CyberArk SECRET-SEN Dumps

 Dual accounts is a password management method that uses two accounts with identical privileges to access a system, database, or application. One account is active and the other is inactive at any given time. The active account remains untouched during password rotation, while the inactive account has its password changed after a grace period. This way, the application can always use the active account without experiencing any delays or errors due to password expiration or change. The advantage of using dual accounts is that it ensures business continuity and seamless access to the target resource, especially for high load and critical applications. References: Manage Dual Accounts, Configure dual accounts

 Conjur uses TLS certificates for authentication between nodes and clients. These certificates are either self-signed by Conjur or imported from a third-party CA. All the certificates are stored in the /opt/conjur/etc/ssl directory from the Conjur containers. This directory contains the following files:

• ca.crt: The CA certificate used to verify all Conjur node certificates. This is either the self-signed Conjur CA certificate or the imported third-party CA certificate.
• server.crt: The server certificate used by the Conjur node for HTTPS and mTLS connections. This certificate contains the DNS names of the node and the load balancer in the CN and SAN fields.
• server.key: The private key corresponding to the server certificate.
• cert.pem: A symbolic link to the server certificate file.
• key.pem: A symbolic link to the server key file.

References: Certificate architecture, Certificate requirements, Rotate certificates

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The cause of the issue is that the host does not have access to the credential. This can happen if the host does not have the correct permissions or if the credential is not properly configured in the Vault Conjur Synchronizer.

The Vault Conjur Synchronizer is a tool that enables the integration between CyberArk Vault and Conjur Secrets Manager Enterprise. The Synchronizer synchronizes secrets that are stored and managed in the CyberArk Vault with Conjur Enterprise, and allows them to be used via Conjur clients, APIs, and SDKs. The Synchronizer creates and updates Conjur policies and variables based on the Vault accounts and safes, and assigns permissions to Conjur hosts based on the Vault allowed machines.

To fix this issue, the host needs to have the permission to access the credential in Conjur. This can be done by adding the host to the allowed machines list of the Vault account that corresponds to the credential, and synchronizing the changes with Conjur. Alternatively, the host can be granted the permission to access the credential in Conjur by modifying the Conjur policy that corresponds to the Vault safe that contains the credential, and loading the policy to Conjur. However, this may cause conflicts or inconsistencies with the Synchronizer, and is not recommended.

For more information, see the CyberArk Vault Synchronizer docs1 and the Synchronizer Troubleshooting guide2.

Followers are read-only replicas of the Leader that perform asynchronous replication from the Leader. This means that they receive updates from the Leader periodically, but not in real time. Followers are designed to handle all types of read requests from workloads and applications, such as authentication, permission checks, and secret fetches. Followers can scale horizontally to support a large number of concurrent requests and reduce the load on the Leader. Followers also provide high availability and disaster recovery by serving as backup nodes in case of Leader failure or network partition. References: Set up Follower, Deploy the Conjur Follower, Follower architecture

 The most maintenance-free way to ensure a Conjur host’s access reflects any changes made to accounts in a safe in the CyberArk vault is to grant the consumers group/role created by the Synchronizer for the Safe to the host. This means that the host will inherit the read and execute permissions on all the secrets in the Safe from the consumers group/role, and will automatically get access to any new or updated secrets in the Safe without requiring any manual intervention or policy changes. The consumers group/role is created by the Vault Conjur Synchronizer, which is a service that synchronizes secrets between the CyberArk vault and Conjur. The Synchronizer creates a policy branch for each Safe in Conjur, and assigns the consumers group/role to have read and execute permissions on all the secrets in the Safe. The Synchronizer also creates a delegation policy for each Safe, which allows the Safe admins to grant permissions to other users, hosts, groups, or layers12.

The other options are not the most maintenance-free ways to ensure a Conjur host’s access reflects any changes made to accounts in a safe in the CyberArk vault. Writing an automation script to update and load the host’s policy using PATCH/update may work, but it requires additional effort and maintenance to ensure the script is always running and up to date with the changes in the Safe. Using yami anchor [&] and wildcard (*) syntax to maintain its list of permission grants may simplify the policy writing, but it still requires manual editing and loading of the policy whenever a new secret is added or removed from the Safe. Using PVWA to add the Conjur host ID as a member of the Safe may not be possible or advisable, as the PVWA is designed for managing human users and not Conjur hosts, and it may not have the necessary integration or authorization to do so3. References: =

• Vault Conjur Synchronizer 1, Synchronizer Policy Structure
• Grant permissions on secrets 2, Grant role permissions on all secrets in a Safe
• Privileged Access Manager - Self-Hosted 3, Privileged Web Access (PVWA)

The CCP (Central Credential Provider) is a tool that enables applications to securely retrieve credentials from CyberArk Secrets Manager without hard-coding or storing them in files. The CCP can be installed on a single server or on multiple servers behind a load balancer for high availability and scalability. The load balancer is a device or service that distributes the network traffic among the CCP servers based on predefined rules and criteria.

