CompTIA Updated CAS-005 Exam Questions and Answers by madeleine

The beststrategy for securely managing cryptographic material is to use a Hardware Security Module (HSM). Here’s why:

Security and Integrity: HSMs are specialized hardware devices designed to protect and manage digital keys. They provide high levels of physical and logical security, ensuring that cryptographic material is well protected against tampering and unauthorized access.

Centralized Key Management: Using HSMs allows for centralized management of cryptographic keys, reducing the risks associated with decentralized and potentially insecure key storage practices, such as on personal laptops.

Compliance and Best Practices: HSMs comply with various industry standards and regulations (such as FIPS 140-2) for secure key management. This ensures that the organization adheres to best practices and meets compliance requirements.

Advancements in quantum computing pose a significant threat to current encryption systems, especially those based on the difficulty of factoring large prime numbers, such as RSA. Quantum computers have the potential to solve these problems exponentially faster than classical computers, making current cryptographic systems vulnerable.

Why Large Prime Numbers are Vulnerable:

Shor's Algorithm: Quantum computers can use Shor's algorithm to factorize large integers efficiently, which undermines the security of RSA encryption.

Cryptographic Breakthrough: The ability to quickly factor large prime numbers means that encrypted data, which relies on the hardness of thismathematical problem, can be decrypted.

Other options, while relevant, do not capture the primary reason for the shift towards new encryption algorithms:

B. Zero Trust security architectures: While important, the shift to homomorphic encryption is not the main driver for new encryption algorithms.

C. Perfect forward secrecy: It enhances security but is not the main reason for new encryption algorithms.

D. Real-time IP traffic capture: Quantum computers pose a more significant threat to the underlying cryptographic algorithms than to the real-time capture of traffic.

Geofencingallows the device to be restricted based on its physical location — disabling or locking devices when they move outside of trusted zones.Full disk encryptionensures that if a device is lost, the data remains inaccessible to unauthorized users. Containerization protects specific apps or data, but does not disable the entire device. Patch management, allow/blocklists, and geotagging serve other important functions but are not directly linked to the requirements in this scenario.

Remote journaling continuously sends log updates to a remote system, ensuring near-real-time backup and an RPO (Recovery Point Objective) under one hour.

Key concepts:

RPO under one hour means minimal data loss.

Remote journaling provides rapid recovery by keeping near-live backups.

Other options:

A(Full disk encryption) protects against unauthorized access but does not aid recovery.

C (Immutable storage) prevents modification but does not ensure real-time backups.

D (RAID 10) improves redundancy but does not help against ransomware.