CCT 251: Practice CISSP Questions - Security Control Testing, Vulnerability Assessments and Network Scanning (Domain 6.2)

The boundaries between digital vulnerabilities and physical warfare are dissolving before our eyes. Ukrainian forces have dramatically shifted military paradigms by marrying cybersecurity breaches with commercial drone attacks against strategic Russian targets like Tupolev aircraft manufacturers. This evolution demands security professionals develop capabilities far beyond traditional network defense – a stark reminder that our field continues expanding into unexpected territories.

Security testing forms the foundation of effective defense, and distinguishing between key methodologies is crucial both for the CISSP exam and real-world implementation. Vulnerability assessments detect weaknesses, while penetration tests exploit them to demonstrate actual impact. When evaluating your security testing approach, consider the perspective advantage: internal testing reveals different vulnerabilities than external probing, each simulating distinct attacker vantage points. False negatives represent perhaps the greatest danger in security testing – providing a dangerous illusion of safety while leaving actual vulnerabilities unaddressed.

Testing approaches vary in depth and disclosure level. Black box testing simulates external attacks with no prior system knowledge. White box testing grants complete access to internal architecture. Gray box testing offers a middle ground with partial system information – a cost-effective approach for organizations with tighter budgets. Red teams validate incident response plans through realistic attack simulations, while authenticated scans reveal vulnerabilities that exist beyond login barriers. By mastering these concepts for Domain 6.2, you'll build essential knowledge that translates directly to creating more secure environments and passing your CISSP exam the first time. Join us at CISSP Cyber Training for free practice questions and comprehensive preparation resources to accelerate your cybersecurity career.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Podcast Introduction
• 1:04 Ukraine's Changing Warfare Tactics
• 4:01 Domain 6.2 CISSP Questions
• 8:16 Vulnerability Assessment vs Penetration Testing
• 14:56 Testing Approaches and Red Teams
• 17:32 CISSP Training Program Promotion

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the CISSP Cyber Training Podcast, where we provide you the training and tools you need to pass the CISSP exam the first time. Hi, my name is Sean Gerber and I'm your host for this action-packed, informative podcast. Join me each week as I provide the information you need to pass the CISSP exam and grow your cybersecurity knowledge. All right, let's get started, let's go. Let's go. Cybersecurity knowledge. All right, let's get started. Good morning everybody. It's Sean Gerber with CISSP Cyber Training, and hope you all are having a beautifully blessed day today. Today is what? Cissp Question Thursday? So we are going to be going over some CISSP questions related to the domain 6.2.1, and that was based on the content that we had on Monday, so you are pretty excited about that. I said E. I don't know why I said E. We, we, we. I we're excited about having some questions related to 6.2.

Speaker 1: 0:54

But before we get started, one thing I wanted to kind of bring up was there's just a recent article I saw in the register related to the Ukraine attacks that occurred. Now, obviously, geopolitical stuff we don't really necessarily get into the CISSP, but we kind of talk about hacking and dealing with those types of activities. But if you all have been seeing the news. The Ukrainians have changed the way warfare is being done and they're actually. It's very interesting how this has changed and, coming from my background with being in the military and flying bombers and just really intelligence, all those pieces around the military apparatus, this whole new paradigm now of drones being launched from, basically, containers around the different country of Russia and attacking these very strategic points. Now I say all that with the thing that how it's changed, in that it is now we call asymmetric warfare and now the Ukrainians are attacking the Tupolev, basically the aircraft manufacturers, the bomb makers, bomber makers within Russia, and part of this was around the fact that they were able to get access to all kinds of personal data, resumes, purchase records, you name it of the Tupolev type activities like the corporation, and they're the ones that make the bombers for the Russian military. So the point I'm trying to bring up around that is nothing is safe and if you are the way the world has changed, thinking it's going to be big country against big country, well, now you're seeing how Ukrainians are attacking the Russians in a way very similar to the American Revolution, in more of a guerrilla warfare type activities, but they're using things that are very interesting, and also commercial, off-the-shelf equipment that is relatively inexpensive in relationship to the things that they are blowing up.