The CCP supports multiple methods to authenticate applications, such as Allowed Machines, Client Certificate, OS User, Path, and Hash. These methods are based on registering information in the Vault with the unique application ID. For more information about the supported authentication methods, see Application authentication methods1.

When installing the CCP and configuring it for use behind a load balancer, some authentication methods may be affected by the load balancer’s behavior and settings. Specifically, the following authentication methods may be affected:

• Allowed Machines authentication: This method authenticates applications based on their IP address or hostname. If the load balancer replaces the source IP or hostname of the routed packets with its own IP or hostname, the CCP will not be able to authenticate the application that initiated the credential request. To enable the CCP to resolve the IP or hostname of the application, the load balancer needs to be configured as a transparent proxy or to attach the X-Forwarded-For header to the routed packets. For more information, see Load balance the Central Credential Provider2.
• Client Certificate authentication: This method authenticates applications based on their client certificate that is signed by a trusted certificate authority (CA). The client certificate is used to establish a secure and trusted connection between the application and the CCP. If the load balancer terminates the SSL connection before proxying the traffic to the CCP, the CCP will not be able to verify the client certificate of the application. To enable the CCP to validate the client certificate, the load balancer needs to be configured as a pass-through proxy or to forward the client certificate to the CCP. For more information, see Load balance the Central Credential Provider2.

The other authentication methods are not affected by the load balancer, as they do not rely on the IP, hostname, or certificate of the application. For example, the OS User method authenticates applications based on their Windows domain user, the Path method authenticates applications based on their URL path, and the Hash method authenticates applications based on a hash value that is generated from the application ID and a shared secret. These methods do not require any special configuration on the load balancer or the CCP.

The correct sequence of installation steps for a Credential Provider on a Linux host is as follows:

• Download the correct install package to a directory on the Linux host and decompress1.
• Copy the aimparms.sample file to /var/tmp/aimparms. Create a Credential File with an account with sufficient permissions to install. Modify the Vault.ini file to point to the correct vault2.
• Install the correct Credential Provider package for the distribution of Linux using the command: rpm -ivh CARKaim-..rpm2.
• Check that the aimprv service is running using the command: service aimprv status2.

References: 1: Download the Credential Provider 2: Install Credential Provider on Linux / AIX

 Secrets Provider and Secretless are two solutions that can minimize the Kubernetes application code changes required to adopt Conjur for secrets access. Secrets Provider is a Kubernetes Job or Deployment that runs as an init container or application container alongside the application pod. It retrieves secrets from Conjur and writes them to one or more files in a shared, mounted volume. The application can then consume the secrets from the files without any code changes, as reading local files is a common and platform-agnostic method. Secretless is a sidecar proxy that runs as a separate container in the same pod as the application. It intercepts the application’s requests to protected resources, such as databases or web services, and injects the secrets from Conjur into the requests. The application does not need to handle any secrets in its code, as Secretless handles the authentication and authorization for it. References: CyberArk Secrets Provider for Kubernetes, Secretless Broker

= Summon is a command-line tool that provides on-demand secrets access for common DevOps tools. It reads a file in secrets.yml format and injects secrets as environment variables into any process. The secrets.yml file is where you define which secrets to retrieve from a trusted store, such as CyberArk Secrets Manager. The secrets.yml file specifies the name and location of each secret, as well as the environment variable to assign it to. For example, a secrets.yml file could look like this:

DB_USERNAME: !var dev/my-app/db-username DB_PASSWORD: !var dev/my-app/db-password

This means that Summon will fetch the values of dev/my-app/db-username and dev/my-app/db-password from the trusted store, and assign them to the environment variables DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD, respectively. Then, Summon will run the specified process with these environment variables set, and remove them once the process exits. This way, Summon enables secure and convenient access to secrets without exposing them in plain text or storing them in files.

References = Summon by cyberark - GitHub Pages; Using Summon to Manage Secrets as You Move From Dev to Prod

The best way to enable debug for CCP is to edit the web.config file in the AIMWebService folder and change the value of the AIMWebServiceTrace parameter to 4, which is the verbose level. This will generate detailed logs in the AIMWSTrace.log file in the logs folder. The logs folder may need to be created manually and given the appropriate permissions for the IIS_IUSRS group. After changing the web.config file, the Windows Web Server (IIS) service needs to be restarted to apply the changes. This method is recommended by CyberArk Support and documented in the CyberArk Knowledge Base1.

Editing the basic_appprovider.conf file and changing the AIMWebServiceTrace value is not a valid option, as this parameter does not exist in this file. The basic_appprovider.conf file is used to configure the basic provider settings, such as the AppProviderVaultParmsFile, the AppProviderPort, and the AppProviderCacheMode. The AIMWebServiceTrace parameter is only found in the web.config file of the AIMWebService.

