CompTIA CloudNetX Exam Syllabus

• IPv4
• IPv6
• IP subnetting
• Classless Inter-domain Routing (CIDR) notation
• Variable Length Subnet Mask (VLSM)
• Public vs. private
• Static vs. dynamic

- Network address translation (NAT)

• Port forwarding
• Port address translation (PAT)
• NAT64

- Networking protocols

• Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
• Authentication protocols
  - Power and cooling
  - 802.1X
  - Remote Authentication Dial-in User Service (RADIUS)
  - Terminal Access Controller Access Control System Plus (TACACS+)
  - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
• Routing protocols
  - Dynamic
  1. Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
  2. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
  - Static
  1. Routing tables
• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
• Network Time Protocol (NTP)
• Domain Name System (DNS)
  - Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC)
  - DNS over Transport Layer Security (TLS) (DoT)
  - DNS over Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) (DoH)

- Container networking
- Network virtual interfaces

• Mesh
• Star
• Hub-and-spoke
• Spine-and-leaf
• Point-to-point

- Zones

• Trusted
• Untrusted
• Screened subnet

- Traffic flows

• North/south
• East/west

- Segmentation

• Virtual local area network (VLAN)
• Virtual extensible LAN (VXLAN)
• Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation (GENEVE)

- Environments

• Production
• Non-production

• ExpressRoute
• Direct Connect
• Software-defined cloud interconnect (SDCI)

- Remote access

• Bastion host
• Secure Shell (SSH)
• Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)

- Application gateways
- Private Platform as a Service (PaaS) connectivity

• Service endpoints
• Transit gateways
• Virtual private cloud (VPC) peering
• Private link

- Virtual private network (VPN)

• Site-to-site
• Point-to-site
• Remote access
• Split tunneling
• WireGuard

• Global
• Local
• Virtual IP (VIP)
• Methods
  - Round robin
  - Load-based
  - Least connections
  - Weighted

- High availability

• Active-active
• Active-passive

- Link aggregation
- Autoscaling
- Regions and availability zones
- Content delivery network (CDN)
- Fault domains
- Update domains
- Redundancy

• Devices
• Paths

• Voltage
• Wattage
• Amperage
• Power distribution unit (PDU)
• Uninterruptible power supply (UPS)
• Utility power
• Emergency power off (EPO)
• Backup power generators

- Power disruption

• Blackout
• Brownout
• Surge
• Spike

- Environmental factors

• Temperature
• Humidity
• British thermal units (BTUs)

- Fire suppression
- Physical access controls

• Video surveillance
• Biometrics
• Proximity readers
• Locks and keys
• Near-field communication (NFC)
• Door sensors

• Switch
• Router

- Power over Ethernet (PoE)
- Three-tier hierarchy

• Core
• Distribution
• Access

- Collapsed core
- Intermediate distribution frame (IDF)/Main distribution frame (MDF)

• Cable management

- Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
- Tagging/trunking
- Bonding
- Voice and video

• Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
• WebRTC
• Real-time Streaming Protocol (RTSP)
• H.323

- Customer premises equipment (CPE)

• Media converters

• Wireless access points
  - Antenna types
  1. Omni-directional
  2. Directional
  - Placement
  - Enclosure
  - Power considerations
  - Controllers
  - Standards and protocols
  1. 802.11
  - Frequencies
  1. 2.4GHz
  2. 5GHz
  3. 6GHz
  - Channels
  - Service set identifier (SSID)
  1. Hidden vs. advertised
  - Wireless roaming

- Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
- NFC
- Long-range wide area network (LoRaWAN)

• Business
• Technical
• Regulatory compliance
• Statement of work (SOW)

- Network diagramming

• Physical vs. logical
• High-level vs. low-level designs
• Flow diagrams

- Verification and validation
- Runbooks
- Work breakdown structure (WBS)
- Knowledge base articles
- Baselines
- Reference architectures

