SSCP Certification SSCP Certification II 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which hashing algorithm produces a 256-bit digest and is part of the SHA-2 family commonly used for digital signatures and certificate integrity?
- MD5
- SHA-1
- SHA-256 (Correct answer)
- SHA-512
Correct answer: SHA-256
SHA-256 is a widely used member of the SHA-2 family, producing a 256-bit hash value considered cryptographically strong for digital signatures.
Question 2: In the context of business continuity planning, what does the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) define?
- The maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time
- The maximum tolerable downtime before a disruption causes unacceptable business impact (Correct answer)
- The cost to restore systems after a disaster
- The frequency of backup rotations
Correct answer: The maximum tolerable downtime before a disruption causes unacceptable business impact
RTO specifies the maximum duration an organization can tolerate being without a system or service before business consequences become unacceptable.
Question 3: What type of vulnerability assessment actively tests a system by attempting to exploit weaknesses, versus merely identifying them?
- Passive scanning
- Penetration testing (Correct answer)
- Configuration review
- Log analysis
Correct answer: Penetration testing
Penetration testing goes beyond vulnerability scanning by actively attempting to exploit identified weaknesses to determine real-world impact.
Question 4: An employee receives an email appearing to be from their CEO, urgently requesting a wire transfer. Which social engineering technique is MOST likely being used?
- Vishing
- Smishing
- Spear phishing / BEC (Correct answer)
- Baiting
Correct answer: Spear phishing / BEC
Business Email Compromise (BEC) / spear phishing uses highly targeted, personalized emails impersonating executives to manipulate employees into financial transactions.
Question 5: Which network security device inspects traffic at Layer 7 and can block specific application-level threats such as SQL injection in web requests?
- Traditional packet-filtering firewall
- Web Application Firewall (WAF) (Correct answer)
- Network-based IDS
- VPN concentrator
Correct answer: Web Application Firewall (WAF)
A WAF operates at the application layer, inspecting HTTP/HTTPS traffic to detect and block attacks like SQL injection, XSS, and CSRF targeting web applications.
Question 6: What is the purpose of salting passwords before hashing them in a database?
- To speed up authentication lookups
- To prevent rainbow table attacks by making each hash unique even for identical passwords (Correct answer)
- To encrypt the password before storage
- To compress password storage size
Correct answer: To prevent rainbow table attacks by making each hash unique even for identical passwords
A salt is a random value added to each password before hashing, ensuring identical passwords produce different hashes and defeating precomputed rainbow table attacks.
Question 7: A systems administrator applies the concept of least privilege to service accounts. What does this PRIMARILY involve?
- Requiring multi-factor authentication for all service accounts
- Granting service accounts only the minimum permissions required to perform their function (Correct answer)
- Logging all service account activity to a SIEM
- Rotating service account passwords quarterly
Correct answer: Granting service accounts only the minimum permissions required to perform their function
Least privilege for service accounts means assigning only the specific permissions each service needs, minimizing damage if the account is compromised.
SSCP Certification SSCP Certification II 4
Which hashing algorithm produces a 256-bit digest and is part of the SHA-2 family commonly used for digital signatures and certificate integrity?