Certified: The ISACA CISA Prepcast

Welcome to The Bare Metal Cyber CISA Prepcast. This series helps you prepare for the exam with focused explanations and practical context.
Advanced Persistent Threats, commonly referred to as APTs, represent some of the most serious risks facing modern organizations. Unlike traditional attacks that are often opportunistic or financially motivated, APTs are strategic, long-term campaigns executed by highly skilled and well-resourced adversaries. These adversaries often include nation-states or state-sponsored groups with specific objectives, such as espionage, intellectual property theft, or disruption of critical services. What makes APTs particularly dangerous is their stealth, persistence, and adaptability. These attacks often unfold over weeks or even months, progressing through multiple stages including initial intrusion, privilege escalation, lateral movement, data staging, and finally, exfiltration. Auditors must be aware that traditional controls alone may not detect or stop such threats. On the CISA exam, candidates may be asked to evaluate how well an organization is positioned to detect, investigate, and respond to sophisticated attacks that bypass conventional defenses.
The defining characteristics of APTs reflect their complexity and intent. Persistence is at the core of the APT strategy. Once inside a target environment, attackers work to establish durable access using backdoors, remote access tools, or stolen credentials. This allows them to remain undetected while gathering intelligence or preparing further actions. Lateral movement is used to explore the environment, pivot between systems, and escalate privileges by targeting administrative accounts or vulnerable services. Many APT actors use custom-built malware designed to avoid detection by signature-based antivirus tools. Command-and-control infrastructure, often involving multiple relay points or encryption, enables remote management of compromised assets. As data is collected, it is staged—often compressed and encrypted—before being exfiltrated. Understanding these techniques allows auditors to assess whether controls are in place to detect anomalies across multiple systems, rather than relying solely on perimeter defenses or antivirus alerts.
To achieve their goals, APT groups employ a wide range of techniques, often chaining multiple attack vectors together. Spear phishing remains one of the most common entry points, where tailored emails are sent to specific individuals to gain credentials or deploy malware. Once initial access is achieved, attackers may use tools like Mimikatz to dump credentials and escalate privileges. Fileless malware, which operates in system memory without writing to disk, is increasingly used to avoid triggering antivirus or endpoint detection tools. Living off the land techniques take advantage of built-in administrative tools such as PowerShell or Windows Management Instrumentation to move laterally or gather information. In some cases, attackers exploit zero-day vulnerabilities—previously unknown flaws that have not yet been patched—to bypass security mechanisms. CISA candidates must understand how these techniques work in practice and how to assess whether controls such as behavior monitoring, privileged access management, or application whitelisting are in place to reduce their impact.
Zero-day exploits are a particularly dangerous tool in the APT arsenal. These vulnerabilities are unknown to vendors and unaddressed by security patches, meaning that organizations cannot defend against them using conventional means. Zero-days are typically discovered and weaponized by attackers before a fix is available, giving them a unique advantage. These exploits are often sold on dark web markets or used in highly targeted campaigns. Because signature-based defenses cannot identify them, behavioral detection and anomaly monitoring become essential. For example, if a zero-day is used to trigger unexpected network traffic, open an unrecognized port, or generate unauthorized system changes, these anomalies may be the only signs of compromise. Auditors must assess whether zero-day risk is addressed in the organization’s detection strategy, and whether the environment is instrumented to spot unexpected behaviors that may indicate the presence of an unknown exploit. CISA scenarios may challenge candidates to evaluate how prepared an organization is for this level of threat.
Detecting advanced attacks requires shifting focus from known indicators to behavioral baselines. Behavioral analytics and anomaly detection, sometimes referred to as user and entity behavior analytics, help identify unusual activity that deviates from the norm. This includes monitoring for irregular login times, unusual file access patterns, or unexpected network traffic. Endpoint detection and response tools provide detailed visibility into what is happening on individual devices, including memory use, process behavior, and network communication. These tools often allow analysts to isolate a host for further investigation. Threat hunting programs proactively search for indicators of compromise before an alert is triggered. Analysts may use known attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures, mapped to frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, to guide their efforts. On the CISA exam, you may be asked to identify how these tools work together, or how an attacker was detected based on subtle indicators rather than alarms. Auditors must evaluate whether proactive detection is part of the security strategy.