• External
• Internal

- Configuration management database (CMDB)

• Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack
• Data exfiltration
• On-path attack
• Credential reuse
• Brute-force attack
• Out-of-band (OOB) attack
• IP spoofing
• Buffer overflow
• Privilege escalation
• Insider threat
• Evil twin
• Rogue access point
• Initialization vector attack
• BGP hijacking
• Social engineering attack

- Vulnerabilities

• Zero-day
• Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) top 10
• Overly permissive rules
• IP reuse
• Legacy access control lists (ACLs)
• Insecure protocols
• Unpatched devices
• Misconfigurations

- Mitigations

• Input sanitization
• Data loss prevention (DLP) controls
• IP address management (IPAM)
• MITRE ATT&CK Framework
• Cyber Kill Chain
• Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM)
• Patch management
• Vulnerability management
• Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks
• Configuration reviews
• Null routing

• Next-generation firewall (NGFW)
• Cloud-native firewall
• Web application firewall (WAF)

- Intrusion prevention system (IPS)/ intrusion detection system (IDS)
- Encryption

• Protocol types
• Secure sockets layer (SSL)/TLS inspection
• Cipher suites
• Algorithms
• Asymmetric
• Symmetric

- Application gateway
- Secure web gateway
- Network access control (NAC)

• Posture assessment

- Dynamic list

• Decryption rules
• Application aware
• Source and destination
• Allow list
• Block list

- Network access control lists (NACLs)
- Network security groups

• Inbound rules
• Outbound rules

- IPS/IDS signature rules
- Geolocation rules
- Content/Uniform Resource Locator (URL) filtering

• Categories
• Applications
• File blocking

- DLP controls
- Port security

• Secure Service Edge (SSE)

- Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)
- Identity as the perimeter
- Device trust
- Principle of least privilege
- Zero Trust network access

• Federation
• Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)
• OAuth 2.0
• OpenID Connect (OIDC)

- Multifactor authentication (MFA)
- Conditional access
- Geofencing
- Privileged access management (PAM)
- Risk-based authentication
- Role-based access control
- Attribute-based access control (ABAC)
- Endpoint trust
- User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA)
- Public key infrastructure (PKI)

• Certificate-based authentication
• Key management system (KMS)

- Session-based tokens
- Just-in-time (JIT) provisioning
- System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM)
- Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM)

• Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
• Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2)
• Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3)

- Authentication

• Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP)
• Preshared key (PSK)
• PSK enterprise

- Guest access
- Captive portal
- Layer 2 client isolation
- Media access control (MAC) address filtering

• Delivery channels
• Verification

- Default credential management
- Disabling unneeded services
- Local password management

• Password complexity
• Password length
• Password rotation

- Protocol configuration

• Disabling insecure protocols

- Restricting access to administrative interfaces
- Disabling unused physical ports
- Log management

• Log rotation
• Remote logging

• Risk acceptance
  - Waivers and exceptions
• Risk avoidance
• Risk transference
• Risk mitigation
• Risk register

- Business continuity

• Mean time to recovery (MTTR)
• Mean time between failures (MTBF)
• Mean time to detect (MTTD)
• Mean time to investigate (MTTI)
• Recovery point objective (RPO)/ recovery time objective (RTO)

- Disaster recovery
- Service management
- Auditing
- Failure rate
- Contracts, agreements, and terms

• Interconnection Security Agreement (ISA)
• Memorandum of understanding (MOU)
• Master service agreement (MSA)
• Service-level indicator (SLI)/key performance indicator (KPI)
• Service-level objective (SLO)
• Service-level agreement (SLA)
• Operational-level agreement (OLA)
• Non-disclosure agreement (NDA)
• Licensing agreements
• End-of-life (EOL)/end-of support (EOS)

- Network function virtualization (NFV)

