CCCS-203b CrowdStrike Certified Cloud Specialist Questions and Answers

Falcon Cloud Security categorizes IOAs usingMITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques, enriched withcloud-provider contextto accurately represent cloud-native attack behavior.

To identifyDefense Evasion via Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Toolsactivity specifically withinAzure, analysts must filter IOAs usingMITRE Tactic and Techniquewhile also scoping the environment to thecloud provider. This ensures visibility into attacker behaviors such as disabling logging, modifying security services, or impairing monitoring controls at the cloud-provider level.

Filtering by attack type alone lacks the structured MITRE mapping required for accurate investigative workflows. Service-level filters are insufficient because impairment of defenses in cloud environments often impacts provider-managed services rather than individual workloads.

Therefore,MITRE Tactic and Technique – Cloud provideris the correct and most precise filter to identify Azure-specific defense evasion IOAs.

Visibility intoAWS IAM controls, includingrestricted use of AWS CloudShell (CIS IAM 1.20), is provided throughCrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security posture managementusingIndicators of Misconfiguration (IOMs). These checks continuously evaluate cloud resources againstindustry-standard benchmarks, including theCIS Foundations Benchmarks for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

CrowdStrike maintainsprebuilt, managed IOM policiesthat are automatically updated to reflect the latest CIS guidance. Leveraging existing IOM policies ensures immediate coverage without the operational risk or overhead of creating and maintaining custom rules. These policies assess IAM configurations, permissions usage, service access controls, and policy enforcement related to CloudShell usage.

IOAs are designed for runtime behavioral detections and are not suitable for posture or configuration validation. Creating custom IOMs is unnecessary for CIS-aligned controls because CrowdStrike already provides validated, benchmark-mapped policies maintained by CrowdStrike security research.

Therefore,leveraging existing IOM policiesis the correct and recommended approach to maintaincontinuous, benchmark-aligned visibilityacross multi-cloud environments.

When configuring a new image registry connection for aprivately hosted container registryin CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, the required and most critical action is toverify the token and secretused for authentication. Private registries require explicit credentials so Falcon can securely access and assess container images for vulnerabilities, malware, and misconfigurations.

CrowdStrike supports multiple private registry types (such as private Docker registries or cloud-native registries with restricted access). In all cases, Falcon relies on valid authentication credentials—typically a token, username/password, or service account secret—to pull image metadata and layers. If these credentials are incorrect, expired, or misconfigured, image assessment will fail even if the registry connection appears configured.

Other options may be relevant in specific environments but are not universally required at creation time. Registry URLs are validated during setup, and allowlisting IP addresses may be necessary only if strict network controls are in place. Secret expiration checks are a maintenance concern, not a mandatory creation step.

Therefore, the required action when creating a private registry connection is toverify the token and secret.

InCrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, IOAs are categorized usingMITRE ATT&CK-aligned tacticsto help analysts quickly identify attacker objectives. When investigating how a threat actor may havemaintained accessto cloud resources after an initial breach, the appropriate tactic to focus on isPersistence.

Persistence IOAs represent techniques such as creating backdoor IAM roles, modifying access policies, adding API keys, enabling long-lived credentials, or altering cloud configurations to survive reboots or credential rotation. Filtering the IOA dashboard byPersistenceisolates these behaviors, enabling faster root-cause analysis and remediation.

Other filters serve different investigative purposes. Execution focuses on initial code execution, Privilege Escalation highlights elevation of permissions, and Ransomware identifies encryption-related activity. None of these specifically address long-term access maintenance.

Therefore, filtering byPersistenceis the correct and most effective way to identify IOAs related to maintaining access within cloud environments.

A valid and recommended reason for adding base images into Falcon Cloud Security is toreduce duplicate findings when a base image is used multiple times. Base images are commonly shared across many application images, meaning vulnerabilities, secrets, or detections present in the base layer can appear repeatedly across derived images.

By onboarding base images directly into Falcon Cloud Security, the platform can more efficiently track and correlate vulnerabilities at their source. This allows security teams to remediate issues once at the base image level rather than addressing the same findings across every downstream image. As a result, vulnerability management becomes more accurate, scalable, and operationally efficient.

