Pass the Paloalto Networks Certified Cybersecurity Associate Practitioner Questions and answers with CertsForce

● Reduce the attack surface: Best-of-breed technologies that are natively integrated provide a prevention architecture that inherently reduces the attack surface. This type of architecture allows organizations to exert positive control based on applications, users, and content, with support for open communication, orchestration, and visibility.

● Prevent all known threats, fast: A coordinated security platform accounts for the full scope of an attack across the various security controls that compose the security posture, thus enabling organizations to quickly identify and block known threats.

● Detect and prevent new, unknown threats with automation: Security that simply detects

threats and requires a manual response is too little, too late. Automated creation and

delivery of near-real-time protections against new threats to the various security solutions in the organization’s environments enable dynamic policy updates. These updates are

designed to allow enterprises to scale defenses with technology, rather than people.

A “ports first” data security solution is a traditional approach that relies on port numbers to identify and filter network traffic. This approach has several limitations and security weaknesses, such as12:

Port numbers are not reliable indicators of the type or content of network traffic, as they can be easily spoofed or changed by malicious actors.

Port numbers do not provide any visibility into the application layer, where most of the attacks occur.

Port numbers do not account for the dynamic and complex nature of modern applications, which often use multiple ports or protocols to communicate.

Port numbers do not support granular and flexible policies based on user identity, device context, or application behavior. One of the security weaknesses that is caused by implementing a “ports first” data security solution in a traditional data center is that you may have to open up multiple ports and these ports could also be used to gain unauthorized entry into your datacenter. For example, if you have a web server that runs on port 80, you may have to open up port 80 on your firewall to allow incoming traffic. However, this also means that any other service or application that uses port 80 can also access your datacenter, potentially exposing it to attacks. Moreover, opening up multiple ports increases the attack surface area of your network, as it creates more entry points for attackers to exploit34. References: Common Open Port Vulnerabilities List - Netwrix, Optimize security with Azure Firewall solution for Azure Sentinel | Microsoft Security Blog, Which item accurately describes a security weakness that is caused by …, Which item accurately describes a security weakness … - Exam4Training

Routing protocols are defined at the network layer (Layer 3) of the OSI model. The network layer is responsible for routing packets across different networks using logical addresses (IP addresses). Routing protocols are used to exchange routing information between routers and to determine the best path for data delivery. Some examples of routing protocols are BGP, OSPF, RIP, and EIGRP. Palo Alto Networks devices support advanced routing features using the Advanced Routing Engine1. References: Advanced Routing - Palo Alto Networks | TechDocs, What Is Layer 7? - Palo Alto Networks, How to Configure Routing Information Protocol (RIP)

Malicious Portable Executable (PE) files hidden inside PDFs represent a stealthy delivery tactic where attackers embed executable payloads within seemingly benign documents. When a user opens the PDF, the embedded PE executes, potentially installing malware. This approach combines social engineering with file obfuscation to bypass traditional detection methods. Palo Alto Networks’ Advanced WildFire sandboxing inspects such files by detonating them in isolated environments to observe behavior and identify hidden threats. This detection technique is critical for uncovering evasive malware concealed within common file types before they reach end-users.

The diagram displays a mesh topology, where each device is connected to every other device in the network. This topology is characterized by the multiple connections each node has, ensuring there is no single point of failure and providing redundant paths for data transmission, enhancing the reliability and resilience of the network. Mesh topology is one of the types of LAN technology that uses ethernet or Wi-Fi to connect devices12. References:

What Is Local Area Network (LAN)? Definition, Types, Architecture, and Best Practices from Spiceworks

Types of LAN | Introduction and Classification of LAN from EDUCBA

Social engineering attacks manipulate human trust to gain unauthorized access or information. Convincing an employee that an attacker is also an employee builds rapport, lowering defenses for information disclosure or credential sharing. Similarly, impersonating a company representative and requesting unrelated personal data exploits authority bias to deceive victims. These tactics exploit psychological vulnerabilities rather than technical flaws and are prevalent initial steps in multi-stage attacks. Palo Alto Networks highlights the importance of training, multi-factor authentication, and behavior-based threat detection to mitigate social engineering risks effectively.

IDSs and IPSs also can be classified as knowledge-based (or signature-based) or behavior-based (or statistical anomaly-based) systems:

● A knowledge-based system uses a database of known vulnerabilities and attack profiles

to identify intrusion attempts. These types of systems have lower false-alarm rates than

behavior-based systems but must be continually updated with new attack signatures to

be effective.

● A behavior-based system uses a baseline of normal network activity to identify unusual

patterns or levels of network activity that may be indicative of an intrusion attempt.

These types of systems are more adaptive than knowledge-based systems and therefore

may be more effective in detecting previously unknown vulnerabilities and attacks, but they have a much higher false-positive rate than knowledge-based systems

Automation in SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response) is the process of programming tasks, alerts, and responses to security incidents so that they can be executed without human intervention. Automation in SOAR helps security teams to handle the huge amount of information generated by various security tools, analyze it through machine learning processes, and take appropriate actions based on predefined rules and workflows. Automation in SOAR also reduces the manual effort and time required for security operations, improves the accuracy and efficiency of threat detection and response, and provides consistency in handling security issues across different environments and scenarios. References: What is SOAR (security orchestration, automation and response)? | IBM, What Is SOAR? Technology and Solutions | Microsoft Security, Security orchestration - Wikipedia.

"In serverless apps, the developer uploads only the app package itself, without a full container image or any OS components. The platform dynamically packages it into an image, runs the image in a container, and (if needed) instantiates the underlying host OS and VM and the hardware required to run them."