• Firewall as a service
• Reverse proxy
• Forward proxy
• NAT gateways

- OOB management
- Network cost management

• Operating expenditure (OpEx)
• Capital expenditure (CapEx)
• Cost optimization
• Chargeback model
• Orphaned resources

- Service delivery

• Self-service
• Cross-connect
• Time to market

• Traffic mirroring
• Throughput
• Latency
• Loss
• Jitter
• Network flows
• Reachability

- Log collection

• Centralized logging
• Security information and event management (SIEM)
• Syslog
• JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
• Data lake

- Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
- Quality of service (QoS)
- Alerting
- Telemetry
- Dashboards

• Status pages

- Metrics
- Continuous monitoring

• Resource utilization
• Bandwidth utilization
• Reactive vs. proactive monitoring

• Resource provisioning
• Resource configuration
• Yet Another Markup Language (YAML)
• JSON
• Linters

- Life cycle management

• Mutable infrastructure
• Immutable infrastructure
• Patch management

- Version control

• Public vs. private repositories
• Secrets management

- DevOps

• Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline management
• GitOps

- Generative artificial intelligence (AI)
- Application programming interface (API)
- Software development kit (SDK)
- Command-line interface (CLI)
- Desired state

• Configuration reviews
• Baselines/benchmarks
• Configuration backup and restore

- Change management

• Gather information
• Question users
• Identify symptoms
• Determine if anything has changed
• Duplicate the problem, if possible
• Approach multiple problems individually

- Establish a theory of probable cause

• Question the obvious
• Consider multiple approaches
  - Top-to-bottom/bottom-to-top OSI model
  - Divide and conquer

- Test the theory to determine cause

• If the theory is confirmed, determine the next steps to resolve the problem
• If the theory is not confirmed, re-establish a new theory or escalate

- Establish a plan of action to resolve the problem and identify potential effects
- Implement the solution or escalate as necessary
- Verify full system functionality and if applicable implement preventive measures
- Document findings, actions, outcomes, and lessons learned throughout the process

• Wireshark
• Netcat
• Nmap
• Iperf
• radclient
• OpenSSL
• Postman

- Commands

• tcpdump
• dig
• mtr
• arp
• netstat
• curl
• ping
• nslookup
• traceroute
• ip
• ipconfig
  - flushdns
• ifconfig
• route
• ss
• dhclient
• top
• snmpwalk
• nfdump

• Wireshark
• Netcat
• Nmap
• Iperf
• radclient
• OpenSSL
• Postman
• Spectrum analyzer
• Heat map
• SIEM

- Commands

• tcpdump
• dig
• mtr
• arp
• netstat
• curl
• ping
• nslookup
• traceroute
• ip
• ipconfig
• ifconfig
• route
• ss
• dhclient
• top
• snmpwalk
• nfdump

- Performance issues
- Connectivity issues
- Access and security issues

• VLAN assignment

- Duplicated IP addresses
- Duplicated MAC addresses
- IP address exhaustion
- NAT table exhaustion
- DHCP issues
- Request timeouts
- IPv6 router advertisements
- Physical layer disruptions
- Stale cache
- IPSec issues
- BGP issues
- Routing loops
- Single point of failure

• Misconfigured jumbo frames
• Fragmentation

- Hairpinning
- Broadcast storm
- Resource exhaustion
- Bandwidth issues

• Overutilization
• Bottleneck
• Throttling

- Network scanning issues

• Sticky clients

- Transmitter/receiver incompatibility

• Incorrect security group
• Missing rules
• Misconfigured rules
• Overly permissive rules
• URL/web content filtering
• Geo-restriction
• ACL issues

- DoS issues

• DDoS
• SYN floods

- Authentication and authorization failures

• Password issues
• Incorrect group membership
• Mismatched secrets

- Certificate issues

• Mismatch
• Expired certificates
• Revoked certificates
• Trust issues
• Hash incompatibility
• TLS issues

- Blocked or dropped traffic