Explanation/Reference:
This is the basic process of risk management.
Risk is the possibility of damage happening and the ramifications of such damage should it occur.
Information risk management (IRM) is the process of identifying and assessing risk, reducing it to an acceptable level, and implementing the right mechanisms to maintain that level. There is no such thing as a 100 percent secure environment. Every environment has vulnerabilities and threats to a certain degree.
The skill is in identifying these threats, assessing the probability of them actually occurring and the damage they could cause, and then taking the right steps to reduce the overall level of risk in the environment to what the organization identifies as acceptable.
Proper risk management requires a strong commitment from senior management, a documented process that supports the organization's mission, an information risk management (IRM) policy and a delegated IRM team. Once you've identified your company's acceptable level of risk, you need to develop an information risk management policy.
The IRM policy should be a subset of the organization's overall risk management policy (risks to a company include more than just information security issues) and should be mapped to the organizational security policies, which lay out the acceptable risk and the role of security as a whole in the organization.
The IRM policy is focused on risk management while the security policy is very high-level and addresses all aspects of security. The IRM policy should address the following items:
Objectives of IRM team
Level of risk the company will accept and what is considered an acceptable risk (as defined in the previous article)
Formal processes of risk identification
Connection between the IRM policy and the organization's strategic planning processes Responsibilities that fall under IRM and the roles that are to fulfill them Mapping of risk to internal controls
Approach for changing staff behaviors and resource allocation in response to risk analysis Mapping of risks to performance targets and budgets
Key indicators to monitor the effectiveness of controls
Shon Harris provides a 10,000-foot view of the risk management process below:
A big question that companies have to deal with is, "What is enough security?" This can be restated as,
"What is our acceptable risk level?" These two questions have an inverse relationship. You can't know what constitutes enough security unless you know your necessary baseline risk level.
To set an enterprise-wide acceptable risk level for a company, a few things need to be investigated and understood. A company must understand its federal and state legal requirements, its regulatory requirements, its business drivers and objectives, and it must carry out a risk and threat analysis. (I will dig deeper into formalized risk analysis processes in a later article, but for now we will take a broad approach.) The result of these findings is then used to define the company's acceptable risk level, which is then outlined in security policies, standards, guidelines and procedures.
Although there are different methodologies for enterprise risk management, the core components of any risk analysis is made up of the following:
Identify company assets
Assign a value to each asset
Identify each asset's vulnerabilities and associated threats
Calculate the risk for the identified assets
Once these steps are finished, then the risk analysis team can identify the necessary countermeasures to mitigate the calculated risks, carry out cost/benefit analysis for these countermeasures and report to senior management their findings.
When we look at information security, there are several types of risk a corporation needs to be aware of and address properly. The following items touch on the major categories:
Physical damage Fire, water, vandalism, power loss, and natural disasters Human interaction Accidental or intentional action or inaction that can disrupt productivity Equipment malfunction Failure of systems and peripheral devices
Inside and outside attacks Hacking, cracking, and attacking
Misuse of data Sharing trade secrets, fraud, espionage, and theft
Loss of data Intentional or unintentional loss of information through destructive means Application error Computation errors, input errors, and buffer overflows The following answers are incorrect:
The process of eliminating the risk is not the best answer as risk cannot be totally eliminated.
The process of assessing the risks is also not the best answer.
The process of transferring risk is also not the best answer and is one of the ways of handling a risk after a risk analysis has been performed.
References:
Shon Harris , AIO v3 , Chapter 3: Security Management Practices , Page: 66-68 and
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/tip/Understanding-risk

Section: Network and Telecommunications
Explanation/Reference:
The Domain Name Service is a distributed database system that is used to map domain names to IP addresses and IP addresses to domain names.
The Domain Name System is maintained by a distributed database system, which uses the client-server model. The nodes of this database are the name servers. Each domain has at least one authoritative DNS server that publishes information about that domain and the name servers of any domains subordinate to it.
The top of the hierarchy is served by the root nameservers, the servers to query when looking up (resolving) a TLD.
Reference(s) used for this question:
KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Page 100.
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System

Section: Security Operation Adimnistration
Explanation/Reference:
Security administrator functions include user-oriented activities such as setting user clearances, setting initial password, setting other security characteristics for new users or changing security profiles for existing users.
Data owners have the ultimate responsibility for protecting data, thus determining proper user access rights to data.
Source: TIPTON, Hal, (ISC)2, Introduction to the CISSP Exam presentation.

