CompTIA Updated SY0-701 Exam Questions and Answers by suleiman

The best answer is C. Ensuring DPAs are in place with third-party vendors.

When a company handles personal data across multiple countries, one of the most important legal and regulatory requirements is ensuring that any third parties processing that data are contractually bound to protect it appropriately. A DPA (Data Processing Agreement) defines how a vendor may collect, process, store, share, and protect personal data. This is a key requirement in many privacy frameworks and regulations.

This matters because organizations are often still responsible for customer data even when a third-party provider handles it. A DPA helps establish:

the roles and responsibilities of each party

the legal basis and limits for data processing

security and privacy obligations

breach notification expectations

cross-border data handling requirements

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. Storing all customer data on encrypted local serversEncryption is important, but this alone does not ensure compliance with international privacy laws. Legal compliance involves governance, lawful processing, third-party handling, and contractual obligations.

B. Hiring a data privacy officer to review contractsA privacy officer may be helpful or required in some situations, but simply hiring one is not as directly critical as having the actual data processing agreements in place.

D. Using strong passwords and firewalls on all endpointsThese are valuable security controls, but they are not sufficient for legal compliance with global privacy regulations.

From a Security+ perspective, privacy compliance often involves third-party risk management, contractual controls, and lawful data handling, making DPAs the most critical answer here.

Device misconfigurations are the correct answer because leaving insecure protocols enabled is a configuration weakness. Protocols such as Telnet, FTP, SMBv1, older SSL/TLS versions, or unused management services can expose systems to credential theft, downgrade attacks, unauthorized access, or exploitation. Turning them off is part of system hardening and secure configuration management. Sideloading refers to installing applications from unauthorized sources, usually on mobile or endpoint platforms. Memory injection involves inserting malicious code into a running process. A malicious update is a compromised or hostile software update. The scenario is not about malware or software installation; it is about removing insecure enabled services. Security+ treats this as a misconfiguration and hardening issue.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Key escrow is the process of storing encryption keys (or copies of them) with a trusted third party so data can be recovered if the primary decryption key is lost. In Security+ SY0-701, escrow is emphasized as a required safeguard for organizations that rely heavily on encryption, especially for regulated data or systems requiring guaranteed recoverability.

A CSR (A) is a Certificate Signing Request and does not store keys. Salting (B) is used with hashing to prevent password attacks and does not assist in data recovery. A root of trust (C) ensures secure hardware initialization but does not store backup decryption keys.

Key escrow directly addresses scenarios where encryption keys are misplaced, corrupted, deleted, or lost due to employee departure or system failure. Without escrow, encrypted data could become permanently inaccessible.

Thus, the correct answer is Escrow, the only mechanism specifically designed to allow recovery when decryption keys are unavailable.

The best answer is A. Zero-day.

A zero-day vulnerability is a newly discovered vulnerability for which no patch or official fix is yet available. Because defenders have had zero days to fully remediate it, attackers may be able to exploit it before a vendor releases a patch.

The question specifically states that the vulnerability is new and does not have an available patch, which is the defining clue.

Why the other options are incorrect:

B. XSSCross-site scripting is a specific web application attack type, not a description of whether a patch exists.

C. SQLiSQL injection is also a specific attack type, not the broader vulnerability status being asked about.

D. Buffer overflowBuffer overflow is a type of coding flaw, but again it does not specifically describe the condition of having no patch available.

From a Security+ perspective, when a vulnerability is newly identified and lacks a vendor fix, it is best described as a zero-day.