Pass the WGU Courses and Certificates Secure-Software-Design Questions and answers with CertsForce

The secure coding practice being described is Access Control. This practice ensures that access to data and features within a system is restricted and controlled. The description given indicates that the product has mechanisms to prevent the display of personally identifiable information (PII), restrict the printing of private documents, and require elevated privileges to access archived documents. These are all measures to control who has access to what data and under what circumstances, which is the essence of access control.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Throttling is a common and effective mitigation technique against Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. It limits the number of requests a user or IP can send over a certain time period, preventing resource exhaustion. This reduces the risk of overwhelming servers, which is the core issue in DoS attacks. Digital signatures (A) protect data integrity and authenticity, Protect secrets (B) secures confidential information, and Timestamps (C) help prevent replay attacks but are not direct defenses for DoS. According to NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 2 (Computer Security Incident Handling Guide) and OWASP DoS Prevention, throttling and rate limiting are standard controls to maintain availability under attack conditions.

To remediate the vulnerability of servers responding to ping requests with sensitive information, the organization should configure the servers to return as little information as possible to network requests. This practice is known as reducing the attack surface. By limiting the amount of information disclosed, potential attackers have less data to use when attempting to exploit vulnerabilities. Regular updates and patching (Option B) are also important, but they do not address the specific issue of information disclosure. Uninstalling or disabling unnecessary features (Option C) and restricting access to configuration files (Option D) are good security practices, but they do not directly prevent the leakage of server information through ping responses.

Manual code review is a type of security analysis that requires a significant time investment from a highly skilled team member. This process involves a detailed and thorough examination of the source code to identify security vulnerabilities that automated tools might miss. It is labor-intensive because it relies on the expertise of the reviewer to understand the context, logic, and potential security implications of the code. Unlike automated methods like static or dynamic code analysis, manual code review demands a deep understanding of the codebase, which can be time-consuming and requires a high level of skill and experience.

The practice described is Code review, which is a part of secure software development best practices. Code reviews are conducted to ensure that the code adheres to accepted coding patterns and meets the team’s quality standards. This process involves the examination of source code by a person or a group other than the author to identify bugs, security vulnerabilities, and ensure compliance with coding standards.

Penetration testing is an activity where a simulated attack is performed on a software product to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers. It is a proactive and authorized attempt to evaluate the security of an IT infrastructure by safely trying to exploit system vulnerabilities, including OS, service and application flaws, improper configurations, and risky end-user behavior. In the context of the Ship phase of the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL), penetration testing is conducted as a final check to uncover any potential security issues that might have been missed during previous phases. This ensures that the software product is robust and secure before it is released.

The OpenSAMM business function being assessed is Verification. This function involves activities related to reviewing and testing to ensure that the software meets the required security standards and practices. In the context of the question, the software security group’s focus on reviewing design artifacts to ensure compliance with organizational security standards falls under the Verification function. This includes tasks such as design review, implementation review, and security testing, which are all aimed at verifying that the security measures and controls are correctly integrated into the software design.