefully. The policy language typically "does not mean "money" or "securities," converted data,programs or instructions used in your data processing operations, including the materials on which the data is recorded."

The coverage is often included as a part of property insurance or as part of a small business owner policy. For example, a small business owner policy includes in many cases valuable papers coverage up to $25,000.

It is important to realize what the coverage actually entails and, even more critical, to analyze your business to determine what it would cost to replace records.

The coverage pays for the loss of vital papers and the cost to replace the records up to the limit of the insurance and after application of any deductible. For example, the insurer will pay to have waterlogged papers dried and reproduced (remember, fires are put out by water and the fire department does not stop to remove your book keeping records). The insurer may cover temporary storage or the cost of moving records to avoid a loss.

For some businesses, losing customer lists, some business records, and contracts, can mean the expense and trouble of having to recreate those documents, but is relatively easy and a low level risk and loss. Larger businesses and especially professionals (lawyers, accountants, doctors) are in an entirely separate category and the cost of replacement of documents is much higher. Consider, in analyzing your business and potential risk, what it would actually cost to reproduce your critical business records. Would you need to hire temporary personnel? How many hours of productivity would go into replacing the records? Would you need to obtain originals? Would original work need to be recreated (for example, home inspectors, surveyors, cartographers)?

Often when a business owner considers the actual cost related to the reproduction of records, the owner quickly realizes that their business insurance policy limits for valuable papers coverage is woefully inadequate.

Insurers (and your insurance professional)will often suggest higher coverages for valuable papers. The extra premium is often worth the cost and should be considered.

Finally, most policies will require records to be protected. You need to review your declarations pages and speak with your insurer to determine what is required. Some insurers may offer discounted coverage if there is a document retention and back up plan in place and followed. There are professional organizations that can assist your business in designing a records management policy to lower the risk (and your premiums). For example, ARMA International has been around since 1955 and its members consist of some of the top document retention and storage companies.

Reference(s) used for this question:

http://businessinsure.about.com/od/propertyinsurance/f/vpcov.htm

Contingency planning requirements should be considered at every phase of SDLC, but most importantly when a new IT system is being conceived. In the initiation phase, system requirements are identified and matched to their related operational processes, allowing determination of the system's appropriate recovery priority.

Source: SWANSON, Marianne, & al., National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), NIST Special Publication 800-34, Contingency Planning Guide for Information Technology Systems, December 2001 (page 12).

and

The Official ISC2 Guide to the CBK, Second Edition, Application Security, page 180-185

RFC 2828 (Internet Security Glossary) defines a Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) as an organization that coordinates and supports the response to security incidents that involves sites within a defined constituency. This is the proper definition for the CSIRT. To be considered a CSIRT, an organization must provide a secure channel for receiving reports about suspected security incidents, provide assistance to members of its constituency in handling the incidents and disseminate incident-related information to its constituency and other involved parties. Security-related incidents do not necessarily have to be reported to the authorities.

Source: SHIREY, Robert W., RFC2828: Internet Security Glossary, may 2000.

A warm site has some basic equipment or in some case almost all of the equipment but it is not sufficient to be operational without bringing in the last backup and in some cases more computers and other equipment.

The following answers are incorrect:

hot site. Is incorrect because a hot-site is fully configured with all the required hardware. The only thing missing is the last backup and you are up and running.

Rolling hot site. Is incorrect because a rolling hot-site is fully configured with all the required hardware.

cold site. Is incorrect because a cold site has basically power, HVAC, basic cabling, but no or little as far as processing equipment is concerned. All other equipment must be brought to this site. It might take a week or two to reconstruct.

References:

OIG CBK Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning (pages 368 - 369)

Because it is rarely possible or cost effective to eliminate all risks, an attempt is made to reduce risks to an acceptable level through the risk assessment process. This process allows, from a set of potential risks (whether likely or not), to come up with a set of identified, possible risks.

The implementation of security controls allows reducing the identified risks to a smaller set of residual risks. Because these residual risks represent the complete set of situations that could affect system performance, the scope of the contingency plan may be reduced to address only this decreased risk set.

As a result, the contingency plan can be narrowly focused, conserving resources while ensuring an effective system recovery capability.

Source: SWANSON, Marianne, & al., National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), NIST Special Publication 800-34, Contingency Planning Guide for Information Technology Systems, December 2001 (page 7).

These people, as employees, are trusted to perform their duties honestly and not take advantage of the trust placed in them.

