Book Image

CompTIA CASP+ CAS-004 Certification Guide

By : Mark Birch
Book Image

CompTIA CASP+ CAS-004 Certification Guide

By: Mark Birch

Overview of this book

CompTIA Advanced Security Practitioner (CASP+) ensures that security practitioners stay on top of the ever-changing security landscape. The CompTIA CASP+ CAS-004 Certification Guide offers complete, up-to-date coverage of the CompTIA CAS-004 exam so you can take it with confidence, fully equipped to pass on the first attempt. Written in a clear, succinct way with self-assessment questions, exam tips, and mock exams with detailed explanations, this book covers security architecture, security operations, security engineering, cryptography, governance, risk, and compliance. You'll begin by developing the skills to architect, engineer, integrate, and implement secure solutions across complex environments to support a resilient enterprise. Moving on, you'll discover how to monitor and detect security incidents, implement incident response, and use automation to proactively support ongoing security operations. The book also shows you how to apply security practices in the cloud, on-premises, to endpoints, and to mobile infrastructure. Finally, you'll understand the impact of governance, risk, and compliance requirements throughout the enterprise. By the end of this CASP study guide, you'll have covered everything you need to pass the CompTIA CASP+ CAS-004 certification exam and have a handy reference guide.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Section 1: Security Architecture
6
Section 2: Security Operations
11
Section 3: Security Engineering and Cryptography
16
Section 4: Governance, Risk, and Compliance

Understanding hashing algorithms

Hashing algorithms are primarily used to validate the integrity of data, though they can also be used to prove that you know something, such as a password secret. Hashing is a one-way process (it is unfeasible to reverse a hash) and does not provide confidentiality for the data. It is important to understand that the original data is not changed in any way. Think of hashing as a way to create a unique digital checksum for a particular document, file, or data payload. Hashing is used for File Integrity Monitoring (FIM), where we can detect if a protected operating system file has been altered. Hashing can be used in digital forensics to capture a unique checksum of a copy image, to match it with the original (this is useful to do before analysts begin the forensic investigation). For security professionals, it is important to understand what would be considered strong and what would represent weak implementations of hashing algorithms. Strong or resilient...