CompTIA Security+ Study Guide

Exam SY0-601

Mike Chapple, David Seidl

• Publisher: Sybex
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119736264
• Edition: 8
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Certification Guides in Computer Science
• Index: Computer Science

Learn the key objectives and most crucial concepts covered by the Security+ Exam SY0-601 with this comprehensive and practical study guide! An online test bank offers 650 practice questions and flashcards!

The Eighth Edition of the CompTIA Security+ Study Guide Exam SY0-601 efficiently and comprehensively prepares you for the SY0-601 Exam. Accomplished authors and security experts Mike Chapple and David Seidl walk you through the fundamentals of crucial security topics, including the five domains covered by the SY0-601 Exam:

• Attacks, Threats, and Vulnerabilities
• Architecture and Design
• Implementation
• Operations and Incident Response
• Governance, Risk, and Compliance

The study guide comes with the Sybex online, interactive learning environment offering 650 practice questions! Includes a pre-assessment test, hundreds of review questions, practice exams, flashcards, and a glossary of key terms, all supported by Wiley's support agents who are available 24x7 via email or live chat to assist with access and login questions.

The book is written in a practical and straightforward manner, ensuring you can easily learn and retain the material. Perfect for everyone planning to take the SY0-601 Exam—as well as those who hope to secure a high-level certification like the CASP+, CISSP, or CISA—the study guide also belongs on the bookshelves of everyone who has ever wondered if the field of IT security is right for them. It's a must-have reference!

Chapter 1
Today's Security Professional

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THE COMPTIA SECURITY+ EXAM OBJECTIVES COVERED IN THIS CHAPTER INCLUDE:

• Domain 1.0: Threats, Attacks, and Vulnerabilities
  • 1.6. Explain the security concerns associated with various types of vulnerabilities.
• Domain 2.0: Architecture and Design
  • 2.1. Explain the importance of security concepts in an enterprise environment.
• Domain 5.0: Governance, Risk, and Compliance
  • 5.1. Compare and contrast various types of controls.

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Security professionals play a crucial role in protecting their organizations in today's complex threat landscape. They are responsible for protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information and information systems used by their organizations. Fulfilling this responsibility requires a strong understanding of the threat environment facing their organization and a commitment to designing and implementing a set of controls capable of rising to the occasion and answering those threats.

In the first section of this chapter, you will learn about the basic objectives of cybersecurity: confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your operations. In the sections that follow, you will learn about some of the controls that you can put in place to protect your most sensitive data from prying eyes. This chapter sets the stage for the remainder of the book, where you will dive more deeply into many different areas of cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity Objectives

When most people think of cybersecurity, they imagine hackers trying to break into an organization's system and steal sensitive information, ranging from Social Security numbers and credit cards to top-secret military information. Although protecting sensitive information from unauthorized disclosure is certainly one element of a cybersecurity program, it is important to understand that cybersecurity actually has three complementary objectives, as shown in Figure 1.1.

FIGURE 1.1 The three key objectives of cybersecurity programs are confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

Confidentiality ensures that unauthorized individuals are not able to gain access to sensitive information. Cybersecurity professionals develop and implement security controls, including firewalls, access control lists, and encryption, to prevent unauthorized access to information. Attackers may seek to undermine confidentiality controls to achieve one of their goals: the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information.

Integrity ensures that there are no unauthorized modifications to information or systems, either intentionally or unintentionally. Integrity controls, such as hashing and integrity monitoring solutions, seek to enforce this requirement. Integrity threats may come from attackers seeking the alteration of information without authorization or nonmalicious sources, such as a power spike causing the corruption of information.

Availability ensures that information and systems are ready to meet the needs of legitimate users at the time those users request them. Availability controls, such as fault tolerance, clustering, and backups, seek to ensure that legitimate users may gain access as needed. Similar to integrity threats, availability threats may come either from attackers seeking the disruption of access or nonmalicious sources, such as a fire destroying a datacenter that contains valuable information or services.

Cybersecurity analysts often refer to these three goals, known as the CIA Triad, when performing their work. They often characterize risks, attacks, and security controls as meeting one or more of the three CIA triad goals when describing them.

Data Breach Risks

Security incidents occur when an organization experiences a breach of the confidentiality, integrity, and/or availability of information or information systems. These incidents may occur as the result of malicious activity, such as an attacker targeting the organization and stealing sensitive information, as the result of accidental activity, such as an employee leaving an unencrypted laptop in the back of a rideshare, or as the result of natural activity, such as an earthquake destroying a datacenter.

Security professionals are responsible for understanding these risks and implementing controls designed to manage those risks to an acceptable level. To do so, they must first understand the effects that a breach might have on the organization and the impact it might have on an ongoing basis.

The DAD Triad

Earlier in this chapter, we introduced the CIA triad, used to describe the three main goals of cybersecurity: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Figure 1.2 shows a related model: the DAD triad. This model explains the three key threats to cybersecurity efforts: disclosure, alteration, and denial. Each of these three threats maps directly to one of the main goals of cybersecurity.

FIGURE 1.2 The three key threats to cybersecurity programs are disclosure, alteration, and denial.

• Disclosure is the exposure of sensitive information to unauthorized individuals, otherwise known as data loss. Disclosure is a violation of the principle of confidentiality. Attackers who gain access to sensitive information and remove it from the organization are said to be performing data exfiltration. Disclosure may also occur accidentally, such as when an administrator misconfigures access controls or an employee loses a device.
• Alteration is the unauthorized modification of information and is a violation of the principle of integrity. Attackers may seek to modify records contained in a system for financial gain, such as adding fraudulent transactions to a financial account. Alteration may occur as the result of natural activity, such as a power surge causing a “bit flip” that modifies stored data. Accidental alteration is also a possibility, if users unintentionally modify information stored in a critical system as the result of a typo or other unintended activity.
• Denial is the disruption of an authorized user's legitimate access to information. Denial events violate the principle of availability. This availability loss may be intentional, such as when an attacker launches a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against a website. Denial may also occur as the result of accidental activity, such as...