The following answers are incorrect:

They have had previous contact with law enforcement. Is incorrect because most often it is a person that holds a position of trust and this answer implies they have a criminal background. This type of individual is typically not in a position of trust within an organization.

They conspire with others. Is incorrect because they typically work alone, often as a form of retribution over a percieved injustice done to them.

They deviate from the accepted norms of society. Is incorrect because while the nature of fraudsters deviate from the norm, the fraudsters often hold a position of trust within the organization.

The keyword is ' MOST CRITICAL ' and the correct answer is ' Management Support ' as the management must be convinced of its necessity and that's why a business case must be made. The decision of how a company should recover from any disaster is purely a business decision and should be treated as so.

The other answers are incorrect because :

Security policy is incorrect as it is not the MOST CRITICAL piece.

Availability of backup information processing facilities is incorrect as this comes once the organization has BCP Plans in place and for a BCP Plan , management support must be there.

Staff training comes after the plans are in place with the support from management.

Reference : Shon Harris , AIO v3 , Chapter-9: Business Continuity Planning , Page : 697.

The purpose of a tape backup method is to protect and/or restore lost, corrupted, or deleted information, thereby preserving the data integrity and ensuring availability.

All other choices could suffer from corruption and it might not be possible to restore the data without proper backups being done.

This is a tricky question, if the information is lost, corrupted, or deleted only a good backup could be use to restore the information. Any synchronization mechanism would update the mirror copy and the data could not be recovered.

With backups there could be a large gap where your latest data may not be available. You would have to look at your Recovery Point Objective and see if this is acceptable for your company recovery objectives.

The following are incorrect answers:

Mirroring will preserve integrity and restore points in all cases of drive failure. However, if you have corrupted data on the primary set of drives you may get corrupted data on the secondary set as well.

Remote Journaling provides Continuous or periodic synchronized recording of transaction data at a remote location as a backup strategy. (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/remote-journaling.html) With journaling there might be a gap of time between the data updates being send in batch at regular interval. So some of the data could be lost.

Database shadowing is synonymous with Mirroring but it only applies to databases, but not to information and data as a whole.

Reference(s) used for this question:

KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Page 68.

Assigning the values for the inputs to a purely quantitative risk assessment requires both a lot of time and significant experience on the part of the assessors. The most experienced employees or representatives from each of the departments would be involved in the process. It is NOT an easy task if you wish to come up with accurate values.

"It can be automated" is incorrect. There are a number of tools on the market that automate the process of conducting a quantitative risk assessment.

"It involves complex calculations" is incorrect. The calculations are simple for basic scenarios but could become fairly complex for large cases. The formulas have to be applied correctly.

"It requires a high volume of information" is incorrect. Large amounts of information are required in order to develop reasonable and defensible values for the inputs to the quantitative risk assessment.

References:

CBK, pp. 60-61

AIO3, p. 73, 78

The Cissp Prep Guide - Mastering The Ten Domains Of Computer Security - 2001, page 24

The structured walk-through test occurs when the functional representatives meet to review the plan in detail. This involves a thorough look at each of the plan steps, and the procedures that are invoked at that point in the plan. This ensures that the actual planned activities are accurately described in the plan. The checklist test is a method of testing the plan by distributing copies to each of the functional areas. The simulation test plays out different scenarios. The parallel test is essentially an operational test that is performed without interrupting current processing.

Source: HARE, Chris, CISSP Study Guide: Business Continuity Planning Domain,

Public Relations, although important to a company, is not listed as an essential business function that should be identified and have loss criteria developed for.

All other entries are considered essential and should be identified and have loss criteria developed.

Source: HARRIS, Shon, All-In-One CISSP Certification Exam Guide, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2002, chapter 9: Disaster Recovery and Business continuity (page 598).

Source: HARRIS, S., CISSP All- In-One Exam Guide, 3rd. Edition, 2005, Chapter 9, Page 701.

There have been much discussion about the steps of the BIA and I struggled with this before deciding to scrape the question about "the four steps," and re-write the question using the AIO for a reference. This question should be easy.... if you know all eight steps.

The eight detailed and granular steps of the BIA are:

1. Select Individuals to interview for the data gathering.

2. Create data gathering techniques (surveys, questionnaires, qualitative and quantitative approaches).

3. Identify the company's critical business functions.

4. Identify the resources that these functions depend upon.

5. Calculate how long these functions can survive without these resources.

6. Identify vulnerabilities and the threats to these functions.

7. Calculate risk for each of the different business functions.

8. Document findings and report them to management.

Shon goes on to cover each step in Chapter 9.

