SY0-701: CompTIA Security+ 2023 Topic 1
Q1. An accounting clerk sent money to an attacker’s bank account after receiving fraudulent instructions to use a new account. Which of the following would most likely prevent this activity in the future?
A. Standardizing security incident reporting
B. Executing regular phishing campaigns
C. Implementing insider threat detection measures
D. Updating processes for sending wire transfers
Hint answer: D
Q2. A technician is deploying a new security camera. Which of the following should the technician do?
A. Configure the correct VLAN.
B. Perform a vulnerability scan.
C. Disable unnecessary ports.
D. Conduct a site survey.
Hint answer: D
Q3. Which of the following factors are the most important to address when formulating a training curriculum plan for a security awareness program? (Choose two.)
A. Channels by which the organization communicates with customers
B. The reporting mechanisms for ethics violations
C. Threat vectors based on the industry in which the organization operates
D. Secure software development training for all personnel
E. Cadence and duration of training events
F. Retraining requirements for individuals who fail phishing simulations
Hint answer: C E
Q4. Which of the following risk management strategies should an enterprise adopt first if a legacy application is critical to business operations and there are preventative controls that are not yet implemented?
A. Mitigate
B. Accept
C. Transfer
D. Avoid
Hint answer: A
Q5. Which of the following would be the best way to handle a critical business application that is running on a legacy server?
A. Segmentation
B. Isolation
C. Hardening
D. Decommissioning
Hint answer: A
Q6. A small business uses kiosks on the sales floor to display product information for customers. A security team discovers the kiosks use end-of-life operating systems. Which of the following is the security team most likely to document as a security implication of the current architecture?
A. Patch availability
B. Product software compatibility
C. Ease of recovery
D. Cost of replacement
Hint answer: A
Q7. Which of the following are cases in which an engineer should recommend the decommissioning of a network device? (Choose two.)
A. The device has been moved from a production environment to a test environment.
B. The device is configured to use cleartext passwords.
C. The device is moved to an isolated segment on the enterprise network.
D. The device is moved to a different location in the enterprise.
E. The device’s encryption level cannot meet organizational standards.
F. The device is unable to receive authorized updates.
Hint answer: E F
Q8. An organization disabled unneeded services and placed a firewall in front of a business-critical legacy system. Which of the following best describes the actions taken by the organization?
A. Exception
B. Segmentation
C. Risk transfer
D. Compensating controls
Hint answer: D
Q9. After reviewing the following vulnerability scanning report:
A security analyst performs the following test:
Which of the following would the security analyst conclude for this reported vulnerability?
A. It is a false positive.
B. A rescan is required.
C. It is considered noise.
D. Compensating controls exist.
Hint answer: A
Q10. Which of the following is used to validate a certificate when it is presented to a user?
A. OCSP
B. CSR
C. CA
D. CRC
Hint answer: A
Q11. Which of the following incident response activities ensures evidence is properly handled?
A. E-discovery
B. Chain of custody
C. Legal hold
D. Preservation
Hint answer: B
Q12. An enterprise has been experiencing attacks focused on exploiting vulnerabilities in older browser versions with well-known exploits. Which of the following security solutions should be configured to best provide the ability to monitor and block these known signature-based attacks?
A. ACL
B. DLP
C. IDS
D. IPS
Hint answer: D
Q13. A security engineer is implementing FDE for all laptops in an organization. Which of the following are the most important for the engineer to consider as part of the planning process? (Choose two.)
A. Key escrow
B. TPM presence
C. Digital signatures
D. Data tokenization
E. Public key management
F. Certificate authority linking
Hint answer: A B
Q14. A security analyst reviews domain activity logs and notices the following:
Which of the following is the best explanation for what the security analyst has discovered?
A. The user jsmith’s account has been locked out.
B. A keylogger is installed on jsmith’s workstation.
C. An attacker is attempting to brute force jsmith’s account.
D. Ransomware has been deployed in the domain.
Hint answer: C
Q15. A systems administrator is looking for a low-cost application-hosting solution that is cloud-based. Which of the following meets these requirements?
A. Serverless framework
B. Type 1 hypervisor
C. SD-WAN
D. SDN
Hint answer: A
Q16. A company is planning to set up a SIEM system and assign an analyst to review the logs on a weekly basis. Which of the following types of controls is the company setting up?
A. Corrective
B. Preventive
C. Detective
D. Deterrent
Hint answer: C
Q17. The management team notices that new accounts that are set up manually do not always have correct access or permissions.
Which of the following automation techniques should a systems administrator use to streamline account creation?
A. Guard rail script
B. Ticketing workflow
C. Escalation script
D. User provisioning script
Hint answer: D
Q18. Which of the following has been implemented when a host-based firewall on a legacy Linux system allows connections from only specific internal IP addresses?
A. Compensating control
B. Network segmentation
C. Transfer of risk
D. SNMP traps
Hint answer: A
Q19. A security analyst and the management team are reviewing the organizational performance of a recent phishing campaign. The user click-through rate exceeded the acceptable risk threshold, and the management team wants to reduce the impact when a user clicks on a link in a phishing message. Which of the following should the analyst do?
A. Place posters around the office to raise awareness of common phishing activities.
B. Implement email security filters to prevent phishing emails from being delivered.
C. Update the EDR policies to block automatic execution of downloaded programs.
D. Create additional training for users to recognize the signs of phishing attempts.
Hint answer: C
Q20. A client asked a security company to provide a document outlining the project, the cost, and the completion time frame. Which of the following documents should the company provide to the client?
A. MSA
B. SLA
C. BPA
D. SOW
Hint answer: D
Q21. After a recent vulnerability scan, a security engineer needs to harden the routers within the corporate network. Which of the following is the most appropriate to disable?