The other options are incorrect and potentially dangerous assumptions. Base image CVEscan absolutely be exploitedby adversaries, and base image vulnerabilities are not inherently less risky than other CVEs. In many cases, unpatched base images are a primary attack vector in containerized environments.

CrowdStrike’s container image strategy emphasizes reducing noise, improving prioritization, and enabling faster remediation. Adding base images supports these goals by minimizing duplicate alerts and providing clearer insight into risk inheritance across image hierarchies. Therefore, the correct answer isReduce duplicates when a base image is used multiple times.

When investigating widespread Indicators of Misconfiguration (IOMs) such as Azure MFA not being enforced, CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security provides deeper investigative context through Event Search and Asset Graph. These two capabilities work together to move beyond a high-level finding count and into actionable insight.

Event Search allows analysts to query cloud control plane activity and identity-related events to understand how authentication policies are configured, modified, or bypassed over time. This helps determine whether MFA gaps are due to legacy configurations, recent changes, or specific identities or services.

Asset Graph provides a visual and relational view of cloud identities, subscriptions, roles, and permissions. It enables analysts to see which users, service principals, or resources are affected by missing MFA enforcement and how they are connected across the environment.

The other options do not provide the same depth of investigation. Identity & Cloud Group is primarily used for scoping visibility, while CloudTrail logging is AWS-specific and not applicable to Azure MFA findings. Therefore, the correct answer is Event search & Asset graph.

When troubleshooting issues with cloud account registrations in CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, thefirst stepshould be toverify the email verification process. Cloud account registration workflows rely on confirmation emails for validation, authorization, and completion of onboarding steps.

If verification emails are delayed, blocked, or misrouted due to email filtering, domain restrictions, or misconfigured mail settings, the registration process can appear to fail even though the underlying configuration is correct. Checking this process is non-disruptive and often resolves the issue quickly.

Resetting user passwords or disabling registration features are intrusive actions that should only be taken after basic validation steps are completed. CrowdStrike best practices emphasize starting with low-impact troubleshooting actions before making broader changes.

Therefore, confirming that users are receiving and completing verification emails is the correct and recommended first step.

The most efficient and CrowdStrike-recommended way to stop seeing vulnerabilities for older images is to use the“Stop assessing images older than (number) of days”setting in Image Assessment configuration.

This setting prevents Falcon Cloud Security from continuing to assess images beyond a defined age threshold—90 days in this case. By stopping assessment at the source, Falcon reduces noise, conserves assessment capacity, and focuses findings on images that are actively used or likely to be deployed.

Other approaches are inefficient or risky. Fusion workflows and manual hiding add operational overhead and do not stop assessments from occurring. Deleting images from registries may disrupt workflows and is outside Falcon’s control.

CrowdStrike best practices favorassessment-scoping controlsover post-processing suppression. Therefore, the correct answer isUse the Stop assessing images older than (number) of days setting.

WhenAWS Systems Manager (SSM)is unavailable,Ansibleis the supported and recommended IT automation tool for generating an inventory of unmanaged workloads and deploying the Falcon sensor using1-click sensor deployment workflows.

CrowdStrike integrates with Ansible to enable discovery, inventory generation, and automated sensor installation across cloud and on-prem environments. Ansible’s agentless architecture makes it especially suitable when native cloud management services are unavailable or restricted.

Other tools listed—Jet, Rudder, and Puppet—are not natively integrated with Falcon’s 1-click deployment workflows for unmanaged workload discovery in cloud environments.

Therefore,Ansibleis the correct answer.

InCrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, theAccount Registrationsection is the authoritative location for monitoring thestatus of onboarded cloud accountsand identifyingdeployment or configuration issues.

FromCloud Security → Settings → Account Registration, security teams can view whether AWS, Azure, or GCP accounts are successfully connected, partially configured, or experiencing errors. This view highlights misconfigurations such as missing permissions, failed integrations, or incomplete setup steps that could prevent posture assessments or detections from functioning correctly.

Other settings areas serve different purposes: Automate focuses on remediation workflows, posture policies define compliance logic, and scan settings control assessment frequency. None provide direct visibility into onboarding health and deployment validation.