Threat analysis is the examination of threat sources against system vulnerabilities to determine the threats for a particular system in a particular operational environment.

The following answers are incorrect:

Risk analysis is the process of identifying the risks to system security and determining the probability of occurrence, the resulting impact, and the additional safeguards that mitigate this impact.

Risk analysis is synonymous with risk assessment and part of risk management, which is the ongoing process of assessing the risk to mission/business as part of a risk-based approach used to determine adequate security for a system by analyzing the threats and vulnerabilities and selecting appropriate, cost-effective controls to achieve and maintain an acceptable level or risk.

Due Diligence is identifying possible risks that could affect a company based on best practices and standards.

Reference(s) used for this question:

STONEBURNER, Gary & al, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), NIST Special Publication 800-27, Engineering Principles for Information Technology Security (A Baseline for Achieving Security), June 2001 (page B-3).

Of the offered technologies, load balancing/disk replication offers the highest availability, measured in terms of minutes of lost data or server downtime.

A Network-Attached Storage (NAS) or a Storage Area Network (SAN) solution combined with virtualization would offer an even higher availability.

Source: SWANSON, Marianne, & al., National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), NIST Special Publication 800-34, Contingency Planning Guide for Information Technology Systems, December 2001 (page 49).

This step is not a part of RISK ANALYSIS.

A risk analysis has three main goals: identify risks, quantify the impact of potential threats, and provide an economic balance between the impact of the risk and the cost of the associated countermeasure. Choosing the best countermeasure is not part of the risk analysis.

Source: HARRIS, Shon, All-In-One CISSP Certification Exam Guide, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2002, chapter 3: Security Management Practices (page 73).

HARRIS, Shon, Mike Meyers' CISSP(R) Certification Passport, 2002, McGraw-Hill, page 12.

Computer security should be first and foremost cost-effective.

As for any organization, there is a need to measure their cost-effectiveness, to justify budget usage and provide supportive arguments for their next budget claim. But organizations often have difficulties to accurately measure the effectiveness and the cost of their information security activities.

The classical financial approach for ROI calculation is not particularly appropriate for measuring security-related initiatives: Security is not generally an investment that results in a profit. Security is more about loss prevention. In other terms, when you invest in security, you don’t expect benefits; you expect to reduce the risks threatening your assets.

The concept of the ROI calculation applies to every investment. Security is no exception. Executive decision-makers want to know the impact security is having on the bottom line. In order to know how much they should spend on security, they need to know how much is the lack of security costing to the business and what

are the most cost-effective solutions.

Applied to security, a Return On Security Investment (ROSI) calculation can provide quantitative answers to essential financial questions:

Is an organization paying too much for its security?

What financial impact on productivity could have lack of security?

When is the security investment enough?

Is this security product/organisation beneficial?

The following are other concerns about computer security but not the first and foremost:

The costs and benefits of security should be carefully examined in both monetary and non-monetary terms to ensure that the cost of controls does not exceed expected benefits.

Security should be appropriate and proportionate to the value of and degree of reliance on the IT systems and to the severity, probability, and extent of potential harm.

Requirements for security vary, depending upon the particular IT system. Therefore it does not make sense for computer security to cover all identified risks when the cost of the measures exceeds the value of the systems they are protecting.

Reference(s) used for this question:

SWANSON, Marianne & GUTTMAN, Barbara, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), NIST Special Publication 800-14, Generally Accepted Principles and Practices for Securing Information Technology Systems, September 1996 (page 6).

and

http://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/cert/other-work/introduction-to-return-on-security-investment

The incident response plan focuses on information security responses to incidents affecting systems and/or networks. It establishes procedures to address cyber attacks against an organization's IT systems. These procedures are designed to enable security personnel to identify, mitigate, and recover from malicious computer incidents, such as unauthorized access to a system or data, denial of service, or unauthorized changes to system hardware or software. The continuity of support plan is the same as an IT contingency plan. It addresses IT system disruptions and establishes procedures for recovering a major application or general support system. It is not business process focused. The business continuity plan addresses business processes and provides procedures for sustaining essential business operations while recovering from a significant disruption. The continuity of operations plan addresses the subset of an organization's missions that are deemed most critical and procedures to sustain these functions at an alternate site for up to 30 days.

Source: SWANSON, Marianne, & al., National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), NIST Special Publication 800-34, Contingency Planning Guide for Information Technology Systems, December 2001 (page 8).

Scanning is definitively a very active attack. The attacker will make use of a scanner to perform the attack, the scanner will send a very large quantity of packets to the target in order to illicit responses that allows the attacker to find information about the operating system, vulnerabilities, misconfiguration and more. The packets being sent are sometimes attempting to identify if a known vulnerability exist on the remote hosts.