Explanation/Reference:
The preventive/technical pairing uses technology to enforce access control policies.
TECHNICAL CONTROLS
Technical security involves the use of safeguards incorporated in computer hardware, operations or applications software, communications hardware and software, and related devices. Technical controls are sometimes referred to as logical controls.
Preventive Technical Controls
Preventive technical controls are used to prevent unauthorized personnel or programs from gaining remote access to computing resources. Examples of these controls include:
Access control software.
Antivirus software.
Library control systems.
Passwords.
Smart cards.
Encryption.
Dial-up access control and callback systems.
Preventive Physical Controls
Preventive physical controls are employed to prevent unauthorized personnel from entering computing facilities (i.e., locations housing computing resources, supporting utilities, computer hard copy, and input data media) and to help protect against natural disasters. Examples of these controls include:
Backup files and documentation.
Fences.
Security guards.
Badge systems.
Double door systems.
Locks and keys.
Backup power.
Biometric access controls.
Site selection.
Fire extinguishers.
Preventive Administrative Controls
Preventive administrative controls are personnel-oriented techniques for controlling people's behavior to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of computing data and programs. Examples of preventive administrative controls include:
Security awareness and technical training.
Separation of duties.
Procedures for recruiting and terminating employees.
Security policies and procedures.
Supervision.
Disaster recovery, contingency, and emergency plans.
User registration for computer access.
Source: KRUTZ, Ronald L. & VINES, Russel D., The CISSP Prep Guide: Mastering the Ten Domains of Computer Security, 2001, John Wiley & Sons, Page 34.

Connection-oriented protocols such as TCP provides reliability.
It is the responsibility of such protocols in the transport layer to ensure every byte is accounted for. The network layer does not provide reliability. It only privides the best route to get the traffic to the final destination address.
For your exam you should know the information below about OSI model:
The Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI) is a conceptual model that characterizes and standardizes the internal functions of a communication system by partitioning it into abstraction layers. The model is a product of the Open Systems Interconnection project at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), maintained by the identification ISO/IEC 7498-1.
The model groups communication functions into seven logical layers. A layer serves the layer above it and is served by the layer below it. For example, a layer that provides error-free communications across a network provides the path needed by applications above it, while it calls the next lower layer to send and receive packets that make up the contents of that path. Two instances at one layer are connected by a horizontal.
OSI Model

