Hello everyone!

As most of our customers know, each of our practice exam questions feature a little blue link at the top of the engine that enables you to issue feedback for that question.  This is a great benefit for us for a couple of reasons. First,  it helps us identify and correct the rare spelling/content errors that appear.  It also helps us keep in touch with customers and take the pulse of the people who are using our training to get ready for the exam .  We felt like this would be a neat opportunity to take some of the feedback people have sent us recently and use our blog as a way for us to answer those questions, personally.  So, let’s start it off with a good question regarding the Certified Ethical Hacker exam.  Specifically, question number 249, which reads:

What are some common ways to prevent password guessing on a Windows Machine?  Select the best answers:

A.) Block ports 135-139

B.) Enforce Complex passwords

C.) Log security events 529 and 539

D.) Use NTInfoScan (now CIS)

E.) Use L0phtcrack

Obviously we can eliminate answer choice D as it’s a vulnerability scanner.  The latter is eliminated because, while it is an password auditing tool, it would only help us—at best—identify weak passwords.  The correct answers, then, are A, B and C.  The feedback we received from the customer is as follows:

“The Question is asking for ‘ways to prevent’ but logging does not prevent anything.  It is a detective control.”

Allow us to elaborate, a bit.  It’s true that logging is a detective control, but remember that the question is asking for ways to prevent a very specific kind of network attack: password guessing.  Logging security events 529 and 539—the log on and log off events, respectively—will allow us to see where on the system someone might be attempting to gain access through password guessing.  Without the logs, we’d be hard pressed to identify and counteract the threat.

Ok, our next comment comes from question number 114 of the CompTIA A+ IT Technician (220-602) practice exam.  The question reads:

You are configuring an email application on a laptop for a new user. The user is a salesperson and will be traveling most of the time. The email client and the email server both support the IMAP and POP3 protocols for receiving mail and you need to determine which to use. Which of the following characteristics about the users’ needs would be most important in determining which protocol to use? Select the best answer.

A.) The user has a significant amount of disk space available.

B.) The user requires that all email delivery be encrypted.

C.) The user needs to access her email from multiple machines or email clients.

D.) The user requires access to existing email messages, even while offline.

The correct answer is C.  Here’s the feedback we got from the customer:

“This question clearly states ‘You are configuring an email application on a laptop for a new user. The user is a salesperson and will be traveling most of the time….’ Yet, the answer to the question implies the user will not be using the laptop. The correct answer according to the test is ‘The user needs to access her email from multiple machines or email clients.’ If that is the case, why state that a laptop is being configured for the user. The answer is B, or is this a trick question?”

You’re right, technically it is a trick question. But it is similar to the type of question you’ll find on the actual A+ exam.  The question relies on your assumption that because we opened with a laptop that means the salesperson will necessarily use the laptop.  This question is less about the hard, technical knowledge required to be a PC tech and more about preparing you for the kinds of questions you’ll encounter on CompTIA’s tests .  A+ may be an entry-level certification, but the test is no joke (one of the most gifted technicians I’ve known failed the 600 series A+ three times).  They will try to trick you.  You have to be able to see through distracters, like the laptop in this question, and get to the meat of what they’re looking for.

Alright, that’s all for now.  Keep the feedback coming in, folks!