IBM Security Foundations Advanced Practice Exam: Hard Questions 2025

An enterprise has implemented a zero-trust architecture but is experiencing performance degradation during peak hours. Analysis shows that continuous authentication requests are creating bottlenecks at the policy decision point. The security team must maintain zero-trust principles while improving performance. Which architectural approach would BEST address this challenge without compromising security posture?

A financial institution is implementing defense-in-depth for their cloud infrastructure. They have deployed network segmentation, encryption at rest, and host-based firewalls. During a security assessment, penetration testers successfully exfiltrated data by compromising a developer workstation and using legitimate API calls with stolen credentials. Which layer of defense-in-depth was MOST critically missing that would have prevented this attack vector?

An organization is designing a security architecture for a hybrid cloud environment where sensitive data must be processed in both on-premises and public cloud systems. Regulatory requirements mandate that cryptographic keys never leave the on-premises environment, but the organization needs to leverage cloud-native services for analytics. Which architecture pattern would BEST meet these requirements?

A global enterprise has deployed microsegmentation across their data center, with each application tier in separate security zones. After implementation, a critical three-tier application experiences intermittent failures. Investigation reveals that the middle tier occasionally cannot reach the database tier, despite firewall rules explicitly allowing this traffic on the required ports. Packet captures show SYN packets arriving but RST packets being returned. What is the MOST likely root cause requiring immediate remediation?

An organization implements TLS 1.3 with forward secrecy across all services. Security operations receives alerts that their network security monitoring tools can no longer perform deep packet inspection for threat detection on encrypted traffic. The CISO mandates maintaining both encryption strength and security monitoring capabilities without introducing significant latency. Which solution BEST addresses these competing requirements?

A SaaS provider encrypts customer data at rest using AES-256. During a security audit, it's discovered that all customer data is encrypted using the same master key, which is rotated annually. A customer requests cryptographic isolation to ensure their data cannot be decrypted even if another customer's environment is compromised. Which key hierarchy architecture BEST provides cryptographic isolation while maintaining operational efficiency?

An enterprise has implemented role-based access control (RBAC) with 200+ roles. Over time, role proliferation and permission creep have created a complex authorization matrix. Security analysis reveals that 73% of users have access to resources they haven't used in 6 months. The organization wants to transition to a more dynamic model while minimizing disruption. What approach would BEST address these issues?

A healthcare organization implements federated identity using SAML 2.0 with multiple external partners. During an incident investigation, security discovers that an attacker gained unauthorized access by intercepting SAML assertions and replaying them within the validity window. The organization needs to prevent assertion replay attacks while maintaining federation with partners who have varying technical capabilities. Which combination of controls would MOST effectively mitigate this attack vector?

During a security incident, the SOC team identifies a sophisticated attack that has persisted for 47 days. Forensic analysis shows the attacker established persistence through legitimate administrative tools, moved laterally using valid credentials, and exfiltrated data gradually to avoid DLP thresholds. The incident response team needs to contain the threat without alerting the attacker and preserve forensic evidence. Which containment strategy should be prioritized FIRST?

An organization's SIEM generates 50,000 alerts daily, with a 98% false positive rate. The security team can only investigate 100 alerts per day, resulting in alert fatigue and potential missed critical incidents. Analysis shows that tuning rules to reduce false positives also increases false negatives unacceptably. Which strategic approach would MOST effectively improve threat detection efficacy?