Cloud X (owned by Cloud Provider X) provides Physical Server A which hosts Virtual Servers A and B. Virtual Server B hosts Ready-Made Environments A and B. Cloud Service Consumer A uses Virtual Server A as part of an IaaS leasing agreement in which Cloud Consumer A is charged a fixed monthly fee for unlimited access. Cloud Service Consumers B and C use Ready-Made Environments A and B respectively as part of a PaaS leasing agreement based on per-minute usage fees. In both cases, access is monitored via Pay-For-Use Monitor A, which keeps track of log-in and log-out times in order to calculate the usage charges that are billed to Cloud Consumers B and C.
Virtual Server A begins generating a series of exceptions. Soon thereafter, Virtual Server B becomes destabilized, resulting in further exceptions being raised in Ready-Made Environments A and B. Cloud Service Consumers B and C receive a series of error messages until both of their connections are dropped Finally, Physical Server A shuts down completely. A subsequent investigation reveals that Virtual Server A was the victim of a security attack performed by a malicious cloud service consumer, the attacker generated increased loads of external communication requests on Virtual Server A and the underlying network, causing Physical Server A (along with Virtual Server B) to eventually shut down.

Which of the following statements accurately identifies the type of security threat that corresponds to the described attack - and -provides a solution that can directly mitigate this type of security threat within Cloud X?

• A. Virtual Server A was subjected to a denial of service attack that can be mitigated by implementing the encryption and digital signature mechanisms.
• B. Virtual Server A was subjected to an insufficient authorization attack that can be mitigated by implementing the single sign-on mechanism.
• C. Virtual Server A was subjected to an insufficient authorization attack that can be mitigated by implementing the digital signature and hardened virtual server image mechanisms.
• D. Virtual Server A was subjected to a denial of service attack that can be mitigated by implementing the hardened virtual server image and identity and access management mechanisms.

Cloud Service Consumer A accesses Cloud Service A (1) that resides in Cloud X. a private cloud owned by the same organization acting as Cloud Consumer A. Cloud Service A processes the message from Cloud Service Consumer A and then sends back a response with the requested data (2). Next, Cloud Service Consumer A sends a message containing some of this data to Cloud Service B (3), which resides in public Cloud Y that is owned by Cloud Provider Y. After processing the message, Cloud Service B sends back a response with additional data to Cloud Service Consumer A (4). Finally, Cloud Service Consumer A writes the data it collected from Cloud Services A and B to Database A (5).

Recently, Cloud Service Consumer A has been required to access Cloud Services A and B at a significantly higher rate, sometimes over 1,000 times within a given workday. This increased usage has not affected Cloud Service B's performance. Cloud Service A, however, has been generating runtime exceptions and responses to Cloud Service Consumer A have become increasingly slow and unreliable. It is determined that this decline in performance is due to infrastructure limitations within private Cloud X's environment. Instead of investing in new infrastructure for Cloud X, it is decided to explore the feasibility of moving Cloud Service A to Cloud Y instead.
Which of the following statements describe valid financial considerations that can be taken into account for assessing the feasibility of this move?

• A. Once Cloud Service A is deployed in Cloud Y, it may form dependencies upon proprietary parts of Cloud Y that may limit its mobility should it be decided to move it outside of Cloud Y in the future. This can incur further locked-in costs that need to be accounted for.
• B. By moving Cloud Service A to Cloud Y, the SaaS delivery model will be established for Cloud Service A, thereby allowing the service implementation to build upon existing infrastructure from underlying PaaS and laaS delivery models that would have been required for Cloud Service B to be implemented in Cloud Y.
• C. Moving Cloud Service A to Cloud Y will require that Database A also be moved to Cloud Y due to the need for Cloud Service A and Database A to share a common virtual server within the same organizational boundary, as required by the cloud-based security group. The move of Database A will increase the integration testing effort and. as a result, will also increase the overall integration costs.
• D. Public Cloud Y charges for the use of its IT resources. Moving Cloud Service A to Cloud Y can therefore result in new on-going costs. Although Cloud Service A may be able to share some of the existing IT resources used by Cloud Service B, it will likely incur new on-going costs that need to be budgeted for.

Cloud Consumer A (the organization that owns Cloud Service Consumer A) needs regular access to an external, cloud-based Weather Service that provides up-to-date weather forecast information. Cloud Providers X, Y and Z are competing public cloud providers, each offering a Weather Service with the features required by Cloud Consumer A.

Based on the provided statistics, which cloud provider can offer a Weather Service with the least amount of projected downtime?

• A. Cloud Provider X
• B. Cloud Provider Z
• C. Any of the three cloud providers, because their availability ratings are identical.
• D. Cloud Provider Y