Pass the WGU Courses and Certificates Managing-Cloud-Security Questions and answers with CertsForce

Authorization is the access management aspect that safeguards data by determining a user’s rights to specific resources. Managing Cloud principles describe authorization as the process of enforcing policies that define what actions an authenticated user is permitted to perform within a system.

Once a user’s identity has been authenticated, authorization evaluates roles, permissions, and access rules to decide whether access to a particular resource should be granted or denied. This ensures that users can only access data and services necessary for their job functions, reducing the risk of unauthorized data exposure.

Authentication verifies who the user is, provisioning creates the identity, and centralization relates to identity architecture design. None of these directly determine access rights. Authorization is therefore the key mechanism that enforces least privilege and protects cloud data from improper access.

The jurisdiction of the cloud provider and users is a primary consideration when analyzing legal and privacy implications of cloud technologies. Managing Cloud guidance explains that data is subject to the laws and regulations of the jurisdiction in which it is stored, processed, or accessed.

Different countries impose varying legal requirements for data privacy, disclosure, and access by authorities. Understanding jurisdiction helps organizations evaluate compliance obligations, cross-border data transfer restrictions, and potential risks related to government access or conflicting regulations.

While encryption, contract configuration, and service level agreements are important, they do not override jurisdictional legal authority. Therefore, jurisdiction is the most critical factor in legal and privacy analysis.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) requires the greatest level of consumer responsibility for security. Managing Cloud documentation explains that in the shared responsibility model, IaaS providers supply virtualized infrastructure components such as compute, storage, and networking, while consumers manage everything above that layer.

Customers are responsible for securing operating systems, applications, data, access controls, patching, and configuration management. This includes vulnerability management, endpoint security, identity management, and monitoring. While this model provides flexibility and control, it also demands strong security expertise and governance.

In contrast, PaaS and SaaS shift more security responsibilities to the provider, and DBaaS abstracts database management. Therefore, IaaS places the highest security responsibility on the consumer.

During the create phase of the cloud data life cycle, data is first generated or collected by an organization. At this stage, it is essential to apply security controls before the data is transferred to the cloud environment. The most effective control during this phase is encryption. Encrypting data ensures that the information is transformed into an unreadable format, protecting it from unauthorized access while it is being transmitted and stored in the cloud.

Managing Cloud principles emphasize that security must be applied as early as possible in the data life cycle to minimize exposure and reduce risk. If data is encrypted prior to upload, even if interception or unauthorized access occurs, the data remains protected and unusable without the appropriate decryption keys. This approach also supports data confidentiality requirements and aligns with security best practices for handling sensitive and regulated information.

The other options do not provide adequate protection during the create phase. Storing or archiving data refers to later life cycle stages, while sharing data increases exposure rather than securing it. Therefore, encrypting data before uploading it to the cloud is a critical safeguard that ensures data confidentiality, supports compliance requirements, and strengthens overall cloud security posture.

In Agile development, user stories are the standard way to capture requirements for new features or improvements. A user story describes the functionality from the perspective of the end user, ensuring that development aligns with business needs.

“Cases” might refer to test cases, which validate requirements, but they are not used to describe them. Cookies are technical elements for web sessions, and notes are informal documentation.

User stories typically follow a format such as: “As a [role], I want [goal] so that [benefit].” This provides clarity, fosters communication between developers and stakeholders, and ensures that acceptance criteria can be defined and tested. Using stories as a requirement tool aligns with iterative, customer-focused release cycles.

The described threat is a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. In security contexts, a DoS attack aims to make a system, application, or data unavailable to legitimate users by overwhelming resources. Unlike brute force or rainbow table attacks, which target authentication mechanisms, or encryption, which is a defensive control, DoS focuses on disrupting availability—the “A” in the Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability (CIA) triad.

DoS can be executed in many ways: flooding a network with traffic, exhausting server memory, or overwhelming application processes. When scaled by multiple coordinated systems, it becomes a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. In either case, the effect is the same—authorized users cannot access critical data or services.

For cloud environments, where service uptime is crucial, DoS protections such as rate limiting, auto-scaling, and upstream filtering are essential. Training data center engineers to recognize DoS helps them understand the importance of resilience strategies and ensures continuity planning includes availability safeguards.

The lack of physical access to cloud infrastructure significantly affects the audit process for cloud customers. Managing Cloud guidance explains that customers do not have direct access to cloud data centers, servers, or networking equipment, which limits their ability to perform traditional on-site audits.

As a result, customers must rely on third-party audit reports, certifications, and attestations provided by the cloud service provider. This changes how evidence is collected and verified during audits and requires auditors to assess assurance reports instead of physical inspections.

Bandwidth constraints, uptime limits, and storage options impact performance and architecture decisions but do not directly affect audit methodology. Therefore, the absence of physical access is the primary audit-related characteristic.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the legal framework concerned with the privacy of data belonging to citizens of the European Union and the European Economic Area (EU/EEA). Managing Cloud principles explain that GDPR establishes comprehensive rules governing the collection, processing, storage, and transfer of personal data.

GDPR applies to organizations both within and outside the EU/EEA if they process personal data of EU residents. It enforces strict requirements related to data protection, consent, breach notification, and individual rights. Cloud service providers and consumers must ensure compliance when handling EU personal data.

The other options apply to different jurisdictions or data types. HIPAA governs healthcare data in the United States, COPPA protects children’s online privacy in the U.S., and APPI applies to Japan. Therefore, GDPR is the correct framework.

A sandbox is a controlled, isolated environment used to safely run, observe, and analyze potentially malicious code. In cybersecurity, sandboxes allow analysts to execute malware samples without risking contamination of production systems. This enables identification of malware behavior, persistence techniques, and indicators of compromise.

Encryption protects confidentiality, but does not allow safe execution. Gateways control traffic flow, and controllers manage devices or workloads. Only a sandbox provides the dedicated containment required for malware analysis.

In cloud environments, sandboxing is often implemented at scale to analyze suspicious files or traffic automatically. This practice enhances defenses against zero-day exploits, advanced persistent threats, and polymorphic malware. By preventing malware from escaping, sandboxes provide essential forensic and detection insights without endangering the wider environment.

Cryptographic erasure is a secure data sanitization technique that relies on encryption. The process involves encrypting the data, encrypting the keys with a second layer, and then destroying the encryption keys. Without the keys, the encrypted data becomes unreadable and is effectively destroyed, even though the storage media remains intact.

One-way hashing is used for password storage, not full data destruction. Degaussing is for magnetic media, and overwriting involves physically writing new data over existing sectors.

Cryptographic erasure is widely used in cloud environments where physical media cannot be easily destroyed or reclaimed by customers. It ensures compliance with data retention and privacy regulations while maintaining environmental sustainability by allowing reuse of storage hardware.