Most Recent IBM C1000-172 Exam Questions & Answers

IBM Key Protect is a cloud-based key management service that allows organizations to manage encryption keys used to protect their data across IBM Cloud services. The primary objective of IBM Key Protect is to securely generate, store, manage, and use cryptographic keys to protect sensitive data.

Key Management System: IBM Key Protect provides lifecycle management for keys, including creating, rotating, importing, and deleting keys. This service integrates with various IBM Cloud services to enable secure data encryption and protect data at rest and in transit.

Use Cases: It is designed for organizations that need to ensure compliance with data security regulations and protect their data using industry-standard encryption practices. It provides a centralized key management solution for cloud-native applications and workloads.

Comparison with Other Options:

Hardware security module (B) is a different type of secure key storage, which can be used alongside IBM Key Protect but is not its primary function.

Data analytics platform (C) and Cloud-based data storage solution (D) are unrelated to key management and encryption.

IBM Key Protect Documentation

IBM Cloud Architect Exam Study Guide

IBM Cloud Security Services

Traffic Steering is a feature in IBM Cloud that optimizes the work of load balancers by directing traffic to the most appropriate resources based on predefined criteria, such as geographic location, resource availability, or other custom rules. This feature is crucial for optimizing application performance, reducing latency, and ensuring high availability across different regions and data centers.

IBM Cloud Load Balancer Overview: The IBM Cloud Load Balancer offers several advanced capabilities, including Traffic Steering, which enables intelligent routing of client requests. Traffic Steering can be configured to direct traffic to different backend servers or pools based on various policies like weighted round-robin, geographic proximity, or failover conditions. This optimizes the distribution of workloads and enhances the reliability and responsiveness of applications deployed on the IBM Cloud.

Importance of Traffic Steering: Traffic Steering is particularly beneficial in scenarios involving multi-region deployments. It ensures that user requests are served by the closest or most responsive data center, thereby minimizing response times and improving the end-user experience. It also enables flexible routing based on business logic or dynamic conditions, such as sudden surges in traffic or failures in specific regions.

Global Load Balancer Role: While the Global Load Balancer (Option D) is used for distributing traffic across multiple regions, Traffic Steering is a specific feature within the load balancing suite that controls how traffic is managed. Traffic Steering complements the Global Load Balancer by providing fine-grained control over traffic distribution strategies, enabling more efficient utilization of resources.

IBM Cloud Load Balancer Documentation

IBM Cloud Architect Exam Study Guide

IBM Cloud Traffic Steering

A Citrix NetScaler (now known as Citrix ADC) is designed to improve the availability of applications by providing advanced load balancing, traffic management, and redundancy features. It ensures that applications remain accessible even in the event of server failures or high traffic volumes.

Why Citrix NetScaler Improves Availability: It distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers to prevent overload on a single server, thus maintaining application uptime. It also provides failover capabilities, ensuring that if one server fails, traffic is rerouted to other healthy servers.

Comparison with Other Options:

A (Predictability): While Citrix NetScaler can improve predictability, its main function is related to availability.

B (Scalability): Citrix NetScaler can aid in scalability, but this is not the primary benefit for achieving 99.99% uptime.

C (Reliability): While reliability is an aspect, the key feature directly supporting 99.99% uptime is availability.

Citrix ADC Documentation

IBM Cloud Load Balancer Services

IBM Cloud Architect Exam Study Guide

IBM Cloud follows the FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) to ensure its services meet the security and compliance standards of the US government.

FedRAMP: It is a U.S. government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. FedRAMP authorization is mandatory for any cloud services used by federal agencies, ensuring they meet strict security requirements.

IBM Cloud Compliance: IBM Cloud adheres to FedRAMP standards to provide its services to government agencies, ensuring that its cloud solutions meet stringent security and compliance requirements, as documented in IBM's FedRAMP Certification.

Why Other Options are Incorrect:

A . CIS (Center for Internet Security) and B. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) are frameworks and standards organizations but not specific programs like FedRAMP.

D . FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) defines security and interoperability standards but does not pertain to the overall authorization of cloud services.

IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services is built on FIPS 140-2 Level 3-certified hardware.

FIPS 140-2 Level 3 Certification: This level of certification ensures that the hardware used by IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services provides a high degree of security, including physical tamper-resistance and the use of strong encryption protocols.

IBM Hyper Protect Crypto Services: These services leverage Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) that meet the FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certification. The HSMs provide a secure environment for key management and cryptographic operations, which is critical for meeting stringent regulatory and compliance requirements.

Reference from IBM Cloud Professional Architect Materials:

Detailed information on IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services and its use of FIPS 140-2 Level 3-certified hardware can be found in IBM documentation on IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services.

Other options are incorrect:

B . NIST 140-2 Level 5-certified hardware and D. NIST 140-2 Level 2-certified hardware are not valid terms.

C . FIPS 140-2 Level 4-certified hardware would be a higher certification level than is currently used.