Security+ Certification/Objectives/Security Architecture

3.1 Compare and contrast security implications of different architecture models.

• Architecture and infrastructure concepts
  • Cloud
    • Responsibility matrix
    • Hybrid considerations
    • Third-party vendors
  • Infrastructure as code (IaC)
  • Serverless
  • Microservices
  • Network infrastructure
    • Physical isolation
      • Air-gapped
    • Logical segmentation
    • Software-defined networking (SDN)
  • On-premises
  • Centralized vs. decentralized
  • Containerization
  • Virtualization
  • IoT
  • Industrial control systems (ICS)/ supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA)
  • Real-time operating system (RTOS)
  • Embedded systems
  • High availability

• Considerations
  • Availability
  • Resilience
  • Cost
  • Responsiveness
  • Scalability
  • Ease of deployment
  • Risk transference
  • Ease of recovery
  • Patch availability
  • Inability to patch
  • Power
  • Compute

3.2 Given a scenario, apply security principles to secure enterprise infrastructure.

• Infrastructure considerations
  • Device placement
  • Security zones
  • Attack surface
  • Connectivity
  • Failure modes
    • Fail-open
    • Fail-closed
  • Device attribute
    • Active vs. passive
    • Inline vs. tap/monitor
  • Network appliances
    • Jump server
    • Proxy server
    • Intrusion prevention system (IPS)/intrusion detection system (IDS)
    • Load balancer
    • Sensors
  • Port security
    • 802.1X
    • Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP)
  • Firewall types
    • Web application firewall (WAF)
    • Unified threat management (UTM)
    • Next-generation firewall (NGFW)
    • Layer 4/Layer 7

• Secure communication/access
  • Virtual private network (VPN)
  • Remote access
  • Tunneling
    • Transport Layer Security (TLS)
    • Internet protocol security (IPSec)
  • Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN)
  • Secure access service edge (SASE)
• Selection of effective controls

3.3 Compare and contrast concepts and strategies to protect data.

• Data types
  • Regulated
  • Trade secret
  • Intellectual property
  • Legal information
  • Financial information
  • Human- and non-human-readable
• Data classifications
  • Sensitive
  • Confidential
  • Public
  • Restricted
  • Private
  • Critical

• General data considerations
  • Data states
    • Data at rest
    • Data in transit
    • Data in use
  • Data sovereignty
  • Geolocation
• Methods to secure data
  • Geographic restrictions
  • Encryption
  • Hashing
  • Masking
  • Tokenization
  • Obfuscation
  • Segmentation
  • Permission restrictions

3.4 Explain the importance of resilience and recovery in security architecture.

• High availability
  • Load balancing vs. clustering
• Site considerations
  • Hot
  • Cold
  • Warm
  • Geographic dispersion
• Platform diversity
• Multi-cloud systems
• Continuity of operations
• Capacity planning
  • People
  • Technology
  • Infrastructure

• Testing
  • Tabletop exercises
  • Fail over
  • Simulation
  • Parallel processing
• Backups
  • Onsite/offsite
  • Frequency
  • Encryption
  • Snapshots
  • Recovery
  • Replication
  • Journaling
• Power
  • Generators
  • Uninterruptible power supply (UPS)