Pass the ISC 2 Credentials SSCP Questions and answers with ValidTests

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.

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

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

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

A hot site has the equipment, software and communications capabilities to facilitate a recovery within a few minutes or hours following the notification of a disaster to the organization's primary site. With the exception of providing your own hot site, commercial hot sites provide the greatest protection. Most will allow you up to six weeks to restore your sites if you declare a disaster. They also permit an annual amount of time to test the Disaster Plan.

The following answers are incorrect:

Cold sites. Cold sites are empty computer rooms consisting only of environmental systems, such as air conditioning and raised floors, etc. They do not meet the requirements of most regulators and boards of directors that the disaster plan be tested at least annually.

Reciprocal Agreement. Reciprocal agreements are not contracts and cannot be enforced. You cannot force someone you have such an agreement with to provide processing to you. Government regulators do not accept reciprocal agreements as valid disaster recovery backup sites.

Time Brokers. Time Brokers promise to deliver processing time on other systems. They charge a fee, but cannot guaranty that processing will always be available, especially in areas that experienced multiple disasters.

The following reference(s) were/was used to create this question:

ISC2 OIG, 2007 p368

Shon Harris AIO v3. p.710

There are some conflicting figures as to which group is a bigger threat hackers or employees. Employees are still considered to the leading source of computer crime losses. Employees often have an easier time gaining access to systems or source code then ousiders or other means of creating computer crimes.

A word of caution is necessary: although the media has tended to portray the threat of cybercrime as existing almost exclusively from the outside, external to a company, reality paints a much different picture. Often the greatest risk of cybercrime comes from the inside, namely, criminal insiders. Information security professionals must be particularly sensitive to the phenomena of the criminal or dangerous insider, as these individuals usually operate under the radar, inside of the primarily outward/external facing security controls, thus significantly increasing the impact of their crimes while leaving few, if any, audit trails to follow and evidence for prosecution.

Some of the large scale crimes committed agains bank lately has shown that Internal Threats are the worst and they are more common that one would think. The definition of what a hacker is can vary greatly from one country to another but in some of the states in the USA a hacker is defined as Someone who is using resources in a way that is not authorized. A recent case in Ohio involved an internal employee who was spending most of his day on dating website looking for the love of his life. The employee was taken to court for hacking the company resources.

The following answers are incorrect:

hackers. Is incorrect because while hackers represent a very large problem and both the frequency of attacks and overall losses have grown hackers are considered to be a small segment of combined computer fraudsters.

industrial saboteurs. Is incorrect because industrial saboteurs tend to go after trade secrets. While the loss to the organization can be great, they still fall short when compared to the losses created by employees. Often it is an employee that was involved in industrial sabotage.

foreign intelligence officers. Is incorrect because the losses tend to be national secrets. You really can't put t cost on this and the number of frequency and occurances of this is less than that of employee related losses.

Reference(s) used for this question:

Hernandez CISSP, Steven (2012-12-21). Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CISSP CBK, Third Edition ((ISC)2 Press) (Kindle Locations 22327-22331). Auerbach Publications. Kindle Edition.

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).

Digital Audio Tape (DAT) can be used to backup data systems in addition to its original intended audio uses.

Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Page 70.

A Hot Site contains everything needed to become operational in the shortest amount of time.

The following answers are incorrect:

Computers and peripherals. Is incorrect because no mention is made of cables. You would not be fully operational without those.

Computers and dedicated climate control systems. Is incorrect because no mention is made of peripherals. You would not be fully operational without those.

Dedicated climate control systems. Is incorrect because no mentionis made of computers, cables and peripherals. You would not be fully operational without those.

According to the OIG, a hot site is defined as a fully configured site with complete customer required hardware and software provided by the service provider. A hot site in the context of the CBK is always a RENTAL place. If you have your own site fully equipped that you make use of in case of disaster that would be called a redundant site or an alternate site.

Wikipedia: "A hot site is a duplicate of the original site of the organization, with full computer systems as well as near-complete backups of user data."

References:

OIG CBK, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning (pages 367 - 368)

AIO, 3rd Edition, Business Continuity Planning (pages 709 - 714)

AIO, 4th Edition, Business Continuity Planning , p 790.

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_site#Hot_Sites

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

It is possible that an organization may not need a disaster recovery plan. An organization may not have any critical processing areas or system and they would be able to withstand lengthy interruptions.

Remember that DRP is related to systems needed to support your most critical business functions.

The DRP plan covers actions to be taken when a disaster occur but DRP PLANNING which is the keywork in the question would also include steps that happen before you use the plan such as development of the plan, training, drills, logistics, and a lot more.

