CertByte is a bi-weekly blog and segment on the CyberWire Daily podcast hosted by Chris Hare, a content developer and project management specialist at N2K. On CertByte, we share practice questions from our suite of industry-leading content and a study tip to help you achieve the professional certifications you need to fast-track your career growth. View our CertByte series on YouTube.
CertByte: ISC2® Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP®)
On this edition of CertByte, we discuss a question from N2K’s ISC2® Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP®) practice test.
As your news-to-knowledge partner, N2K will advance your career while bringing you the industry news and trends that help you stay a step ahead. Through our bi-weekly episodes of CertByte on the CyberWire Daily podcast, and these companion articles, we aim to support your certification journey and fast-track your career growth in IT, cybersecurity, and project management. As your host, I or my guest will share a practice question from N2K’s suite of industry-leading content and a study tip (or study “bit” as I like to call it) to increase your confidence and readiness on exam day.
In this segment, my new guest host Steven Burnley and I break down a question from N2K’s ISC2® Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP®) Practice Test. The SSCP exam is targeted at IT admins, directors, managers, and network security professionals who have a hands-on role in operational security. As always, the question we shared is a sample from N2K’s ISC2® Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP®) Practice Test*, and not from the actual ISC2 exam.
Quick ISC2 SSCP study bit.
As this exam is heavy on terminology and acronyms, using flashcards is a great way to help with memorization. N2K’s flashcards also help you filter out those terms you already know, so you can focus on only those that are giving you trouble. Most of our exams offer more than 150 flashcards to help give students that extra edge.
This week’s question.
An IT security manager is struggling to keep the organization's computers in working order. He is testing updates and configuring them to be installed onto systems and making tweaks to the configuration settings to various systems as business tasks require. However, he often discovers systems which do not have the necessary updates or which are using out-of-date settings. This may be caused by systems being disconnected from the company network when taken into the field or when used for special offline projects.
Which technology should the IT security manager implement to help handle this complex issue?
Answer choices:
- IEEE 802.1x
- NAC
- NTP synchronization
- OCSP
Working through the logic of each answer choice.
Before considering each answer option, I checked the exam’s objectives. This particular question falls under the “Understand network attacks and countermeasures” subobjective in the Network and Communications Security objective. After Steven confirmed that questions of this length are typical for this exam, and that this is more than just a simple match-term-to-its-definition question, I asked him about the “often” qualifier in the third sentence. It was throwing me off because it implied there was a potential for one answer choice to be the slightly better one. Steven said this was not the case, but gave me some hints. First, he said that all of the options are protocols, but three of them are security protocols. IEEE has to do with user authentication and access, NAC is a broad security framework that includes quarantine features, NTP has to do with clock synchronization for audits and logging, and OCSP has to do with validating digital signatures.
I used Steven’s helpful guidance as a way to narrow down my answer choices. Given the question asks specifically about network systems being disconnected and not getting the necessary updates, I ruled out IEEE, which is isolated to user authentication and access. NAC is a broad security framework that includes quarantine features, and as I thought Steven may be trying to give me a hint there, I held onto that one. NTP is regarding syncing clocks, which does not seem to be the issue here, and OSCP has to do with digital certs, which is not the situation described here, either, so I decided to go with “B. NAC.”
Steven shared the good news that the correct answer is: “B. NAC.” Network access control (NAC) should be implemented in this scenario. When a system is determined by NAC to lack specific configuration settings or to be missing a required update, the system will be quarantined. A NAC quarantine is an isolation triggered by a system being out of compliance.
IEEE 802.1x is the IEEE standard known as port-based network access control, which is used to leverage authentication already present in a network to validate clients connecting over hardware devices, such as wireless access points or VPN concentrators.
Network Time Protocol (NTP) synchronization is the means by which clocks on various systems are brought into alignment. It is essential that all internal systems are synchronized.
Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) is the communication query system employed by modern certificate authorities (CAs) to inform endpoints of the revocation status of digital certificates.
I asked Steven if he had any other advice about how a student can study for this question. He mentioned that he liked how I paid close attention to verb tenses in my answer deconstruction. Steven felt that was a pro study tip to give candidates an edge in answering these types of procedural questions.
Before we wrapped up, I asked Steven to share if there were any N2K product updates. He mentioned there is an update coming up in early 2025 of ISC2’s CISSP exam. N2K also updated the framework for Cisco’s CCNA exam in September 2024. We also have several more Microsoft, CompTIA, and Amazon practice test updates coming soon, so keep a lookout on our website or subscribe to our monthly newsletter.
Want more help with this exam?
Whether you are actively studying for the SSCP or would like to suggest a future certification question, email us at certbyte at n2k.com.
Premium certification prep tools.
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Explore key terms from the SSCP certification.
Visit N2K CyberWire’s glossary to dive deeper into these key terms, listed in the order discussed in our segment: ISC2®, SSCP®, network, operational security, IT security manager, configuration settings, IEEE, NAC, NTP, OCSP, protocol, quarantine, audit log, compliance, IP address, environment, port, authentication, multi-factor authentication, certificate authority (CA), digital certificate, bandwidth, certificate revocation list (CRL), and synchronization.
Happy certifying!