A passive attack is usually done in the footprinting phase of an attack. While doing your passive reconnaissance you never send a single packet to the destination target. You gather information from public databases such as the DNS servers, public information through search engines, financial information from finance web sites, and technical infomation from mailing list archive or job posting for example.

An attack can be active or passive.

An "active attack" attempts to alter system resources or affect their operation.

A "passive attack" attempts to learn or make use of information from the system but does not affect system resources. (E.g., see: wiretapping.)

The following are all incorrect answers because they are all passive attacks:

Traffic Analysis - Is the process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication. It can be performed even when the messages are encrypted and cannot be decrypted. In general, the greater the number of messages observed, or even intercepted and stored, the more can be inferred from the traffic. Traffic analysis can be performed in the context of military intelligence or counter-intelligence, and is a concern in computer security.

Eavesdropping - Eavesdropping is another security risk posed to networks. Because of the way some networks are built, anything that gets sent out is broadcast to everyone. Under normal circumstances, only the computer that the data was meant for will process that information. However, hackers can set up programs on their computers called "sniffers" that capture all data being broadcast over the network. By carefully examining the data, hackers can often reconstruct real data that was never meant for them. Some of the most damaging things that get sniffed include passwords and credit card information.

In the cryptographic context, Eavesdropping and sniffing data as it passes over a network are considered passive attacks because the attacker is not affecting the protocol, algorithm, key, message, or any parts of the encryption system. Passive attacks are hard to detect, so in most cases methods are put in place to try to prevent them rather than to detect and stop them. Altering messages, modifying system files, and masquerading as another individual are acts that are considered active attacks because the attacker is actually doing something instead of sitting back and gathering data. Passive attacks are usually used to gain information prior to carrying out an active attack."

Wiretapping - Wiretapping refers to listening in on electronic communications on telephones, computers, and other devices. Many governments use it as a law enforcement tool, and it is also used in fields like corporate espionage to gain access to privileged information. Depending on where in the world one is, wiretapping may be tightly controlled with laws that are designed to protect privacy rights, or it may be a widely accepted practice with little or no protections for citizens. Several advocacy organizations have been established to help civilians understand these laws in their areas, and to fight illegal wiretapping.

Reference(s) used for this question:

HARRIS, Shon, All-In-One CISSP Certification Exam Guide, 6th Edition, Cryptography, Page 865

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_%28computing%29

and

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-wiretapping.htm

and

https://pangea.stanford.edu/computing/resources/network/security/risks.php

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_analysis

The Full Backup Method is primarily run when time and tape space permits, and is used for the system archive or baselined tape sets.

Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Page 69.

Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Pages 16, 32.

Direct evidence can prove a fact all by itself and does not need backup information to refer to. When using direct evidence, presumptions are not required. One example of direct evidence is the testimony of a witness who saw a crime take place. Although this oral evidence would be secondary in nature, meaning a case could not rest on just it alone, it is also direct evidence, meaning the lawyer does not necessarily need to provide other evidence to back it up. Direct evidence often is based on information gathered from a witness’s five senses.

The following answers are incorrect:

Circumstantial evidence. Is incorrect because Circumstantial evidence can prove an intermediate fact that can then be used to deduce or assume the existence of another fact.

Conclusive evidence. Is incorrect because Conclusive evidence is irrefutable and cannot be contradicted. Conclusive evidence is very strong all by itself and does not require corroboration.

Corroborative evidence. Is incorrect because Corroborative evidence is supporting evidence used to help prove an idea or point. It cannot stand on its own, but is used as a supplementary tool to help prove a primary piece of evidence.

A sag is a momentary low voltage. A spike is a momentary high voltage. A fault is a momentary power out and a brownout is a prolonged power supply that is below normal voltage.

Source: HARRIS, Shon, All-In-One CISSP Certification Exam Guide, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2002, chapter 6: Physical security (page 299)

Physically securing the tapes from unauthorized access is obviously a security concern and is considered a function of the Operations Security Domain.

Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Page 71.

SearchStorage.com Definitions mentions "As part of a disaster recovery plan, BIA is likely to identify costs linked to failures, such as loss of cash flow, replacement of equipment, salaries paid to catch up with a backlog of work, loss of profits, and so on.

A BIA report quantifies the importance of business components and suggests appropriate fund allocation for measures to protect them. The possibilities of failures are likely to be assessed in terms of their impacts on safety, finances, marketing, legal compliance, and quality assurance.