To be effective, the plan would certainly cover before, during, and after the disaster actions.

It may take you a couple years to develop a plan for a medium size company, there is a lot that has to happen before the plan would be actually used in a real disaster scenario. Plan for the worst and hope for the best.

All other statements are true.

NOTE FROM CLEMENT:

Below is a great article on who legally needs a plan which is very much in line with this question. Does EVERY company needs a plan? The legal answer is NO. Some companies, industries, will be required according to laws or regulations to have a plan. A blank statement saying: All companies MUST have a plan would not be accurate. The article below is specific to the USA but similar laws will exist in many other countries.

Some companies such as utilities, power, etc... might also need plan if they have been defined as Critical Infrastructure by the government. The legal side of IT is always very complex and varies in different countries. Always talk to your lawyer to ensure you follow the law of the land :-)

Read the details below:

So Who, Legally, MUST Plan?

With the caveats above, let’s cover a few of the common laws where there is a duty to have a disaster recovery plan. I will try to include the basis for that requirement, where there is an implied mandate to do so, and what the difference is between the two

Banks and Financial Institutions MUST Have a Plan

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (Council) was established on March 10, 1979, pursuant to Title X of the Financial Institutions Regulatory and Interest Rate Control Act of 1978 (FIRA), Public Law 95-630. In 1989, Title XI of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) established the Examination Council (the Council).

The Council is a formal interagency body empowered to prescribe uniform principles, standards, and report forms for the federal examination of financial institutions by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS); and to make recommendations to promote uniformity in the supervision of financial institutions. In other words, every bank, savings and loan, credit union, and other financial institution is governed by the principles adopted by the Council.

In March of 2003, the Council released its Business Continuity Planning handbook designed to provide guidance and examination procedures for examiners in evaluating financial institution and service provider risk-management processes.

Stockbrokers MUST Have a Plan

The National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) has adopted rules that require all its members to have business continuity plans. The NASD oversees the activities of more than 5,100 brokerage firms, approximately 130,800 branch offices and more than 658,770 registered securities representatives.

As of June 14, 2004, the rules apply to all NASD member firms. The requirements, which are specified in Rule 3510, begin with the following:

3510. Business Continuity Plans. (a) Each member must create and maintain a written business continuity plan identifying procedures relating to an emergency or significant business disruption. Such procedures must be reasonably designed to enable the member to meet its existing obligations to customers. In addition, such procedures must address the member’s existing relationships with other broker-dealers and counter-parties. The business continuity plan must be made available promptly upon request to NASD staff.

NOTE:

The rules apply to every company that deals in securities, such as brokers, dealers, and their representatives, it does NOT apply to the listed companies themselves.

Electric Utilities WILL Need a Plan

The disaster recovery function relating to the electric utility grid is presently undergoing a change. Prior to 2005, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) could only coordinate volunteer efforts between utilities. This has changed with the adoption of Title XII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (16 U.S.C. 824o). That new law authorizes the FERC to create an Electric Reliability Organization (ERO).

The ERO will have the capability to adopt and enforce reliability standards for "all users, owners, and operators of the bulk power system" in the United States. At this time, FERC is in the process of finalizing the rules for the creation of the ERO. Once the ERO is created, it will begin the process of establishing reliability standards.

It is very safe to assume that the ERO will adopt standards for service restoration and disaster recovery, particularly after such widespread disasters as Hurricane Katrina.

Telecommunications Utilities SHOULD Have Plans, but MIGHT NOT

Telecommunications utilities are governed on the federal level by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for interstate services and by state Public Utility Commissions (PUCs) for services within the state.

The FCC has created the Network Reliability and Interoperability Council (NRIC). The role of the NRIC is to develop recommendations for the FCC and the telecommunications industry to "insure [sic] optimal reliability, security, interoperability and interconnectivity of, and accessibility to, public communications networks and the internet." The NRIC members are senior representatives of providers and users of telecommunications services and products, including telecommunications carriers, the satellite, cable television, wireless and computer industries, trade associations, labor and consumer representatives, manufacturers, research organizations, and government-related organizations.

There is no explicit provision that we could find that says telecommunications carriers must have a Disaster Recovery Plan. As I have stated frequently in this series of articles on disaster recovery, however, telecommunications facilities are tempting targets for terrorism. I have not changed my mind in that regard and urge caution.

