View Full Cisco CCNP Security 300-745 Exam Dumps and Practice Test Dumps.

Q41. An enterprise wants to prevent unknown or noncompliant devices from gaining normal access to the corporate wired network. Which security architecture is most appropriate?

1. Public DNS filtering only
   2. Static routing
   3. Network Access Control with device posture assessment
   4. GRE tunneling

Correct Answer: 3. Network Access Control with device posture assessment

Explanation: Network Access Control, or NAC, can verify the identity and security posture of a device before granting normal network access. Policies can evaluate factors such as device ownership, operating-system state, security-agent status, certificates, and user identity. Compliant endpoints can receive appropriate network permissions, while unknown or noncompliant systems can be denied, quarantined, or given limited remediation access. DNS filtering protects against certain domain-based threats but does not control admission to the network. Static routing and GRE provide connectivity functions rather than endpoint trust evaluation. NAC therefore directly supports identity-aware access and device compliance enforcement.

Q42. A security architect wants administrators to authenticate to routers and switches using individual credentials while maintaining centralized authorization and accounting. Which approach best meets this requirement?

1. Centralized AAA using TACACS+
   2. One shared local administrator password
   3. Anonymous SSH access
   4. SNMP community strings for login

Correct Answer: 1. Centralized AAA using TACACS+

Explanation: Centralized AAA provides authentication, authorization, and accounting for administrative access to infrastructure devices. TACACS+ is particularly suitable for network-device administration because it supports centralized user authentication, detailed command authorization, and accounting records that show administrative activity. This improves accountability and enables least-privilege administrative roles. Shared local accounts make it difficult to identify which administrator performed an action, while anonymous access would be highly insecure. SNMP community strings are intended for monitoring or management operations in older SNMP models and are not a replacement for secure administrator authentication.

Q43. A company needs to detect suspicious network traffic but cannot risk automatically blocking production packets during the initial deployment phase. Which architecture is most appropriate?

1. Inline IPS in blocking mode
   2. Host firewall with deny-all policy
   3. WAF configured to reject every request
   4. IDS operating out of band

Correct Answer: 4. IDS operating out of band

Explanation: An Intrusion Detection System can inspect copies of network traffic without sitting directly in the forwarding path. Because it is out of band, the IDS can identify suspicious activity and generate alerts without automatically dropping production packets. This makes it well suited to monitoring or baseline phases where administrators want visibility before enabling active prevention. An inline IPS can block malicious traffic but introduces the possibility of false-positive disruption. A deny-all host firewall or overly aggressive WAF would interfere with production access. IDS therefore provides detection capability with minimal direct impact on live traffic.

Q44. Which control best protects an individual server from unwanted inbound and outbound connections even if the surrounding network segmentation is misconfigured?

1. DNS caching
   2. Host-based firewall
   3. GRE
   4. DHCP relay

Correct Answer: 2. Host-based firewall

Explanation: A host-based firewall enforces traffic policy directly on the operating system or workload. Because enforcement occurs on the server itself, the control can remain effective even if upstream segmentation, firewall policy, or network topology is incorrectly configured. Host firewalls are particularly useful for defense in depth and can restrict inbound services as well as outbound connections from compromised applications. They should be centrally managed where possible to avoid configuration drift. DNS caching, GRE tunneling, and DHCP relay serve network functionality roles and do not provide workload-specific traffic enforcement.

Q45. A microservices application requires every service-to-service connection to be authenticated and encrypted without developers manually implementing TLS in every service. Which design best meets this requirement?

1. Disable encryption inside the cluster
   2. Use one shared password in all containers
   3. Place all services on one trusted VLAN
   4. Use a service mesh that provides mutual TLS

Correct Answer: 4. Use a service mesh that provides mutual TLS

Explanation: A service mesh can provide consistent service-to-service security through sidecar proxies or similar data-plane components. Mutual TLS allows both communicating services to authenticate each other while encrypting traffic in transit. The mesh can also automate certificate issuance, renewal, policy enforcement, observability, and service identity. This avoids requiring every development team to implement TLS logic independently. Treating an internal network as inherently trusted creates lateral-movement risk, while shared passwords are difficult to rotate and provide weak identity assurance. Service-mesh mTLS therefore provides scalable workload identity and encrypted east-west communication.

