PCCP Paloalto Networks Palo Alto Certified Cybersecurity Practitioner (PCCP) Free Practice Exam Questions (2025 Updated)

Scanning for excessive logins – ITDR identifies suspicious patterns such as unusual or excessive login attempts, which may indicate credential abuse.

Analyzing access management logs – ITDR tools analyze identity-related logs, including authentication and authorization events, to detect threats tied to user behavior and access anomalies.

Device security and signature matching are not core functions of ITDR; they fall under endpoint protection and traditional threat detection respectively.

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services combine incident impact analysis and proactive threat hunting to enhance organizational security posture. Incident impact analysis assesses the severity, scope, and potential damage of identified threats, helping prioritize responses. Proactive threat hunting involves skilled analysts searching for hidden threats that automated detection may miss, leveraging threat intelligence and behavioral analytics. Palo Alto Networks’ MDR integrates Cortex XDR and human expertise to detect, investigate, and remediate sophisticated threats early. Unlike routine firewall updates or development processes, MDR is focused on active threat discovery and comprehensive incident management.

Host Intrusion Prevention Systems (HIPS) operate on endpoints to enforce security policies by monitoring system calls, file integrity, and configuration settings. HIPS can validate device compliance, including operating system versions and patch levels, before permitting network access. This capability prevents vulnerable or outdated devices from becoming attack vectors. Palo Alto Networks integrates HIPS functionalities in its endpoint security solutions, providing granular control to enforce organizational security standards and reduce risk from non-compliant endpoints. Unlike network-based inspection, HIPS works locally on hosts to stop threats at their origin.

SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) differs from SIEM by adding automated incident response and workflow orchestration to the detection and alerting capabilities found in SIEM. This enables faster and more efficient handling of security incidents.

Assessing severity levels – UEBA data helps prioritize incidents by evaluating the risk and severity based on user and entity behavior.

Detecting and correlating anomalies – UEBA continuously analyzes activity to identify abnormal behavior and correlate anomalies that may indicate insider threats or compromised accounts.

Containers encapsulate applications and their dependencies into lightweight, portable units that can run consistently across multiple environments. This abstraction supports cloud-native development by enabling microservices architectures, rapid deployment, and scaling within orchestration platforms like Kubernetes. Containers accelerate cloud migration by decoupling applications from infrastructure, facilitating automation, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflows. Palo Alto Networks addresses container security by integrating runtime protection, vulnerability scanning, and compliance enforcement within its Prisma Cloud platform, ensuring safe adoption of cloud-native tools and methodologies.

SOAR platforms are unique in their ability to automate incident response through the use of predefined workflows. These workflows allow repetitive security tasks to be executed automatically, improving response speed and efficiency.

A TLS handshake occurs after the TCP handshake is complete. The TLS handshake is responsible for establishing a secure, encrypted session between client and server, including the negotiation of encryption algorithms and exchange of keys.

Lateral movement is a key stage where the attacker moves across the network to find valuable targets.

Privilege escalation involves gaining higher access rights to expand control within the compromised environment.

Communication with covert channels is a tactic used during persistence or exfiltration, while deletion of critical data is not a standard APT lifecycle stage — it’s more characteristic of destructive attacks.

Determining system health using unaltered system data – Active monitoring collects real-time data to assess the current health and performance of systems.

Using probes to establish potential load issues – Active monitoring uses synthetic transactions or probes to simulate user interactions and identify performance or load-related issues before they affect users.

Scripting of manual tasks – SOAR platforms automate repetitive, manual security tasks through playbooks and scripting, improving response time and efficiency.

Consistent incident handling – SOAR ensures that incidents are managed in a standardized and repeatable manner, reducing errors and improving compliance.

Isolated system and log retention are not core advantages of SOAR.

Virtual firewalls offer the advantage of dynamic scalability, making them ideal for internal segmentation in data centers. They can be quickly deployed, resized, and adjusted to meet the needs of changing workloads and environments, unlike physical firewalls which require fixed hardware resources.

A User Entity Behavior Analysis (UEBA) tool performs active monitoring by continuously analyzing the behavior of users and entities to detect anomalies that may indicate insider threats, compromised accounts, or malicious activity. It uses machine learning and analytics to identify unusual patterns in real time.

IoT devices often have constant internet connectivity and increased data sharing, making them more vulnerable to command-and-control (C2) attacks. Their limited security features and exposure to external networks provide attackers more opportunities to compromise and control them remotely.

Authorization is the component of the AAA (Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting) framework that regulates user access and permissions to resources after identity has been verified. It determines what actions or resources a user is allowed to access.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) technologies provide comprehensive visibility and real-time threat prevention directly on endpoint devices. EDR continuously monitors process activities, file executions, and system calls to detect malware, suspicious behaviors, and zero-day threats at the source. Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex XDR platform exemplifies this by correlating endpoint telemetry with network and cloud data to provide a holistic defense against attacks. Operating locally on endpoints allows EDR to prevent lateral movement and respond to threats quickly, filling security gaps that network-centric tools alone cannot address. This endpoint-level insight is critical to identifying sophisticated threats that initiate or manifest on user devices.

Advanced WildFire is a Cloud-Delivered Security Service (CDSS) that detects zero-day malware using inline cloud machine learning (ML) and sandboxing techniques. It analyzes unknown files in real-time to identify and block new threats before they can cause harm.

Detection of threats using data analysis – SIEM platforms analyze collected data to identify suspicious patterns and detect threats.

Ingestion of log data – SIEM systems collect and centralize log data from various sources, which is essential for analysis, correlation, and alerting.

Automation and prevention are more aligned with SOAR and firewall/EDR functionalities, not the core operations of SIEM.

Application allow listing is a security practice that permits only pre-approved (trusted) applications, files, and processes to run on a system. This approach helps prevent unauthorized or malicious software from executing, thereby reducing the attack surface.