50 IBM Cloud Pak for Security v1.10 Administrator Practice Questions: Question Bank 2025

An administrator wants to deploy IBM Cloud Pak for Security on Red Hat OpenShift. Which underlying component provides the container orchestration layer required by the platform?

A security team wants to search data across multiple integrated tools from a single interface without copying all the data into one database. Which Cloud Pak for Security capability best addresses this requirement?

An administrator must ensure only members of the 'SOC-Analysts' group can access the Cases feature in Cloud Pak for Security. What is the recommended approach?

A user reports they cannot log in to Cloud Pak for Security after the identity provider (IdP) was updated. Other users can still log in. Which is the most likely cause?

A company wants to integrate a third-party threat intelligence feed so that indicators can be correlated and used during investigations. Which Cloud Pak for Security construct is typically used to represent and share such intelligence across tools?

After deploying Cloud Pak for Security, the administrator needs to connect to a data source that uses a self-signed TLS certificate. Federated search fails with a certificate trust error. What is the best corrective action?

A SOC lead wants a repeatable process where analysts can launch an investigation from an alert, automatically enrich it with related indicators, and track tasks and evidence until closure. Which combination of capabilities best supports this workflow?

An administrator is planning for a maintenance window and wants to minimize the risk of data loss for Cloud Pak for Security. Which approach is most appropriate?

Users report that federated search returns results from some connected products but not from one particular product. The connection test shows success, yet queries return zero results. Which is the most likely cause to investigate first?

A customer requires strict network segmentation: only specific namespaces may communicate with Cloud Pak for Security services, and all other pod-to-pod traffic must be denied by default. What is the best practice design on OpenShift to meet this requirement?

After installing IBM Cloud Pak for Security, users can access the platform but cannot see any data from external security tools. The administrator wants to enable searching and viewing data from a supported tool without building custom integrations. What is the recommended approach?

A security administrator needs to ensure that only members of the 'SOC-Managers' group can approve and close cases, while analysts can create and update cases. What is the best way to implement this requirement?

An organization wants to reduce storage consumption while still meeting compliance requirements for auditability of case activities. What should the administrator do?

A newly deployed Cloud Pak for Security instance is slow when multiple users run federated searches simultaneously. The OpenShift cluster shows high CPU usage on specific pods related to the search service. What is the most appropriate first action?

A company is designing a highly available deployment for IBM Cloud Pak for Security on OpenShift. Which design choice best supports high availability for core services?

Users report that they are intermittently logged out of IBM Cloud Pak for Security and must reauthenticate frequently. The platform is integrated with an external identity provider. Which configuration area should the administrator investigate first?

An administrator wants to validate that threat intelligence is being used effectively in investigations. Which platform capability most directly helps correlate indicators (like IPs and hashes) with observed activity during analysis?

A security team wants to onboard a new data source connection. During setup, the connection test fails with an authorization error even though network connectivity is confirmed. What is the most likely cause?

Following a routine certificate rotation in the environment, Cloud Pak for Security users cannot access the UI and receive TLS errors. OpenShift routes are still present. What should the administrator do to resolve this with least disruption?

An administrator is planning maintenance and wants to minimize risk during platform updates. Which approach best aligns with recommended operational practices for Cloud Pak for Security on OpenShift?

After installing IBM Cloud Pak for Security, an administrator wants to allow analysts to sign in using the company’s corporate identity provider and enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) centrally. Which approach is the best practice?

A security team wants to validate that IBM Cloud Pak for Security is healthy after a planned maintenance window. Which check is most appropriate as an initial, high-level validation?

An administrator needs to grant a SOC lead the ability to manage cases and assign work to analysts, but not change platform-wide settings or install integrations. Which access model should be used?

A customer is deploying IBM Cloud Pak for Security in a restricted network with no direct internet access. They want to ensure the installation can still retrieve required container images. What is the recommended architecture pattern?