Q46. A cloud-native application needs database credentials, API keys, and signing keys. Which design is most secure?

1. Store secrets in the application source-code repository
   2. Embed credentials in container images
   3. Use a centralized secrets-management service with short-lived credentials where possible
   4. Put all secrets in a shared spreadsheet

Correct Answer: 3. Use a centralized secrets-management service with short-lived credentials where possible

Explanation: A dedicated secrets-management platform provides controlled storage, retrieval, rotation, auditing, and access policy for sensitive credentials. Where supported, short-lived credentials further reduce risk because compromised secrets expire automatically. Applications should retrieve secrets at runtime using workload identity rather than embedding reusable credentials in source code or container images. Source repositories and images often have broad access and long retention, increasing exposure if secrets are stored there. Spreadsheets provide weak access control and poor automation. Centralized secret management therefore improves both security and operational lifecycle control for cloud-native applications.

Q47. Which component is most appropriate for enforcing authentication, rate limiting, and request policies consistently across a collection of application APIs?

1. API gateway
   2. Layer 2 unmanaged switch
   3. DHCP server
   4. GRE concentrator

Correct Answer: 1. API gateway

Explanation: An API gateway provides a centralized control point for API traffic. It can enforce authentication and authorization, rate limits, request validation, routing, logging, quotas, and other API-specific policies. This is particularly useful when many microservices expose APIs but developers should not implement identical edge controls independently in every service. The gateway should complement secure application logic rather than replace it. Layer 2 switches, DHCP servers, and GRE concentrators do not understand API semantics or provide application-layer policy enforcement. An API gateway therefore supports consistent security and governance across API-based architectures.

Q48. Which application security test interacts with a running application from the outside to discover exploitable behavior?

1. SAST
   2. DAST
   3. Software bill of materials only
   4. Source-code formatting

Correct Answer: 2. DAST

Explanation: Dynamic Application Security Testing, or DAST, tests a running application from an external perspective. It sends requests to the application and analyzes responses to identify issues such as injection vulnerabilities, authentication weaknesses, insecure server behavior, and other exploitable conditions. Because DAST does not require access to the application’s source code, it can evaluate the deployed behavior of an application. SAST analyzes code without executing it, while a software bill of materials identifies components rather than actively testing application behavior. Mature application security programs commonly combine SAST, DAST, SCA, and manual testing.

Q49. During threat modeling, a team wants a structured method for considering spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service, and elevation of privilege. Which model should be used?

1. ITIL
   2. COBIT
   3. STRIDE
   4. DHCP snooping

Correct Answer: 3. STRIDE

Explanation: STRIDE is a threat-modeling mnemonic that helps teams systematically consider six common categories of threat: spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service, and elevation of privilege. Architects can apply STRIDE to trust boundaries, data flows, application components, identities, and interfaces to identify potential attack paths before deployment. The result can then drive security requirements and controls. ITIL focuses on service management, while COBIT provides broader governance guidance. DHCP snooping is a specific Layer 2 security feature and is not a general threat-modeling framework.

Q50. A SOC wants to correlate authentication events, firewall logs, endpoint alerts, and cloud audit records in one platform for investigation. Which technology is most appropriate?

1. DHCP server
   2. Load balancer
   3. GRE tunnel
   4. SIEM

Correct Answer: 4. SIEM

Explanation: Security Information and Event Management, or SIEM, platforms aggregate and normalize logs from many sources so analysts can search, correlate, detect, and investigate suspicious activity across the environment. Combining identity, network, endpoint, cloud, and application telemetry provides a broader view than examining isolated systems independently. SIEM rules and analytics can identify relationships between events that would otherwise appear unrelated. A SIEM is typically complemented by SOAR for automated response and by specialized endpoint or network detection technologies. DHCP, load balancing, and GRE do not provide centralized security-event correlation.