A. Console access
B. Routing protocols
C. VLANs
D. Web-based administration
Hint answer: D
Q22. An organization is building a new backup data center with cost-benefit as the primary requirement and RTO and RPO values around two days. Which of the following types of sites is the best for this scenario?
A. Real-time recovery
B. Hot
C. Cold
D. Warm
Hint answer: D
Q23. An organization wants to limit potential impact to its log-in database in the event of a breach. Which of the following options is the security team most likely to recommend?
A. Tokenization
B. Hashing
C. Obfuscation
D. Segmentation
Hint answer: B
Q24. A security administrator is reissuing a former employee’s laptop. Which of the following is the best combination of data handling activities for the administrator to perform? (Choose two.)
A. Data retention
B. Certification
C. Destruction
D. Classification
E. Sanitization
F. Enumeration
Hint answer: B E
Q25. A systems administrator uses a key to encrypt a message being sent to a peer in a different branch office. The peer then uses the same key to decrypt the message. Which of the following describes this example?
A. Symmetric
B. Asymmetric
C. Hashing
D. Salting
Hint answer: A
Q26. A technician wants to improve the situational and environmental awareness of existing users as they transition from remote to in-office work. Which of the following is the best option?
A. Send out periodic security reminders.
B. Update the content of new hire documentation.
C. Modify the content of recurring training.
D. Implement a phishing campaign.
Hint answer: C
Q27. Employees in the research and development business unit receive extensive training to ensure they understand how to best protect company data. Which of the following is the type of data these employees are most likely to use in day-to-day work activities?
A. Encrypted
B. Intellectual property
C. Critical
D. Data in transit
Hint answer: B
Q28. Which of the following enables the use of an input field to run commands that can view or manipulate data?
A. Cross-site scripting
B. Side loading
C. Buffer overflow
D. SQL injection
Hint answer: D
Q29. A company is expanding its threat surface program and allowing individuals to security test the company’s internet-facing application. The company will compensate researchers based on the vulnerabilities discovered. Which of the following best describes the program the company is setting up?
A. Open-source intelligence
B. Bug bounty
C. Red team
D. Penetration testing
Hint answer: B
Q30. Which of the following is the most likely to be used to document risks, responsible parties, and thresholds?
A. Risk tolerance
B. Risk transfer
C. Risk register
D. Risk analysis
Hint answer: C
Q31. An engineer needs to find a solution that creates an added layer of security by preventing unauthorized access to internal company resources. Which of the following would be the best solution?
A. RDP server
B. Jump server
C. Proxy server
D. Hypervisor
Hint answer: B
Q32. An analyst is evaluating the implementation of Zero Trust principles within the data plane. Which of the following would be most relevant for the analyst to evaluate?
A. Secured zones
B. Subject role
C. Adaptive identity
D. Threat scope reduction
Hint answer: D
Q33. Which of the following provides the details about the terms of a test with a third-party penetration tester?
A. Rules of engagement
B. Supply chain analysis
C. Right to audit clause
D. Due diligence
Hint answer: A
Q34. An employee receives a text message that appears to have been sent by the payroll department and is asking for credential verification. Which of the following social engineering techniques are being attempted? (Choose two.)
A. Typosquatting
B. Phishing
C. Impersonation
D. Vishing
E. Smishing
F. Misinformation
Hint answer: C E
Q35. An administrator notices that several users are logging in from suspicious IP addresses. After speaking with the users, the administrator determines that the employees were not logging in from those IP addresses and resets the affected users’ passwords. Which of the following should the administrator implement to prevent this type of attack from succeeding in the future?
A. Multifactor authentication
B. Permissions assignment
C. Access management
D. Password complexity
Hint answer: A
Q36. Which of the following scenarios describes a possible business email compromise attack?
A. An employee receives a gift card request in an email that has an executive’s name in the display field of the email.
B. Employees who open an email attachment receive messages demanding payment in order to access files.
C. A service desk employee receives an email from the HR director asking for log-in credentials to a cloud administrator account.
D. An employee receives an email with a link to a phishing site that is designed to look like the company’s email portal.
Hint answer: C
Q37. A data administrator is configuring authentication for a SaaS application and would like to reduce the number of credentials employees need to maintain. The company prefers to use domain credentials to access new SaaS applications. Which of the following methods would allow this functionality?
A. SSO
B. LEAP
C. MFA
D. PEAP
Hint answer: A
Q38. An organization would like to store customer data on a separate part of the network that is not accessible to users on the main corporate network. Which of the following should the administrator use to accomplish this goal?
A. Segmentation
B. Isolation
C. Patching
D. Encryption
Hint answer: A
Q39. An enterprise is trying to limit outbound DNS traffic originating from its internal network. Outbound DNS requests will only be allowed from one device with the IP address 10.50.10.25. Which of the following firewall ACLs will accomplish this goal?
A. Access list outbound permit 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 port 53
Access list outbound deny 10.50.10.25/32 0.0.0.0/0 port 53
B. Access list outbound permit 0.0.0.0/0 10.50.10.25/32 port 53
Access list outbound deny 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 port 53
C. Access list outbound permit 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 port 53
Access list outbound deny 0.0.0.0/0 10.50.10.25/32 port 53
D. Access list outbound permit 10.50.10.25/32 0.0.0.0/0 port 53
Access list outbound deny 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 port 53
Hint answer: D
Q40. Which of the following is the phase in the incident response process when a security analyst reviews roles and responsibilities?
A. Preparation
B. Recovery
C. Lessons learned
D. Analysis
Hint answer: A
