50 IBM Security Guardium Data Protection v11.x Administrator Practice Questions: Question Bank 2025

An administrator wants to expand Guardium capacity by adding another appliance to the environment while keeping central management of policies and reports. Which architecture component should be used to centrally manage multiple managed units?

A database team wants Guardium to monitor SQL activity without requiring changes to database configuration files. Which Guardium component is typically installed on the database server to capture traffic for monitoring?

You need to create a policy that triggers an alert only when a privileged user runs SELECT statements against tables containing sensitive data. Which policy approach is the best fit?

A security team wants to reduce alert noise by generating alerts only after repeated failed login attempts within a short time window. Which Guardium feature is most appropriate?

An administrator needs to generate a weekly compliance report and automatically email it to auditors. What is the recommended Guardium method to achieve this?

A compliance manager requests a report showing all access to a set of sensitive tables, regardless of which database they are on. What should the administrator do first to make reporting consistent across databases?

After deploying S-TAP, the Guardium appliance shows the database server as online, but no SQL activity appears in reports. What is the most likely first troubleshooting step on Guardium?

A Guardium deployment needs to consolidate audit data from multiple collectors into a central repository for enterprise reporting. Which component role is typically used to receive and store aggregated data from collectors?

A company wants to block certain high-risk SQL actions (e.g., DROP TABLE) in real time for non-admin users, while still allowing DBAs to perform them during a defined maintenance window. Which solution is the best practice in Guardium?

A Guardium managed unit is running low on disk space. The administrator wants to remediate without losing recent critical audit data and also prevent recurrence. What is the best course of action?

An administrator needs to confirm that an S-TAP is actively sending database activity to Guardium. Which component should they check first to validate the data ingestion path is working?

A Guardium administrator wants to ensure policy changes are controlled and auditable. Which practice best supports controlled policy rollout with minimal risk?

A compliance team asks for a report that shows "who did what" on sensitive tables over the last week. Which Guardium capability is most appropriate to satisfy this request?

A company has multiple Collectors in different regions and wants enterprise-wide reporting without logging into each Collector. Which architecture best supports consolidated reporting and management?

A policy is intended to alert only when privileged users access a specific schema, but alerts are triggering for non-privileged users as well. Which configuration is the most likely cause?

An administrator needs to reduce noise from alerts caused by an application service account that runs a frequent health-check query. What is the best approach to reduce unnecessary alerts while maintaining visibility?

A scheduled report is not being delivered to recipients, but the report runs successfully when executed manually. Which item should the administrator verify first?

After adding a new database server, the S-TAP appears "connected" but no SQL activity is shown in Guardium reports. Which troubleshooting step is most appropriate to confirm whether traffic is being captured at the source?

A security architect requires that policy decisions be based on normalized SQL (e.g., literals removed) so that the same query pattern is matched regardless of parameter values. Which approach best satisfies this requirement?

An organization must ensure that collection continues even if a primary Collector becomes unavailable, and they want to minimize data loss during failover. Which design is most appropriate?

An administrator wants to allow a junior operator to run reports and view audit results, but not change policies, add STAPs, or modify system configuration. Which approach best meets this requirement?

A team wants to monitor database activity without installing any software on the database server. The databases are supported and network traffic can be routed through an inspection point. Which Guardium method best fits this requirement?

An administrator needs to quickly verify whether the Collector is currently receiving new database activity records. Which action is the most direct way to confirm ingestion is occurring?

A policy requirement states: 'Alert when a privileged user accesses tables containing sensitive data, but ignore access from the approved application service account.' Which Guardium policy design best satisfies this?

In a distributed deployment, administrators want a single point to manage policy definitions and distribute them to multiple Collectors. Which component is primarily used for centralized management and policy distribution?

After creating a new alerting policy, the administrator notices alerts are not being generated even though the monitored activity clearly matches the rule conditions. The policy was created on the Central Manager and pushed successfully. What is the most likely missing step on the Collector?

A customer needs a weekly report listing top SQL errors by database user across all Collectors, with a single consolidated view. Which design best meets this reporting requirement?

A new STAP has been installed, but no traffic is visible in Guardium. The database is known to be active. Which troubleshooting step is most likely to isolate whether the issue is with traffic capture versus policy filtering?

A company must ensure that collected audit data cannot be altered by local administrators on individual Collectors and wants centralized, tamper-resistant retention for compliance. Which architecture best addresses this requirement?

A policy generates too many alerts because it triggers on routine batch jobs that access sensitive tables at night. The requirement is to keep the policy but suppress alerts during the approved batch window while still auditing the activity. What is the best solution?

A new Guardium Data Protection deployment includes a Collector and an Aggregator. The administrator wants enterprise-wide reporting without placing additional load on the Collector. Where should scheduled, consolidated reports be generated as a best practice?

An administrator needs to grant a security analyst access to run reports and view audit results, but must prevent the analyst from changing policies or system settings. Which approach best meets this requirement?

A policy requires that alerts be generated only when an application user (not DBAs) accesses a sensitive table outside business hours. Which Guardium concept is most directly used to distinguish application users from privileged database accounts in this policy?

An administrator wants to quickly validate that Guardium is receiving traffic from a newly onboarded database without waiting for scheduled reports. What is the most appropriate place to check first in the UI?

A company has multiple Collectors in different regions. They want one place to define policies and then distribute them consistently to all Collectors while maintaining local collection. Which design best fits this requirement?

After creating a new inspection-based policy rule, the administrator notices that no alerts are generated even though the activity is visible in real-time monitoring. Which action is most likely required to make the new rule effective?

A compliance team requests a weekly report showing all failed login attempts to any production database, grouped by source IP and database user. Which reporting approach is most appropriate?

A Guardium system is running low on disk space. The administrator wants to reduce storage usage without compromising current auditing. Which action is most appropriate to consider first?

A database is monitored via S-TAP. The security team needs the database service account to be masked in reports (but still searchable by authorized admins). Which capability best satisfies this requirement?

A company requires that policy changes follow separation of duties: one person proposes the change, and a different person must approve it before it is deployed to Collectors. Which Guardium capability best supports this control?

An administrator wants to verify that a new database server is being monitored by Guardium and that traffic is being captured. Which action is the most direct initial check?

A security team wants an alert when a privileged user accesses a specific sensitive table, but they do NOT want to block the activity. Which policy approach best meets this requirement?

An administrator is asked to grant a colleague access to run reports but not change policies or system settings. What is the recommended approach?

A company has multiple Guardium collectors and wants a single place to manage policies and distribute them consistently. Which architecture component best supports centralized policy administration?

A SOC analyst needs a dashboard that shows database activity trends over the last 24 hours and can be filtered by server group. Which capability is most appropriate?

A policy is generating too many alerts because it triggers on both successful and failed login attempts. The requirement is to alert only on failed logins. What is the best change?

After onboarding a new database, the collector shows no traffic, but the S-TAP status is 'connected'. Network connectivity is confirmed. Which is the most likely cause?

A customer wants to reduce storage growth while still retaining high-level accountability for all database activity. They are willing to keep full SQL only for high-risk events. Which strategy best aligns with this goal?

An organization wants to consolidate audit data from several collectors into a central repository for enterprise reporting, while keeping collectors focused on capture and enforcement. Which architecture design best meets this requirement?

A policy rule intended to match a sensitive table is not firing. The SQL uses synonyms/views, and users query through the view rather than the base table. What is the best way to ensure the policy detects access to the underlying sensitive object?