Q51. Which security technology provides visibility into endpoint processes, behavioral activity, and the ability to contain a compromised workstation?

1. MPLS
   2. EDR
   3. DNS resolver
   4. Static ACL only

Correct Answer: 2. EDR

Explanation: Endpoint Detection and Response, or EDR, continuously monitors endpoint activity such as process creation, file behavior, network connections, persistence mechanisms, and other security-relevant events. EDR platforms can detect suspicious behavior, provide investigation telemetry, and often support response actions such as isolating a compromised host or terminating malicious processes. This makes EDR a valuable component of incident detection and containment. MPLS and DNS provide network services rather than endpoint behavioral detection. Static ACLs can limit connectivity but lack the deep process-level visibility and response functionality of an EDR platform.

Q52. An incident-response review finds that security alerts were generated correctly but no one acted on them for several hours. Which design change best addresses the root operational weakness?

1. Disable the alerts
   2. Collect fewer logs
   3. Define escalation workflows, ownership, and response SLAs
   4. Remove incident severity classifications

Correct Answer: 1. Define escalation workflows, ownership, and response SLAs

Explanation: Effective detection requires a defined operational process for response. If alerts exist but no one is responsible for acting on them within an acceptable period, the architecture has an operational gap rather than merely a technology problem. Clear ownership, severity definitions, escalation paths, response service-level objectives, and after-hours procedures help ensure alerts lead to timely action. Automation can further route or enrich incidents, but responsibility must remain clear. Disabling alerts or collecting less evidence would reduce visibility, while removing severity classifications would make prioritization more difficult.

Q53. Which metric best represents the expected financial loss from a risk when both probability and business impact are considered?

1. Quantified annualized loss estimate
   2. Number of VLANs
   3. Router interface count
   4. DNS TTL

Correct Answer: 4. Quantified annualized loss estimate

Explanation: Quantitative risk analysis attempts to express risk in measurable terms, often financial. Techniques such as Single Loss Expectancy and Annualized Loss Expectancy combine estimated impact with frequency or probability to help compare risks and justify control investments. Although the values are estimates and can contain uncertainty, they provide a common business language for security and executive decision-making. Technical counts such as VLANs, interfaces, or DNS TTL values do not directly describe expected business loss. Quantification can therefore help prioritize controls based on probable financial exposure rather than purely technical severity.

Q54. A security control reduces the likelihood of successful ransomware exploitation but cannot eliminate it entirely. What remains after the control is applied?

1. Zero risk
   2. Residual risk
   3. Inherent availability
   4. Route convergence

Correct Answer: 2. Residual risk

Explanation: Residual risk is the risk that remains after controls have been implemented. Before controls are considered, organizations evaluate inherent risk. Mitigation measures such as segmentation, backups, EDR, patching, and email protection can lower the probability or impact of ransomware, but no realistic architecture eliminates all risk. Management must evaluate whether the remaining residual risk is acceptable or whether additional treatment is required. This concept is important in security design because architects must communicate that controls reduce risk rather than guarantee perfect protection. Route convergence and availability are unrelated to the definition of residual risk.

Q55. Which compliance requirement is most directly associated with protecting electronic protected health information in the United States?

1. PCI DSS
   2. COPPA
   3. HIPAA Security Rule
   4. BGPsec

Correct Answer: 3. HIPAA Security Rule

Explanation: The HIPAA Security Rule establishes administrative, physical, and technical safeguards for electronic protected health information in covered U.S. healthcare contexts. Security architects working in such environments must consider access controls, auditability, integrity, transmission security, risk analysis, and other safeguards relevant to ePHI. PCI DSS focuses on payment-card data, while COPPA concerns certain online collection of information from children. BGPsec is a routing-security technology rather than a regulatory requirement. Architects should map actual data types and business activities to applicable laws and standards instead of assuming one compliance framework applies universally.

Q56. A business requirement states that critical customer-facing services must continue operating even if one data center becomes unavailable. Which security architecture quality does this most directly address?

