01. Why is the CISA Zero Trust Maturity Model useful during strategic planning?
a) It ranks Zero Trust vendors by how many pillars their products cover
b) It frames progress as staged improvement within each pillar
c) It replaces the risk register as the record of the program's risks
d) It sets the budget each pillar receives
02. CSA's glossary describes the Single Packet Authorization one-time password: it is based on RFC 4226, modified to include a counter so that the password differs each time.
What is this one-time password used for?
a) Encrypting the application traffic that flows between the hosts once access is granted
b) Replacing the user's MFA at sign-in
c) Uniquely identifying the initiating host to the controller and accepting host
d) Rotating and revoking the gateway's TLS certificates
03. What fundamental security problem was the Software-Defined Perimeter (SDP) designed to address?
a) Slow VPN concentrators under heavy remote-work load
b) Malware infections on endpoints that lack up-to-date scanning tools
c) Unencrypted traffic between data centers, branches and clouds
d) Connect-first, authenticate-later access based on IP address
04. Federal agencies report their zero trust progress inconsistently, and no senior official answers for slipping milestones.
Which NSTAC key recommendation addresses this?
a) Metric-based progress reporting, with accountability at agency CISO level or above
b) A public ranking of agencies by zero trust tools purchased
c) Annual self-attestation by each program team, with no review or sign-off
d) Pausing funding until every pillar reaches Optimal
05. Which statement best describes how Zero Trust treats a subject's entitlements?
a) Assigned by role at provisioning and reviewed periodically
b) Granted broadly to everyone inside a trusted network zone
c) Kept to the minimum needed and adjusted dynamically as context changes
d) Kept to the minimum needed but fixed once approved at onboarding
06. Much of the traffic on an enterprise network is encrypted, so its monitoring tools cannot perform deep packet inspection on it.
According to NIST SP 800-207, how can the enterprise still analyze this traffic?
a) Collect connection metadata such as source and destination for analysis
b) Block every encrypted session until its payload can be decrypted and inspected at the edge
c) Treat encrypted flows as trusted, since encryption protects them
d) Rely on endpoint antivirus logs instead
07. A CISO is presenting a Zero Trust initiative to the executive board to secure its sponsorship.
Which framing is most likely to win the board's support?
a) Consolidating every tool onto one vendor platform and cutting licensing spend
b) Alignment with risk reduction and compliance objectives
c) A guarantee that migration will cause no operational disruption at any point
d) A commitment to retire all legacy systems within the first funding cycle
08. Once an SDP access request has been approved, what does the initiating host establish with the accepting host?
a) The initiating host gains broad, network-layer access to the whole protected segment
b) The controller relays the host's application traffic to the protected service
c) The initiating host sets up a mutually authenticated, encrypted connection to the authorized accepting host
d) The accepting host publishes its service so any enrolled client can find it
09. As MFA prompts and access challenges multiply during a Zero Trust rollout, employees get less work done and some start looking for workarounds.
Which phenomenon does NIST SP 800-207 cite for this effect?
a) Policy drift
b) Alert fatigue
c) Shadow IT
d) Security fatigue
10. The NSTAC report describes the Department of Defense's Comply-to-Connect (C2C) program as one of the efforts foundational to its zero trust architecture.
What does C2C require?
a) Devices connect first and are scanned for compliance at the next maintenance window
b) No network privileges until a device or application fully complies
c) Only government-owned devices may connect, whatever their current security state
d) Users attest once at enrollment that their devices comply, and are trusted thereafter