Analysts report that saved searches and dashboard widgets intermittently return partial results. The platform appears healthy, but the issue correlates with peak ingestion periods. Which is the MOST likely cause to investigate first?

A SOC wants to standardize triage by ensuring that when a case is created from an alert, required fields (priority, owner, and category) are always set and specific tasks are automatically added. What feature best supports this requirement?

A company wants to integrate an external data source using a STIX/TAXII-based feed to enrich investigations. They need to ensure the feed can be consumed securely and reliably. Which administrative consideration is MOST important?

A platform administrator is troubleshooting why a newly installed integration is not appearing for analysts. The integration pods are running, but the UI does not show the app. Which is the BEST next step?

During an upgrade, the administrator notices repeated failures pulling images for a subset of components, while other components upgrade successfully. The environment uses an internal mirrored registry. What is the MOST likely root cause?

An organization wants to meet audit requirements by proving who changed case fields and when (for example, severity changes and reassignment). Which capability should the administrator ensure is enabled and retained appropriately?

A new administrator must confirm that IBM Cloud Pak for Security core services are running after an installation. Which approach is the MOST direct way to verify that the platform services are healthy in the cluster?

A security team wants users to sign in to IBM Cloud Pak for Security using their corporate identity provider and enforce group-based access. Which configuration is the BEST practice?

An analyst reports that creating a case is possible, but they cannot add artifacts from search results into the case. Other analysts can. Which is the MOST likely cause?

A dashboard panel in IBM Cloud Pak for Security shows 'No data' for a specific data source connection that was working previously. What should an administrator check FIRST?

A customer requires strict network segmentation so that only specific namespaces can communicate with the IBM Cloud Pak for Security services. Which OpenShift capability is MOST appropriate to implement this requirement?

An administrator wants to ensure integration secrets (API keys/passwords) are rotated without manual updates inside pods. What is the BEST approach in OpenShift for Cloud Pak for Security deployments?

A team wants to enrich detections by automatically adding contextual information about IPs/domains observed in offenses. In IBM Cloud Pak for Security, what feature is typically used to provide this enrichment?

During troubleshooting, an administrator needs to determine whether a failure is caused by the application layer or by the underlying OpenShift cluster resources. Which combination of checks is MOST effective?

A regulated customer needs to retain audit evidence of administrative actions taken in IBM Cloud Pak for Security and OpenShift for incident investigations. Which logging approach best meets this requirement?

After deploying a new data source integration, searches return partial results and some fields are missing compared to the source system. Network connectivity and credentials are confirmed. What is the MOST likely explanation?

An administrator must allow analysts to launch the Cloud Pak for Security UI from the OpenShift console using single sign-on. Which configuration best supports this requirement?

A security team wants to reduce data movement by running queries across multiple data sources from a single interface, while keeping the data in place. Which Cloud Pak for Security capability is designed for this?

An administrator needs to quickly confirm that the Cloud Pak for Security web application is reachable externally. What is the most direct OpenShift resource to check first?

After connecting a new data source, federated searches return no results, but the connector pod is Running. Which step is most likely to identify the root cause?

A customer requires that Cloud Pak for Security be installed in a way that supports high availability for application services. Which approach best aligns with this requirement on OpenShift?

An administrator must allow a subset of analysts to manage cases but prevent them from administering connectors and platform settings. What is the best practice approach?

Case creation fails with an error indicating that an external service is not reachable. The platform is otherwise healthy. Which configuration issue is the most likely cause?

A cluster maintenance window is scheduled and the administrator wants to minimize impact to Cloud Pak for Security while applying worker node updates. What is the recommended operational approach?

A regulated environment requires strict separation of duties: platform administrators manage the OpenShift cluster, while security administrators manage Cloud Pak for Security configuration without needing cluster-wide privileges. Which design best meets this requirement?

A federated search against multiple sources intermittently times out only during peak hours. Pod CPU/memory usage is moderate, but network latency to one data source is high. What is the most appropriate next action?