1. Confidentiality only
   2. Nonrepudiation only
   3. Password complexity
   4. Availability and resilience

Correct Answer: 1. Availability and resilience

Explanation: Designing services to continue operating despite a data-center outage directly addresses availability and resilience. The architecture may use geographically separated sites, redundant infrastructure, health checking, failover, replicated services, and tested disaster-recovery processes. Security architecture is not limited to confidentiality; protecting availability is a core objective because deliberate attacks, hardware failures, natural disasters, and configuration errors can all disrupt services. Nonrepudiation and password policies serve different security purposes. Resilient design ensures that critical systems can continue providing required business functions when individual components or locations fail.

Q57. A CI/CD pipeline must deploy cloud infrastructure automatically. How should the pipeline authenticate to the cloud platform?

1. Use a scoped workload identity or short-lived service credential
   2. Store the root administrator password in source code
   3. Reuse a developer’s personal administrator account
   4. Disable authentication for the pipeline

Correct Answer: 2. Use a scoped workload identity or short-lived service credential

Explanation: Automated pipelines should authenticate using dedicated workload identities or short-lived credentials with only the permissions required for deployment. This supports least privilege, reduces exposure from credential theft, and provides clearer audit trails than using personal administrator accounts. Modern cloud platforms often support federated workload identity so pipelines do not need long-lived static secrets at all. Root credentials in source code are especially dangerous because repositories can be copied, logged, or exposed. Secure pipeline identity should also include rotation, logging, separation of duties, and policy controls over which environments the pipeline can modify.

Q58. Which practice best prevents an unauthorized infrastructure change from being deployed through an Infrastructure as Code repository?

1. Disable source control history
   2. Allow direct commits to the production branch by everyone
   3. Require code review, automated policy checks, and protected branches
   4. Store infrastructure configuration only on individual laptops

Correct Answer: 4. Require code review, automated policy checks, and protected branches

Explanation: Protected branches, mandatory peer review, and automated policy validation create multiple checkpoints before infrastructure changes reach production. Review can detect unsafe design decisions, while policy-as-code tools can automatically reject configurations that violate security standards, such as publicly exposed storage or overly permissive firewall rules. Version control also provides traceability and supports rollback. Direct unrestricted commits remove these safeguards, and storing configuration on personal laptops reduces collaboration, auditability, and resilience. A secure IaC workflow treats infrastructure changes with the same disciplined software-engineering controls used for production application code.

Q59. A machine-learning security system begins missing malicious activity after an attacker manipulates the data used to retrain the model. Which AI security threat does this describe?

1. Model poisoning
   2. Route hijacking
   3. ARP spoofing only
   4. VLAN hopping

Correct Answer: 1. Model poisoning

Explanation: Model poisoning occurs when an attacker manipulates training or retraining data so that the resulting machine-learning model behaves incorrectly. In a security context, poisoning could reduce detection accuracy, create blind spots for specific malicious patterns, or introduce attacker-controlled behavior. Defenses include protecting training pipelines, validating data provenance, monitoring model drift, restricting who can modify training data, and testing updated models before production use. Route hijacking, ARP spoofing, and VLAN hopping are network attacks rather than attacks against machine-learning model integrity. AI security therefore requires protecting both the model and the data pipeline that produces it.

Q60. A security team uses generative AI to produce recommended firewall rules from natural-language requirements. Which control is most important before applying the generated rules to production?

1. Automatically deploy every generated rule
   2. Remove all firewall logging
   3. Validate and review the generated policy before enforcement
   4. Give the AI permanent root access to all firewalls

Correct Answer: 3. Validate and review the generated policy before enforcement

Explanation: Generative AI can accelerate policy development, but generated output may contain mistakes, over-permissive rules, missing dependencies, or incorrect interpretations of the requirement. The generated configuration should therefore pass deterministic validation, policy-as-code checks, testing, and appropriate human review before production enforcement. This is especially important for firewalls because a single incorrect rule can expose sensitive services or disrupt critical applications. AI should assist the workflow rather than automatically receive unrestricted control. Logging should remain enabled so deployed changes and resulting network behavior can be monitored and audited.