Therefore,Cloud security – Settings – Account registrationis the correct and verified answer.

In CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, exclusions for cloud scans are designed to be precise and scalable so that organizations can safely reduce noise without weakening overall security coverage. According to CrowdStrike best practices,tagsare the recommended and supported criterion for creating cloud scan exclusions.

Tags are metadata labels applied to cloud resources (such as AWS accounts, instances, or services) and are commonly used for ownership, environment classification (for example, dev, test, or prod), or application grouping. By using tags as exclusion criteria, security teams can dynamically control which resources are excluded from scans without relying on static identifiers. This is especially important in cloud environments where resources are frequently created, modified, or terminated.

Exclusions based onaccounts,regions, orservicesare broader in scope and can unintentionally exclude large portions of the environment, increasing the risk of blind spots. Tag-based exclusions allow CrowdStrike Falcon to maintain least-privilege security principles by excluding only explicitly labeled resources.

Because Falcon continuously evaluates cloud resources, tag-based exclusions automatically apply to newly created assets that inherit the same tag, ensuring consistent policy enforcement. For these reasons, CrowdStrike documentation and operational guidance identifyTagas the correct and most effective criterion for creating cloud scan exclusions.

During thecloud inventory phase of image assessmentinCrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, the platform performs a deep, non-runtime analysis of container images to establish a complete software and binary inventory. This phase is designed to build visibility and context before vulnerability analysis or enforcement occurs.

Falcon expandsall container image layersto inspect their contents individually. This layered expansion is critical because vulnerabilities and malicious artifacts can exist in any layer, including inherited base images. During this process, Falcon collectscryptographic hashes for all binary objectsfound within the image. These hashes allow Falcon to uniquely identify binaries, correlate them with known threats, and support future detection and investigation workflows.

In addition to binary hashing, Falcon enumerates andlists operating system (OS) packagesinstalled in the image. This includes system libraries and dependencies provided by the base operating system, which are essential for accurate vulnerability mapping and exposure analysis later in the assessment lifecycle.

Importantly,vulnerability identification does not occur during the inventory phase. That activity is handled in subsequent analysis stages. The inventory phase focuses exclusively onexpansion, identification, and catalogingof image contents to ensure complete visibility and accuracy.

Therefore, the correct answer isOption C, as it precisely reflects the documented activities performed during the cloud inventory phase of image assessment in CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security.

InCrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, the most efficient and direct way to identify whichcontainer and Kubernetes podare responsible for suspicious outbound traffic is by usingNetwork Eventsand filtering on theremote (destination) port.

When a container initiates outbound network communication, thedestination portrepresents the service being contacted externally. Since the alert specifically referencesdestination port 1337, filteringNetwork Eventsforremote port 1337immediately surfaces the relevant telemetry. Falcon automatically enriches these events withcontainer ID, container name, Kubernetes pod name, namespace, node, and cluster context, allowing rapid attribution.

UsingAdvanced Event Searchis technically possible but less efficient, as it requires manual query construction and does not provide the same streamlined Kubernetes-focused workflow as Network Events. Reviewing dashboards alone is insufficient for precise attribution and forensic analysis.

Filtering onlocal port 1337would be incorrect in this scenario, as it would only identify processes listening locally rather than outbound connections sourcing from the container.

Therefore,Option Cis correct because it aligns with Falcon Cloud Security’s design forcontainer-aware network telemetry, providing the fastest and most accurate path to identifying the originating container and pod.

To blockprivileged containers before they are executed, CrowdStrike recommends deploying theKubernetes Admission Controller. This component operates atadmission time, intercepting Kubernetes API requests and enforcing security policies before workloads are allowed to run.

Privileged containers represent a significant security risk because they can bypass isolation boundaries and access host resources. The Kubernetes Admission Controller can enforce policies that explicitly deny deployments using privileged flags, hostPath mounts, or other high-risk configurations.

Other options do not provide enforcement. Runtime sensors and agents can detect or alert on risky behaviorafter execution, but they cannot prevent the workload from starting. Image assessment evaluates image content but does not enforce Kubernetes runtime constraints.

Therefore, to proactively block privileged containers, the correct and CrowdStrike-recommended solution is theKubernetes Admission Controller.