Professional Standards & Competencies Flashcards

A cloud engineer discovers that a co-worker's credentials were used to access production systems during off-hours without authorization. What is the FIRST action the engineer should take?

Answer: Report the incident to the security team and follow the incident response plan

Following the incident response plan ensures a structured, documented, and legally defensible response to potential credential compromise.

Which document formally defines the performance expectations and acceptable uptime guarantees between a cloud provider and a customer?

Answer: Service Level Agreement (SLA)

An SLA specifies measurable service commitments such as uptime percentage, response times, and remedies for failures.

A cloud engineer is asked to cut costs by disabling encryption on a non-production database containing real customer PII. What should the engineer do?

Answer: Refuse and escalate to a compliance officer, explaining the PII risk

Real PII must be protected regardless of environment; disabling encryption violates regulations like GDPR and CCPA and must be escalated.

When participating in a post-incident review, a cloud engineer should primarily focus on:

Answer: Documenting systemic causes and preventive action items without blame

Blameless post-mortems focus on systemic improvements rather than individual fault, fostering a culture of continuous learning.

A cloud engineer's employer asks them to configure infrastructure in a way that clearly violates a customer's contractual data residency requirement. The engineer should:

Answer: Refuse and document the conflict in writing to management

Violating a contractual data residency requirement exposes the company to legal liability; the engineer should refuse and escalate in writing.

Which practice BEST demonstrates continuous professional development for a cloud engineer?

Answer: Pursuing vendor-neutral and vendor-specific certifications alongside active lab work

Combining certifications with hands-on lab work builds both validated knowledge and practical skill, representing true professional development.

A cloud engineer is about to push an urgent hotfix directly to production without a change review. The MOST professional course of action is:

Answer: Apply the hotfix under an emergency change process and document it immediately after

Emergency change processes allow expedited approvals while preserving auditability and accountability.