SAC Assessment & Evaluation Methods 2

Question 1

Which metric best measures the effectiveness of a patch management program over time?

Accepted Answer

Mean time to patch (MTTP) critical vulnerabilities

Answer

Mean time to patch measures how quickly the organization remediates known vulnerabilities, directly reflecting patch management effectiveness.

Question 2

During a system audit, you discover that log retention is set to 30 days but policy requires 90 days. What type of finding is this?

Accepted Answer

Compliance gap

Answer

A compliance gap exists when an operational setting does not meet the documented policy or regulatory requirement.

Question 3

Which evaluation approach compares system performance against a previously recorded baseline?

Accepted Answer

Baseline comparison

Answer

Baseline comparison evaluates current metrics against a known-good snapshot to detect degradation or anomalies.

Question 4

A sysadmin wants to assess whether CPU utilization spikes are recurring at a specific time. Which tool category is most appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Performance monitoring with historical graphing

Answer

Performance monitoring tools with historical graphing (e.g., Grafana, Nagios) reveal time-correlated patterns in resource utilization.

Question 5

What is the primary purpose of a post-incident review (PIR)?

Accepted Answer

Identify root causes and prevent recurrence

Answer

A PIR (also called a post-mortem) focuses on root cause analysis and process improvements to prevent similar incidents.

(SAC) System Administration Certification Practice Test