CC Exam Dumps - ISC certification Questions and Answers

A baseline is a documented set of approved security controls, configurations, and system settings used as a standard across an IT environment. Baselines ensure consistency, security, and compliance by defining how systems should be configured before deployment and during operation.

Security baselines are commonly derived from frameworks such as CIS Benchmarks, NIST SP 800-53, and vendor hardening guides. They help reduce misconfigurations, which are a leading cause of security breaches.

Patches address specific vulnerabilities, inventory tracks assets, and policies define high-level rules and expectations. Baselines translate policies into actionable technical settings, such as password policies, logging configurations, and service restrictions.

By enforcing baselines, organizations improve security posture, simplify audits, and enable faster incident response. Any deviation from the baseline can be detected and investigated, making baselines a cornerstone of secure and well-managed IT environments.

These areType 1 (bare-metal) hypervisors, running directly on hardware without a host operating system, offering higher performance and security.

Federated authentication enables single identity across trusted organizations, supporting single sign-on (SSO) and eliminating repeated credential entry.

A cryptographic hash uniquely represents the contents of a file or message. Even a small change produces a completely different hash value, making it an effective digital fingerprint.

Firewalls are not particularly effective against insider threats because insiders already have authorized access to internal systems and networks. Firewalls are designed to control traffic between trusted and untrusted networks, not to monitor legitimate internal user behavior.

Least privilege limits what insiders can access, reducing potential damage. Background checks help identify risky individuals before hiring. Separation of duties prevents any one person from having complete control over critical processes.

Insider threats involve misuse of legitimate access, whether malicious or accidental. Effective controls against insiders focus on access management, monitoring, auditing, and behavioral analysis—not perimeter defenses.

Security frameworks consistently emphasize that insider threats require administrative, detective, and procedural controls rather than traditional network perimeter tools like firewalls.

Hashing is the best control for detecting unauthorized changes to source code. By generating cryptographic hash values for approved versions of files, any modification—intentional or accidental—will result in a different hash, immediately indicating tampering.

Backups help recover data but do not prevent or detect unauthorized changes. File labels provide classification but do not ensure integrity. Security audits review compliance but do not continuously detect changes.

Hashing supports integrity assurance, which is a core security objective. Tools such as file integrity monitoring (FIM) systems rely on hashing to alert administrators when files are altered unexpectedly.

NIST and CIS controls emphasize hashing and integrity monitoring as essential for protecting code repositories, system files, and critical configurations, especially in DevOps and CI/CD environments.

Encryption ensures confidentiality by rendering data unreadable to unauthorized users, whether at rest or in transit.

Policies are high-level statements of management intent and direction. Standards and procedures derive from policies.

Data loss affecting availability or integrity is classified as asecurity incident, even if no attacker is involved.

Zero Trust assumes no implicit trust and requires continuous verification of every access request. Microsegmentation is a core Zero Trust technique that limits lateral movement.