WGU Updated Managing-Cloud-Security Exam Questions and Answers by hussain

A vulnerability assessment requires compliance with the cloud service provider’s terms of service. Managing Cloud documentation explains that vulnerability scanning and testing can affect cloud infrastructure and other tenants if not properly authorized.

CSPs define acceptable testing activities to protect shared environments. Customers must follow these guidelines to avoid violating contracts or causing service disruptions. Many CSPs require prior notification or explicit permission before conducting vulnerability assessments.

The other methods involve internal development processes and do not impact cloud infrastructure directly. Therefore, vulnerability assessment is the correct answer.

The correct answer is electronic discovery (e-discovery). This process involves identifying, collecting, and producing electronically stored information (ESI) that may serve as evidence in legal proceedings. E-discovery ensures that relevant data such as emails, logs, or documents is preserved and made available in a legally defensible manner.

Chain of custody refers to documenting the handling of evidence once collected, while forensic imaging creates exact copies of digital media. Gap analysis identifies weaknesses in processes but is unrelated to evidence collection.

E-discovery is essential in both corporate and cloud contexts, as data is often distributed across multiple environments. Cloud providers may assist customers with e-discovery by providing tools for searching, tagging, and exporting relevant data. A sound e-discovery process ensures compliance with legal obligations and prevents spoliation of evidence.

Once a vendor has been selected, the onboarding phase requires contractual verification and technical arrangements for data transfer. This step ensures that service levels, compliance requirements, encryption standards, and responsibilities are clearly defined before operations begin.

Options such as identifying the business need or responding to the RFP are pre-selection activities. Ensuring secure destruction of data is relevant to offboarding, not onboarding. Therefore, the most critical onboarding task is verifying the contract details and ensuring secure data transfer agreements.

Discussing these issues protects the organization from legal disputes, ensures smooth technical integration, and supports compliance with frameworks such as GDPR and PCI DSS. It also defines the scope of vendor accountability in case of security incidents.

When evaluating the risks of a new Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, the historical availability of services must be examined in detail. Managing Cloud principles explain that availability is a critical risk factor because customers rely entirely on the provider to deliver uninterrupted access to applications and data.

Reviewing historical uptime, outage frequency, and incident response performance provides insight into the provider’s operational maturity and resilience. Past availability metrics help organizations assess whether the SaaS provider can meet business continuity, disaster recovery, and service level expectations.

The other options represent security controls or operational activities but are not primary risk indicators during SaaS evaluation. Administrative account usage and multi-factor authentication relate to access controls, while patching is managed by the provider in SaaS environments. Therefore, historical availability is the most relevant item to assess.