CompTIA CySA+ Practice Test (CS0-003)

During an incident response, the first action should be proper identification and classification of the incident. This helps in understanding the severity and nature of the breach, guiding subsequent steps like containment and eradication. The immediate response should not involve eradication or recovery without a clear understanding of what has occurred.

The correct answer is true. In a Zero Trust security model, trust is never assumed implicitly and must be earned; it requires verification at every stage of digital interaction, regardless of whether it comes from inside or outside the network perimeter. This principle stands in contrast to traditional security models, which often assume that everything inside the network is trustworthy. Zero Trust is designed to protect against both external threats and potential insider threats by enforcing strict access controls and constantly validating security status.

The most effective method for investigating the precise nature of the network transactions with the external destination is to employ a filter within the network traffic analysis tool. For instance, setting up a filter based on the address of the external host focuses the analysis exactly where it is needed, by displaying only the transactions in question. It streamlines the review process by excluding all unrelated data, aiding in the quick detection of possible security incidents. The correct filter in the context of Wireshark would be something like 'ip.addr == x.x.x.x' where 'x.x.x.x' represents the address in question. The other responses would not provide as focused a data set for examination, potentially obscuring the needed information among large amounts of irrelevant data.

To ensure adherence to regulatory standards, including a section that details how the organization is meeting specific regulatory requirements is essential. This helps in verifying that all practices align with industry regulations and demonstrates accountability. While an executive summary, top vulnerabilities, and remediation steps are important, they do not specifically address compliance with regulatory standards and regulations.

Centralized logging solutions are designed to minimize the performance impact on individual systems while providing a comprehensive collection point for logs containing potential IoCs. They can effectively process and store logs from a variety of systems, both legacy and modern. Network-based anomaly detection could miss subtle signs contained in the logs of individual systems, and relying solely on endpoint detection could be resource-intensive for legacy systems. Full packet capture is comprehensive but often has significant performance and storage implications, making it less suitable for continuous collection on a network with diverse systems.

Reverse engineering in cybersecurity involves analyzing software or hardware to discover its functionality, structure, and behavior, allowing professionals to detect vulnerabilities, malware, or security flaws. It is not primarily used to patch software, replace hardware, or document APIs.

A Compliance Report is created to ensure that the organization is complying with regulatory requirements and to pinpoint areas where the organization might be falling short. The importance of these reports is crucial to maintain the integrity and confidence in an organization's ability to protect sensitive data. Risk Score Report and Vulnerability Report are focused on identifying and evaluating risks or vulnerabilities, not specifically on compliance with regulations. Action Plan is more about what an organization plans to do to address identified vulnerabilities and is not a report demonstrating adherence to regulations.

Creating a bit-for-bit image of the original drive using a write blocker is the best practice to ensure data integrity and non-repudiation, as the write blocker prevents any write operations to the original evidence which could lead to claims of evidence tampering. Simply copying files may not capture hidden or system files and could alter metadata. Remote mirroring could introduce changes to the data during transmission and is not forensically sound for evidence acquisition. Photographs do not capture the data in a manner suitable for analysis or court admissibility.

When response teams collect data for analysis during an incident, it is essential that they ensure the data has not been tampered with during the process. Performing a cryptographic hash function on files both before acquisition and after ensures that the data remains identical and unaltered. If the hash values match, this confirms data integrity has been maintained. It's a foundational concept in digital forensics and incident response.

Root cause analysis involves identifying the underlying vulnerabilities and contributing factors that led to a security breach. Forensic analysis focuses on gathering and preserving evidence to understand what happened, while lessons learned help to improve future incident response plans.

The correct answer is 'Adversary Infrastructure', as in the Diamond Model of Intrusion Analysis, prioritizing the understanding of adversary infrastructure is crucial when evidence of data exfiltration is present. This helps analyze the adversary’s command and control servers and the mechanisms used to extract data. Understanding Victim and Capability can supplement this analysis but are not as directly relevant to the context as identifying the infrastructure utilized in the cyber attack. 'Adversary's Tools' without focusing on infrastructure does not provide comprehensive insight into the data exfiltration process.

A Service-Level Objective (SLO) is a predefined level of service between a service provider and the customer that sets a target for system performance. SLOs are essential for managing expectations and measuring the effectiveness of IT services. They are not informal agreements or strategies but are clear objectives used to monitor and gauge service performance.

Credentialed scans provide a deeper level of insight into a system's security by using valid login credentials. This allows the scanner to view configurations and settings that are not accessible through non-credentialed scans, resulting in more thorough and accurate vulnerability detection. Though agent-based and passive scans have their benefits, they either miss detailed internal configurations or do not actively test systems.

Creating a memory image is the correct method for preserving the state of volatile memory because it captures all the data contained in RAM at a particular moment, which could be lost if the system is powered down. This needs to be done before any other action to ensure that potential evidence, which may exist only in memory and could be crucial to understanding the breach, is retained. Encrypting the disk does not address the volatility of memory, changing file permissions could alter metadata and may not be effective for data in memory, and disconnecting from the network, while important, does not by itself preserve memory contents.

Including the risk score in the vulnerability report is fundamental as it aids in prioritizing the vulnerabilities based on their potential impact and the likelihood of exploitation. Clear risk scoring can help management understand which vulnerabilities pose the greatest risk to the organization and should be addressed first. Affected hosts would be important to understanding the scope, but without a risk score, it's hard to prioritize. Mitigation steps are critical after prioritization, and recurrence data is valuable but more related to tracking and trends rather than immediate actions.