Cloud Security Professional Practice Test

Skills this practice test covers

• Explain how a SOC uses threat intelligence to categorize and prioritize incidents.
• Manage users, roles, logs, the asset inventory and data source ingestion in Cortex Cloud.
• Find risky cloud settings with the posture modules for cloud accounts, Kubernetes, AI, data and identities.
• Protect running workloads with Cloud Workload Protection, Cloud Detection and Response and WAAS.
• Deploy and update the agents that guard hosts and containers.
• Scan code, open-source packages, IaC templates and pipelines before release.

5 domains · 30 topics · 196 of 533 questions are written for Cloud-Security-Professional

Requirements

• No formal prerequisites.
• Recommended: the Cybersecurity Practitioner certification or the same foundational knowledge.
• Recommended: a basic understanding of the Cortex Cloud platform and of cloud security.
• Recommended: working knowledge of cloud deployments, the threats to them, and operating system fundamentals.

About the Cloud-Security-Professional exam

How to earn the certification

Earns

Palo Alto Networks Cloud Security ProfessionalProfessional

The certification stays valid for two years.

Before

• CyberSec-Practitioner Cybersecurity Practitioner

  Optional. The foundational level that comes before the Professional certifications.

How to prepare for Cloud-Security-Professional

1. 1

   Map each module to its risk

   Make a table with each Cortex Cloud module, the risk it finds and where it looks: settings, data, identities, running workloads or code. Keep it beside the notes for every domain.

2. 2

   Connect a test cloud account

   If a Cortex Cloud tenant is available, connect a test cloud account, then review the posture findings, the asset inventory and a dashboard. Without one, follow each step in the product documentation.

3. 3

   Spend most time on posture and runtime

   Cloud Posture Security and Cloud Runtime Security are the two largest domains. Study each posture module first, then the runtime modules and the agent deployment steps.

4. 4

   Scan a small sample repository

   Take a repository with a Terraform file, some open-source packages and a test secret. Note what IaC security, software composition analysis and secrets scanning would each report.

5. 5

   Run timed sets on weak modules

   Take the Cloud-Security-Professional practice test in Study Mode, then in Timed Mode, and repeat the questions on modules that went wrong. Ask Brainy AI Assistant to compare any two modules that still blur together.

   Start a timed Cloud-Security-Professionalrun

Who Cloud-Security-Professional is for

• Cloud security administrators who run Cortex Cloud for their organization.
• SOC analysts who handle alerts from cloud accounts and workloads.
• DevSecOps engineers who add code and pipeline scanning to software delivery.
• Security architects and cloud engineers who plan the controls for cloud environments.

Typical job titles: Cloud security engineer · Cloud security administrator · DevSecOps engineer · SOC analyst · Security architect

Cloud-Security-Professional glossary

17 terms from the exam objectives and the vendor's official material, each defined in a sentence.

Agentless Scanning

Scanning cloud workloads for vulnerabilities and risks through the cloud provider, without installing an agent.

AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM)

Posture checks for the AI models, data and services that an organization runs in the cloud.

Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)

A combined view of security risks across an organization's code, pipelines and applications.

Asset Inventory

The list of cloud resources the platform has found, kept up to date for search and reporting.

CI/CD Posture Management

Checking build and deployment pipelines for weak settings and risky permissions.

Cloud Detection and Response (CDR)

Detecting attacks in cloud activity and logs, and responding to them.

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

Continuous checks of cloud accounts for misconfigurations and compliance gaps.

Cloud Workload Protection (CWP)

Protection for running workloads, such as hosts and containers, through an agent that watches their activity.

Cortex Cloud

Palo Alto Networks' cloud security platform, which joins posture, runtime and application security with SOC tools.

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

Finding and classifying sensitive data in cloud storage, and flagging risky access to it.

Identity Security

Checks on cloud users, roles and permissions that find excess access before it can be misused.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security

Scanning templates that define cloud resources for misconfigurations before the resources are created.

Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM)

Posture checks for Kubernetes clusters and the settings of the workloads that run in them.

Secrets Scanning

Finding passwords, keys and tokens that were left in code or configuration files.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

Scanning the open-source packages an application uses for known vulnerabilities and license problems.

Unified Compliance Management

One place to measure cloud resources against compliance standards and to track the results.

Web Application and API Security (WAAS)

Protection for web applications and APIs against attacks such as injection, applied at the workload.