Speaker 1: 2:42

And so the point of it is is that with between hacking that occurring and physical destruction that is occurring, we are seeing a complete paradigm shift in relation to warfare. So I'd just say all that to kind of talk about the fact that if you, as you are in cybersecurity, your world is just really expanding beyond what we first started at least what I first started back in the early 2000s. It has just gone way off the charts and we kind of had suspicions it was going to end up kind of going down this path. But now, with the way the drones have taken place and now that the ability for people to have activities in a way that is just totally out of the paradigm shifts or out of the thought process, this is going to be an interesting, very interesting place that we end up going in the future. So, as a security professional, you are going to have to learn how to deal with all kinds of things that you probably at least I never had to learn when I was just getting started in security. So it's pretty cool. It's very interesting, very dynamic and can be very challenging depending upon what side of the fence you're on. But again, that's all I wanted to kind of talk about here. Again, they talk about the Ukrainian strikes, striking bomb makers or bomber makers with a hack attack and the fact that they were able to get access to the Tupolev Aircraft Manufacturing Company.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Now let's move on to some of the questions we have for today. Okay, so these are the questions you're going to have in the CISSP cyber training. If you head over there, you can get access to all these questions that are available to you, and the point of it is is to help you kind of guide you through the various questions and so that you can be better prepared for the CISSP exam. So we're going to start rolling through some of the questions, again related to domain 6.2. Okay, question one which of the following describes the primary goal of a vulnerability assessment? A to identify weaknesses in systems and security controls that could be exploited by threats. B to exploit identified weaknesses and gain unauthorized access to systems. C to determine the financial impact of a successful cyber attack. Or D to continuously monitor network traffic for malicious activity? And the answer is A to identify weaknesses in systems and security controls that could be exploited by potential threats. Again, vulnerability assessments are a very important part of any organization. You need to consider doing them.

Speaker 1: 5:01

Question two a security professional is conducting a vulnerability scan of a web application. The scan reports a high severity vulnerability, but upon manual verification it is determined that the vulnerability does not actually exist. Okay, this scenario is an example of what A a true positive, b a false negative, c a true negative or D a false positive. So again, basically a scan the web application and it comes back and says yes, there's a problem, but upon further discovery it is not a problem. So the answer is a false positive. D right, false positives occur a lot. They can happen with security tools and therefore it's important for you to tune and train these tools so that your false positive rate goes down. Important for you to tune and train these tools so that your false positive rate goes down.

Speaker 1: 5:45

Question three which of the following components of a security content automation protocol SCAP SCAP provides the standardized scoring system for describing the severity of security vulnerabilities. Again, which of the following components of the SCAP provides a standardized scoring system for describing the severity of your security vulnerabilities A Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure. B Common Configuration and Enumeration, cce, c Common Vulnerability Scoring System, cvss, or D Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language, oval. And the answer is C Right, common Vulnerability Scoring System. And the answer is C Right, common Vulnerability Scoring System. The Common Vulnerability Scoring System, or CVSS, is free and open industry standard for assessing the severity of a computer system security vulnerabilities. Cves you hear a lot about, they provide the naming system, cces are the configuration issues and OVL is for describing test procedures.

Speaker 1: 6:41

Question four A penetration test, where the testers have no prior knowledge of the target system's internal structure, network diagrams or source code, is known as what? Again, a penetration test. The testers have no prior knowledge of target systems, internal structures or network diagrams. What is this called? A white box testing, c black box testing, c gray box testing or D crystal box testing, testing not texting testing. And the answer is B black box testing, right, it simulates an external attacker's perspective and they're testing no internal knowledge of this target system. The goal is, then, is you'd have no idea, you're just going in to see what is there, and this is really an approach where the system defenses determine how, what would happen, what would be encountered and so forth. So that is what they call black box testing.

Speaker 1: 7:31

Question five during which phase of a penetration test would an ethical hacker actively gather information about a target by interacting with live systems such as port scanning and service enumeration? Again, during which phase of the penetration test would a ethical hacker activity gather information about a target by interacting with live systems such as port scanning and service enumeration? A Reconnaissance, b Vulnerability analysis, c Exploitation or D Enumeration? And the answer is D Enumeration. That is the active phase of information gathering, where the tester is directly interacting with the target, trying to figure out information what's open, what ports are open, what user accounts are available, network details and so on. So that is what they call enumeration.

