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 the PKI hierarchy

A PKI hierarchy describes the main components needed to process certificate signing requests (CSRs), authorize requests, and perform the signing process. Each component of the PKI plays an important role. In Figure 12.1, we can see an overview of the PKI hierarchy:

Figure 12.1 – Common components of PKI

We will now learn about these components.

Certificate authority

A certificate authority (CA) consists of an application server running a service called Certificate Services (or Linux/Unix equivalent daemon). There may be multiple levels of CAs; there will always be a root CA. In addition, there will normally be at least one more layer. This is known as the subordinate or intermediate CA. The root CA will typically be kept in a secure location, in many cases isolated (or air-gapped). The root CA only needs to be powered up and available to sign intermediate CA signing requests. For redundancy, an enterprise may...