You might also want to consider what the liability of a telephone company is if it does have a disaster that causes loss to your organization. In three words: It’s not much. The following is the statement used in most telephone company tariffs with regard to its liability:

The Telephone Company’s liability, if any, for its gross negligence or willful misconduct is not limited by this tariff. With respect to any other claim or suit, by a customer or any others, for damages arising out of mistakes, omissions, interruptions, delays or errors, or defects in transmission occurring in the course of furnishing services hereunder, the Telephone Company’s liability, if any, shall not exceed an amount equivalent to the proportionate charge to the customer for the period of service during which such mistake, omission, interruption, delay, error or defect in transmission or service occurs and continues. (Source, General Exchange Tariff for major carrier)

All Health Care Providers WILL Need a Disaster Recovery Plan

HIPAA is an acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Public Law 104-191, which amended the Internal Revenue Service Code of 1986. Also known as the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act, the Act includes a section, Title II, entitled Administrative Simplification, requiring "Improved efficiency in healthcare delivery by standardizing electronic data interchange, and protection of confidentiality and security of health data through setting and enforcing standards."

The legislation called upon the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to publish new rules that will ensure security standards protecting the confidentiality and integrity of "individually identifiable health information," past, present, or future.

The final Security Rule was published by HHS on February 20, 2003 and provides for a uniform level of protection of all health information that is housed or transmitted electronically and that pertains to an individual.

The Security Rule requires covered entities to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all electronic protected health information (ePHI) that the covered entity creates, receives, maintains, or transmits. It also requires entities to protect against any reasonably anticipated threats or hazards to the security or integrity of ePHI, protect against any reasonably anticipated uses or disclosures of such information that are not permitted or required by the Privacy Rule, and ensure compliance by their workforce.

Required safeguards include application of appropriate policies and procedures, safeguarding physical access to ePHI, and ensuring that technical security measures are in place to protect networks, computers and other electronic devices.

Companies with More than 10 Employees

The United States Department of Labor has adopted numerous rules and regulations in regard to workplace safety as part of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. For example, 29 USC 654 specifically requires:

(a) Each employer:

(1) shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees;

(2) shall comply with occupational safety and health standards promulgated under this Act.

(b) Each employee shall comply with occupational safety and health standards and all rules, regulations, and orders issued pursuant to this Act which are applicable to his own actions and conduct.

Other Considerations or Expensive Research QUESTION NO: s for Lawyers (Sorry, Eddie!)

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Law for Protecting Taxpayer Information

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Mandated Requirements

Homeland Security and Terrorist Prevention

Pandemic (Bird Flu) Prevention

ISO 9000 Certification

Requirements for Radio and TV Broadcasters

Contract Obligations to Customers

Document Protection and Retention Laws

Personal Identity Theft...and MORE!

Suffice it to say you will need to check with your legal department for specific requirements in your business and industry!

I would like to thank my good friend, Eddie M. Pope, for his insightful contributions to this article, our upcoming book, and my ever-growing pool of lawyer jokes. If you want more information on the legal aspects of recovery planning, Eddie can be contacted at my company or via email at mailto:mempope@tellawcomlabs.com. (Eddie cannot, of course, give you legal advice, but he can point you in the right direction.)

I hope this article helps you better understand the complex realities of the legal reasons why we plan and wish you the best of luck

See original article at: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=777896

See another interesting article on the subject at: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=677910 &seqNum=1

References used for this question:

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 281).

These are core functions of the incident response process.

"Incident Evaluation" is incorrect. Evaluation of the extent and cause of the incident is a component of the incident response process.

"Incident Recognition" is incorrect. Recognition that an incident has occurred is the precursor to the initiation of the incident response process.

"Incident Protection" is incorrect. This is an almost-right-sounding nonsense answer to distract the unwary.

References

CBK, pp. 698 - 703

The incremental backup method only copies files that have been recently changed or added. Only files with their archive bit set are backed up. This method is fast and uses less tape space but has some inherent vulnerabilities, one being that all incremental backups need to be available and restored from the date of the last full backup to the desired date should a restore be needed.

Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, John Wiley & Sons, 2001, Chapter 3: Telecommunications and Network Security (page 69).

You do not want the alternate or recovery site located in close proximity to the original site because the same event that create the situation in the first place might very well impact that site also.

From NIST: "The fixed site should be in a geographic area that is unlikely to be negatively affected by the same disaster event (e.g., weather-related impacts or power grid failure) as the organization’s primary site.

The following answers are incorrect:

It is close enough to become operational quickly. Is incorrect because it is not the best answer. You'd want the alternate site to be close but if it is too close the same event could impact that site as well.

It is close enough to serve its users. Is incorrect because it is not the best answer. You'd want the alternate site to be close to users if applicable, but if it is too close the same event could impact that site as well

It is convenient to airports and hotels. Is incorrect because it is not the best answer, it is more important that the same event does not impact the alternate site then convenience.

References:

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

NIST document 800-34 pg 21