When an advanced attack is discovered, the organization must respond swiftly and decisively. The first step is to isolate compromised systems to prevent the attacker from moving laterally or escalating privileges further. Incident response teams must collect memory images, log files, and other forensic data to understand what happened and how far the compromise spread. Reverse engineering of malware may be needed to determine its capabilities, persistence mechanisms, and potential impact. Identifying affected users, systems, and data is critical to understanding the full scope. Communication with leadership, compliance teams, and legal counsel ensures that the appropriate disclosures are made and that response actions align with legal and regulatory obligations. Auditors review whether incident response was timely, whether communication was documented, and whether containment procedures were followed. The CISA exam may include case studies of breaches that test your understanding of response workflows, escalation criteria, and forensic readiness.
Patch management and threat intelligence both play important roles in preventing and mitigating advanced threats. While zero-day exploits cannot be patched until disclosed, many attacks use known vulnerabilities that are left unpatched in target environments. Maintaining a structured, rapid patching process is essential. This includes vulnerability scanning, prioritization based on exploitability, and clear documentation of exceptions. Subscribing to threat intelligence feeds gives security teams early warnings of emerging threats and indicators of compromise. Participation in sharing communities, such as Information Sharing and Analysis Centers, allows organizations to learn from industry peers. Aligning internal detection capabilities with threat frameworks, like MITRE ATT&CK, helps translate threat intelligence into actionable monitoring. CISA exam questions may ask how patching delays contributed to a breach, or how threat intelligence should be integrated into detection systems. Auditors verify that intelligence is not just received—but reviewed, correlated, and used to drive decision-making.
Security architecture must be designed with the assumption that breaches will happen. Defense-in-depth strategies reduce the impact of compromise by layering controls. Network segmentation limits how far attackers can move once inside. Access policies based on least privilege and deny-by-default reduce the ability of attackers to escalate or pivot. Monitoring privileged account activity and restricting service accounts to defined roles helps prevent privilege misuse. Secure configuration baselines, removal of unused services, and periodic audits of open ports or exposed services help eliminate unnecessary exposure. Auditors review whether architecture and policy are aligned, and whether segmentation, access controls, and logging support attack containment. CISA candidates must be able to assess how well an environment is compartmentalized, and whether design decisions delay or prevent attackers from reaching high-value assets once inside.
Preparation is as important as detection when facing advanced threats. Red team exercises simulate the tactics of skilled attackers and test whether defenses hold up under pressure. These exercises challenge security teams to detect and respond to realistic threats. Purple teaming brings offensive and defensive teams together to share insights and improve controls. Penetration testing focuses on discovering vulnerabilities, while tabletop exercises walk through response plans in simulated attack scenarios. Backup restoration testing ensures that, even after a breach, critical systems can be restored and continuity maintained. These tests should include situations where the attacker has disabled or corrupted backups. CISA exam questions may reference organizations that failed to detect or contain an APT, and ask whether preparedness actions were sufficient. Auditors evaluate whether these simulations are scheduled, documented, and used to drive improvements in both technology and team readiness.
For CISA candidates, advanced threats are a critical test of audit maturity. You must understand how APTs operate across multiple phases and how they exploit both technical gaps and human behavior. Expect questions on spear phishing, privilege escalation, zero-day vulnerabilities, and how to detect activity without clear alerts. Know how to assess behavior-based detection, how to audit patch and intelligence processes, and how to evaluate architecture for segmentation and containment. A mature security posture is not defined by whether an attack occurs—it is measured by how quickly and effectively it is detected, contained, and analyzed. As an auditor, your responsibility is to ensure the organization is resilient not just against common threats but against advanced, persistent, and adaptive adversaries. Defenses must evolve, controls must be tested, and awareness must be constant. The presence of layered, behavior-aware, and proactive security measures is the clearest sign of organizational readiness.
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