Where possible, impact is expressed monetarily for purposes of comparison. For example, a business may spend three times as much on marketing in the wake of a disaster to rebuild customer confidence."

Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, John Wiley & Sons, 2001, Page 278.

The difference between this and the full-interruption test is that the primary production processing of the business does not stop; the test processing runs in parallel to the real processing. This is the most common type of disaster recovery plan testing.

A checklist test is only considered a preliminary step to a real test.

In a structured walk-through test, business unit management representatives meet to walk through the plan, ensuring it accurately reflects the organization's ability to recover successfully, at least on paper.

A simulation test is aimed at testing the ability of the personnel to respond to a simulated disaster, but not recovery process is actually performed.

Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, John Wiley & Sons, 2001, Chapter 8: Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery Planning (page 289).

Remote Journaling is a technology to facilitate sending copies of the journal of transaction entries from a production system to a secondary system in realtime. The remote nature of such a connection is predicated upon having local journaling already established. Local journaling on the production side allows each change that ensues for a journal-eligible object e.g., database physical file, SQL table, data area, data queue, byte stream file residing within the IFS) to be recorded and logged. It’s these local images that flow to the remote system. Once there, the journal entries serve a variety of purposes, from feeding a high availability software replay program or data warehouse to offering an offline, realtime vault of the most recent database changes.

Reference(s) used for this question:

The Essential Guide to Remote Journaling by IBM

and

TIPTON, Hal, (ISC)2, Introduction to the CISSP Exam presentation.

and

KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, John Wiley & Sons, 2001, Chapter 8: Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery Planning (page 286).

The incremental backup method usually resets the archive bit on the files after they have been backed up.

An Incremental Backup will backup all the files that have changed since the last Full Backup (the first time it is run after a full backup was previously completed) or after an Incremental Backup (for the second backup and subsequent backups) and sets the archive bit to 0. This type of backup take less time during the backup phase but it will take more time to restore.

The other answers are all incorrect choices.

The following backup types also exists:

Full Backup - All data are backed up. The archive bit is cleared, which means that it is set to 0.

Differential Backup - Backup the files that have been modified since the last Full Backup. The archive bit does not change. Take more time while the backup phase is performed and take less time to restore.

Reference(s) used for this question:

KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Page 69.

Tests and disaster recovery drills should be performed at least once a year. The company should have no confidence in an untested plan. Since systems and processes can change, frequent testing will aid in ensuring a plan will succeed.

Source: HARRIS, Shon, All-In-One CISSP Certification Exam Guide, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2002, chapter 9: Disaster Recovery and Business continuity (page 621).

In 1991, U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines were developed to provide judges with courses of action in dealing with white collar crimes. These guidelines provided ways that companies and law enforcement should prevent, detect and report computer crimes. It also outlined how senior management are responsible for the computer and information security decisions that they make and what actually took place within their organizations.

Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) is commonly employed in very large data retrieval systems.

Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Page 71.

Why is this the correct answer? Simply because it is WRONG, you would have contact information for your emergency personnel within the plan but NOT for ALL of your personnel. Be careful of words such as ALL.

According to NIST's Special publication 800-34, contingency plan appendices provide key details not contained in the main body of the plan. The appendices should reflect the specific technical, operational, and management contingency requirements of the given system. Contact information for recovery team personnel (not all personnel) and for vendor should be included, as well as detailed system requirements to allow for supporting of system operations. The Business Impact Analysis (BIA) should also be included as an appendix for reference should the plan be activated.

Reference(s) used for this question:

SWANSON, Marianne, & al., National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), NIST Special Publication 800-34, Contingency Planning Guide for Information Technology Systems

Although important, The monitoring of threat activity for adjustment of technical controls is not facilitated by a Business Continuity Planning

The following answers are incorrect:

All of the other choices are facilitated by a BCP:

the continuation of critical business functions

the rapid recovery of mission-critical business operations

the reduction of the impact of a disaster

Residual risk is "The security risk that remains after controls have been implemented" ISO/IEC TR 13335-1 Guidelines for the Management of IT Security (GMITS), Part 1: Concepts and Models for IT Security, 1996. "Weakness of an assets which can be exploited by a threat" is vulnerability. "The result of unwanted incident" is impact. Risk that remains after risk analysis has been performed is a distracter.

Risk can never be eliminated nor avoided, but it can be mitigated, transferred or accpeted. Even after applying a countermeasure like for example putiing up an Antivirus. But still it is not 100% that systems will be protected by antivirus.