Speaker 1: 8:16

Question six which type of security control testing involves conducting assessments using valid key point here valid credentials allowing the scanner to simulate the actions of an authenticated user? Okay, so which type of security control testing involves conducting assessments using valid credentials allowing the scanner to simulate the actions of an authenticated user? A authenticated scan, b network discovery scan, c web application scan or D an authenticated scan? Hmm, I wonder what that one is right Authenticated user credentials. It is D authenticated scan and authenticated scan. Obviously, they also call that what they call a credential scan. It allows the tool to log into the target and the application and, with legitimate credentials, to then therefore and see what can actually it can find. Many unauthenticated scans really don't give you a whole lot of information. So one of the aspects you'll want to consider when doing scanning is an authenticated scan. If you don't have it in place now, I would highly recommend that you do that, because it's going to give you a much better reading of what are the vulnerabilities behind the authentication.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Question seven which of the following is a key objective of security control testing? A to validate the effectiveness of implemented security controls. B to simulate all security risks from an organization. C to ensure 100 uptime for all critical systems. Or. D to automate all incident response procedures. Again, which of the following is a key objective for security control testing? And the answer is a to validate the effectiveness of for security control testing. And the answer is A to validate the effectiveness of implemented security controls, right? So when you're looking at understanding what's going on of the objective of a security control testing, you wanna find out which ones are actually valid and you validate these and their effectiveness through using these various types of scanning capabilities, and that's really the main function of it. So you wanna test the controls, you put controls in place, you. So you want to test the controls. You put controls in place, you want to be able to test them and that is the ultimate goal around security control testing.

Speaker 1: 10:14

Question eight security team is reviewing the logs for suspicious activity after reported incident. The activity falls under which aspect of security control testing? A pen testing, c log review and analysis, c vulnerability assessments or D code review. Again, security team is reviewing the logs. What are they doing? What does this fall under? It falls under B log review and analysis. So log reviews and analysis are a crucial part of any sort of security control testing and security operations. It involves looking at the application logs and systems and so forth. It's a very important part and you should consider doing it.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Question nine when performing a penetration test, the phase where the tester attempts to gain control of a system or escalate privileges using identified vulnerabilities is known as what? A reconnaissance, b enumeration, c vulnerability analysis or D exploitation vulnerability analysis or de-exploitation. Again, performing pen tests, what phase of the tester attempts to gain control of the system or escalate privileges using identified vulnerabilities is known as de-exploitation. Exploitation is the phase where the pen tester actively attempts to leverage the vulnerabilities that they've been able to find against a compromised system and this basically comes down to is they're trying to achieve a predefined objective by gaining unauthorized access. That's the ultimate goal.

Speaker 1: 11:32

Question 10, which of the following is a significant drawback of a false negative in a security assessment and testing? A it leads to unnecessary remediation efforts and extreme costs. B it provides false sense of security, leaving the actual vulnerabilities unaddressed. C it provides false sense of security, leaving the actual vulnerabilities unaddressed. C it indicates a vulnerability where what the it indicates a vulnerability was detected correctly. Or. D it overestimates the true security posture of the system. Again, which is the following significant drawback of a false negative? It is B it provides a false sense of security, leaving the actual vulnerabilities addressed. So basically, a false negative says hey, you're good, you're good to go, no worries, mate, everything's fine, but in reality, yeah, you have a problem. So false negative can lead you down the path of thinking everything is all hunky-dory.

Speaker 1: 12:19

Question 11, which is the main difference between a vulnerability assessment and a penetration test? We've talked about a lot about this on CISSP Cyber Training. So what's the difference between a vulnerability assessment and a pen test? A the vulnerability assessment actively exploits weaknesses, while the pen test only identifies them. B a vulnerability assessment is a continuous process, while pen testing is a one-time event. C a vulnerability assessment focuses on identifying weaknesses, while the pen test attempts to exploit them to demonstrate the overall impact. Or D a vulnerability assessment requires specialized tools, while pen tests can be done manually. And the answer is C Right vulnerability assessments. They focus on finding weaknesses and pen tests are designed to exploit those weaknesses and to show I own the castle, right. The vulnerability assessment shows, says to you oh yes, the castle could be broken into. The pen test says I'm just going to kick the door down and walk right.