Image source: http://www.petri.co.il/images/osi_model.JPG
PHYSICAL LAYER The physical layer, the lowest layer of the OSI model, is concerned with the transmission and reception of the unstructured raw bit stream over a physical medium. It describes the electrical/optical, mechanical, and functional interfaces to the physical medium, and carries the signals for all of the higher layers. It provides:
Data encoding: modifies the simple digital signal pattern (1s and 0s) used by the PC to better accommodate the characteristics of the physical medium, and to aid in bit and frame synchronization. It determines:
What signal state represents a binary 1
How the receiving station knows when a "bit-time" starts
How the receiving station delimits a frame
DATA LINK LAYER
The data link layer provides error-free transfer of data frames from one node to another
over the physical layer, allowing layers above it to assume virtually error-free transmission
over the link. To do this, the data link layer provides:
Link establishment and termination: establishes and terminates the logical link between two
nodes.
Frame traffic control: tells the transmitting node to "back-off" when no frame buffers are
available.
Frame sequencing: transmits/receives frames sequentially.
Frame acknowledgment: provides/expects frame acknowledgments. Detects and recovers
from errors that occur in the physical layer by retransmitting non-acknowledged frames and
handling duplicate frame receipt.
Frame delimiting: creates and recognizes frame boundaries.
Frame error checking: checks received frames for integrity.
Media access management: determines when the node "has the right" to use the physical
medium.
NETWORK LAYER
The network layer controls the operation of the subnet, deciding which physical path the
data should take based on network conditions, priority of service, and other factors. It
provides:
Routing: routes frames among networks.
Subnet traffic control: routers (network layer intermediate systems) can instruct a sending
station to "throttle back" its frame transmission when the router's buffer fills up.
Frame fragmentation: if it determines that a downstream router's maximum transmission
unit (MTU) size is less than the frame size, a router can fragment a frame for transmission
and re-assembly at the destination station.
Logical-physical address mapping: translates logical addresses, or names, into physical
addresses.
Subnet usage accounting: has accounting functions to keep track of frames forwarded by
subnet intermediate systems, to produce billing information.
Communications Subnet The network layer software must build headers so that the network layer software residing in the subnet intermediate systems can recognize them and use them to route data to the destination address.
This layer relieves the upper layers of the need to know anything about the data transmission and intermediate switching technologies used to connect systems. It establishes, maintains and terminates connections across the intervening communications facility (one or several intermediate systems in the communication subnet).
In the network layer and the layers below, peer protocols exist between a node and its immediate neighbor, but the neighbor may be a node through which data is routed, not the destination station. The source and destination stations may be separated by many intermediate systems.
TRANSPORT LAYER The transport layer ensures that messages are delivered error-free, in sequence, and with no losses or duplications. It relieves the higher layer protocols from any concern with the transfer of data between them and their peers.
The size and complexity of a transport protocol depends on the type of service it can get from the network layer. For a reliable network layer with virtual circuit capability, a minimal transport layer is required. If the network layer is unreliable and/or only supports datagrams, the transport protocol should include extensive error detection and recovery.
The transport layer provides:
Message segmentation: accepts a message from the (session) layer above it, splits the message into smaller units (if not already small enough), and passes the smaller units down to the network layer. The transport layer at the destination station reassembles the message. Message acknowledgment: provides reliable end-to-end message delivery with acknowledgments. Message traffic control: tells the transmitting station to "back-off" when no message buffers are available. Session multiplexing: multiplexes several message streams, or sessions onto one logical link and keeps track of which messages belong to which sessions (see session layer).
Typically, the transport layer can accept relatively large messages, but there are strict message size limits imposed by the network (or lower) layer. Consequently, the transport
layer must break up the messages into smaller units, or frames, prepending a header to
each frame.
The transport layer header information must then include control information, such as
message start and message end flags, to enable the transport layer on the other end to
recognize message boundaries. In addition, if the lower layers do not maintain sequence,
the transport header must contain sequence information to enable the transport layer on
the receiving end to get the pieces back together in the right order before handing the
received message up to the layer above.
End-to-end layers
Unlike the lower "subnet" layers whose protocol is between immediately adjacent nodes,
the transport layer and the layers above are true "source to destination" or end-to-end
layers, and are not concerned with the details of the underlying communications facility.
Transport layer software (and software above it) on the source station carries on a
conversation with similar software on the destination station by using message headers
and control messages.
SESSION LAYER
The session layer allows session establishment between processes running on different
stations. It provides:
Session establishment, maintenance and termination: allows two application processes on
different machines to establish, use and terminate a connection, called a session.
Session support: performs the functions that allow these processes to communicate over
the network, performing security, name recognition, logging, and so on.
PRESENTATION LAYER
The presentation layer formats the data to be presented to the application layer. It can be
viewed as the translator for the network. This layer may translate data from a format used
by the application layer into a common format at the sending station, then translate the
common format to a format known to the application layer at the receiving station.
The presentation layer provides:
Character code translation: for example, ASCII to EBCDIC.
Data conversion: bit order, CR-CR/LF, integer-floating point, and so on.
Data compression: reduces the number of bits that need to be transmitted on the network.
Data encryption: encrypt data for security purposes. For example, password encryption.
APPLICATION LAYER The application layer serves as the window for users and application processes to access network services. This layer contains a variety of commonly needed functions:
Resource sharing and device redirection Remote file access Remote printer access Inter-process communication Network management Directory services Electronic messaging (such as mail) Network virtual terminals
The following were incorrect answers:
Application Layer - The application layer serves as the window for users and application processes to access network services. Network layer - The network layer controls the operation of the subnet, deciding which physical path the data should take based on network conditions, priority of service, and other factors. Physical Layer - The physical layer, the lowest layer of the OSI model, is concerned with the transmission and reception of the unstructured raw bit stream over a physical medium. It describes the electrical/optical, mechanical, and functional interfaces to the physical medium, and carries the signals for all of the higher layers.
The following reference(s) were/was used to create this question:
CISA review manual 2014 Page number 260 and Official ISC2 guide to CISSP CBK 3rd Edition Page number 287 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcp_protocol