CDT Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield CDT facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. Which practice best supports chain of custody for records transferred to off-site storage? → Completing a transfer form documenting box contents, transfer date, and custodians
2. A records manager discovers that employees are storing official business emails in personal folders outside the ERMS. What is the best corrective action? → Update policy, train staff, and implement auto-classification tools
3. Which capture method is best suited for high-volume, structured document processing in an enterprise environment? → Centralized production scanning with automated workflows
4. In a CDT reporting context, what is the primary purpose of a 'trend line' overlaid on a document volume chart? → To show the direction and rate of change over time
5. What does 'vital records' mean in the context of records management? → Records essential to resume operations after a disaster
6. When implementing full-text search across millions of documents, which indexing approach provides the fastest query response times? → Inverted index with term frequency weighting
7. Which law significantly impacts records management in healthcare? → HIPAA
8. Which encryption standard is currently recommended by NIST for protecting sensitive government documents at rest? → AES-256
9. When evaluating a document workflow for automation opportunities, which task typically provides the highest ROI when automated? → Preflight checking and error correction before RIP submission
10. Which concept ensures that document management systems capture the context in which a record was created? → Provenance
11. Which Python library is most widely used for programmatically creating and modifying PDF documents from scratch (not converting from other formats)? → ReportLab
12. What is the primary advantage of a taxonomy in an electronic records management system? → It provides a consistent classification structure for locating and managing records
13. What is the primary goal of document security? → To secure documents from unauthorized access
14. What is the primary advantage of duplex scanning over simplex scanning? → Simultaneous capture of both sides of a document in one pass
15. What is a data governance framework? → Policies and procedures that define how data is managed across the organization
16. A Bash script that processes documents must handle filenames containing spaces. Which syntax correctly passes such a filename to a command? → process_doc "$filename"
17. What does 'chain of custody' mean for sensitive documents? → A chronological record documenting who handled a document and when
18. How does metadata support document lifecycle management? → By identifying the document's key attributes for management
19. Which secure document destruction method is most appropriate for classified paper records? → Cross-cut shredding to DIN 66399 P-4 or higher
20. Which compression standard is the industry standard for lossless compression of bitonal scanned document images in TIFF files? → Group 4 (G4) CCITT compression
21. Which indexing strategy is BEST suited for full-text search across large volumes of scanned documents that have been OCR'd? → Inverted index mapping terms to document locations
22. Which element must a records retention schedule include to be legally defensible? → Legal citation or business justification for each retention period
23. Which authentication method provides the strongest security? → Multi-factor authentication combining different verification types
24. Which type of attack involves an unauthorized party intercepting document transmissions between two parties without their knowledge? → Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack
25. What is the purpose of XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) in document formats? → Embed metadata directly within file formats like PDF and JPEG
26. Which regular expression pattern would correctly match a US Social Security Number in the format NNN-NN-NNNN for redaction automation? → \d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4}
27. Why is version control important in document imaging? → To maintain document accuracy and history
28. Which scalability pattern is most appropriate for a document conversion service that experiences irregular spikes in demand? → Event-driven auto-scaling triggered by queue depth
29. A Zonal OCR script reads invoices but misidentifies the vendor name when the logo shifts position between vendors. What is the MOST appropriate fix? → Switch from fixed-zone OCR to anchor-relative or AI-based field extraction
30. When a document monitoring system generates a 'service level agreement (SLA) breach report,' what does this report communicate? → Instances where defined performance or turnaround targets were not met