Speaker 1: 13:13

In Question 12, the security team is discussing various approaches for testing a new application. They decide to provide the testers with some internal knowledge of the application's architecture and source code. That's pretty interesting, but not full access. This approach is best described as what? A black box testing, b white box testing, c gray box testing. Or D red team's assessments. And the answer is C it's a gray box testing. Basically, you're getting some elements from the black and white box and it gives you a little bit of insight into what's actually going on. It does allow you to get further into the organization and it helps you kind of. And it really is a good thing if you are on a tighter budget and you want to be able just to see what they can find, but you want to not have them waste a bunch of time trying to kick the door the front door in. So I would highly recommend gray box testing. It's used, it. It's a much more cost-efficient approach. But you just got to determine what are the needs for you and your organization.

Speaker 1: 14:12

Question 13, which of the following best describes the purpose of a common vulnerabilities and exposures CVE system? Again, what's the following best describes the purpose of a common vulnerabilities and exposures system? A to provide naming system for publicly known cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures system. A to provide naming system for publicly known cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures. B to provide a common language for describing security testing procedures. C to standards for scoring a vulnerability severity. Or. D to define security configuration checklists. Again, which of the following best describes a purpose of a common vulnerabilities and the CVE system? And the answer is A to provide a naming system for publicly known cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures. So it's basically a publicly disclosed list that has different vulnerabilities and they have names. To those, it provides unique identifiers so you know which one it is, and they then also work in coordination with the various vulnerability management teams to ensure that you are properly being protected.

Speaker 1: 15:11

Question 14, when designing a security control testing strategy, what is the significance of air quotes perspective, more or less internal versus external testing? So, the perspective, what is the benefit, the significance of that? A it determines the cost of the testing engagement. B it influences the tools and techniques used during the test. C, it dictates the reporting format of the test results. Or, d, it defines the scope and potential impact of the findings by simulating different attacker vantage points. Air quotes, perspective, right? So again, what is designing a security control testing strategy? What is the significance of perspective internal versus external testing? And the answer is D. It defines the scope and potential impact of the findings by simulating different attack vantage points. The ultimate point is just what is it like if you get into the environment from an internal perspective and what happens if you're just trying to get bang on the door from the outside? What are the different kind of control mechanisms and how are they working depending upon your perspective in the network?

Speaker 1: 16:13

Question 15, what is the primary purpose of red team exercise in a security control testing. Again, what is the primary purpose of a red team exercise in security control testing? A to validate the effectiveness of an incident response plan by simulating realistic attacks. B to perform automated vulnerability scans on an organization's network. C to provide recommendations for security policy updates. Or. D to train the security operations center analysts on new specific tools. So what is the primary purpose of a red team? It is A is to validate the effectiveness of your incident response plan and by simulating potentially real attacks, the goal is, if you have a red team that you're banging on the door, they want to see how does your IR team respond to these banging on the door. It might just be a tap, so do they hear you tapping? And then you have to tap a little louder and you tap a little louder until eventually the IR team scrambles to their feet and goes and addresses the issue. Right, that's the purpose of a red team Now that and they also are used for helping they do pen testing, and not necessarily they may work a little bit with the red or with your incident response teams to do kind of they call it purple teaming, where you would actually then teach some of the folks while they're trying to break in. I highly recommend that. It's a really good thing if you can do it, but, that being said, that's the purpose of a red team.

Speaker 1: 17:33

Okay, so go to CISSP Cyber Training head over there. Get some free content. There's tons of stuff there. There's also some stuff that you get. I mean, honestly, it's a fair price. You go and you buy what I have there on CISSP Cyber Training. It is fair.

Speaker 1: 17:48

Getting your CISSP is expensive, but if you don't want to spend the time to go to it or don't have the money and don't want to go to a boot camp, the CISSP Cyber Trainings program is amazing. It will help you and yes, I am biased, of course, because I created it. But, that being said, it will help you and it's the cheapest amount of money that you will ever spend to get your CISSP. The only difference is you got to do the work. It's a self-study program. Now we have also other tiers that are available to do mentorship and other ways that I can help you, but bottom line is that you can get all the training you need If you're studying for the CISSP.

Speaker 1: 18:22

Go to CISSP Cyber Training and get access to it now. All right. I hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful day and we will catch you all on the flip side, see ya. Thanks so much for joining me today on my podcast. If you like what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes, as I would greatly appreciate your feedback. Also, check out my videos that are on YouTube and just head to my channel at CISSP cyber training and you will find a plethora, or a cornucopia, of content to help you pass the CISSP exam the first time. Lastly, head to CISSP Cyber Training and sign up for 360 free CISSP questions to help you in your CISSP journey. Thanks again for listening.