In the PVWA, going to the Applications tab, selecting the Application in question, and going to Options > Logging and choosing Debug is not a valid option, as this will only enable debug for the Application Identity Manager (AIM) component, not the CCP component. The AIM component is used to manage the application identities and their access to the Vault. The CCP component is used to provide secure retrieval of credentials from the Vault using web services. Enabling debug for AIM will generate logs in the APPconsole.log, APPtrace.log, and APPaudit.log files in the ApplicationPasswordProvider\Logs folder, but these logs will not help to troubleshoot the CCP authentication issues.

From the command line, running appprvmgr.exe update_config logging=debug is not a valid option, as this will only enable debug for the Application Provider Manager (APM) component, not the CCP component. The APM component is used to manage the configuration and operation of the providers, such as the basic provider, the LDAP provider, and the ENE provider. Running appprvmgr.exe update_config logging=debug will generate logs in the appprvmgr.log file in the ApplicationPasswordProvider\Logs folder, but these logs will not help to troubleshoot the CCP authentication issues. References:

• Enable Debugging and Gather Logs - Central Credential Provider1

According to the CyberArk Sentry Secrets Manager documentation, auto-failover is a feature that enables the automatic promotion of a standby node to a leader node in case of a leader failure. Auto-failover requires a quorum, which is a majority of nodes in the cluster that are available and synchronized. A quorum ensures that only one node can be promoted to a leader at a time and prevents split-brain scenarios. In the exhibit, each option shows a network diagram of a load balancer and four nodes, one of which is crossed out with a red X, indicating a leader failure. The text below each diagram indicates whether there is a quorum or not. Option C is the only example where auto-failover will occur, because there is a quorum of three out of four nodes, and one of the standby nodes can be promoted to a leader. Option A will not have auto-failover, because there is no quorum, as only two out of four nodes are available. Option B will not have auto-failover, because there is no quorum, as only one out of four nodes is available. Option D will not have auto-failover, because there is no quorum, as none of the nodes are available. References: 1: Auto-failover 2: Configure auto-failover

When an account or Safe is renamed in the Vault, the Vault Conjur Synchronizer will create new variables in Conjur with the new name and delete the old variables with the old name. This means that the permissions that were granted to the old variables in Conjur will not apply to the new variables, and they will need to be recreated using delegation policies. Otherwise, the users or hosts that had access to the old variables will not be able to access the new ones. References: Manage Accounts and Safes During Synchronization; Vault Synchronizer full policy guide

This is the correct answer because the log file shows the error message “CEADBR009E Failed to load policy through SDK” and the exception message “The number of LOBs exceeds the limit”. This indicates that the Vault Conjur Synchronizer service (Synchronizer) encountered a problem when trying to sync the secrets from the CyberArk Vault to the Conjur database using the Conjur SDK. The Conjur SDK is a library that allows the Synchronizer to interact with the Conjur REST API and perform operations on the Conjur resources, such as roles, policies, secrets, and audit records. The number of LOBs refers to the number of lines of business (LOBs) that are configured in the Synchronizer. A LOB is a logical grouping of secrets that belong to a specific business unit or function. Each LOB has its own configuration file that specifies the source safe, the target policy, and the mapping rules for the secrets. The Synchronizer can sync multiple LOBs concurrently using multiple threads. However, there is a limit on the number of threads that the Synchronizer can use, which depends on the hardware and software specifications of the Synchronizer machine. If the number of LOBs exceeds the number of threads, the Synchronizer will not be able to sync all the LOBs and will generate an error. This answer is based on the CyberArk Secrets Manager documentation and the CyberArk Secrets Manager training course.

This is the correct answer because a minimal Conjur deployment that integrates with an existing CyberArk PAM Vault environment, supports high availability, and is redundant across two geographically disparate regions requires the following servers:

• 2 Linux servers for the Conjur master cluster, one in each region. The master cluster consists of a leader and a standby node that can automatically failover in case of a leader failure. The leader node performs read/write operations on the Conjur database and policy engine, while the standby node replicates the leader data and can be promoted to leader if needed. The master cluster also hosts the Conjur UI and API endpoints.
• 4 Linux servers for the Conjur follower clusters, two in each region. The follower clusters consist of one or more follower nodes that perform read-only operations on the Conjur database and policy engine, such as authentication, authorization, and secret retrieval. The follower clusters are horizontally scalable and can be configured behind a load balancer to handle high volumes of requests from applications and clients. The follower clusters also host the Conjur Synchronizer service, which synchronizes secrets from the CyberArk PAM Vault to the Conjur database.
• 2 Linux servers for the Conjur seed fetcher service, one in each region. The seed fetcher service is a utility that runs on a separate server and periodically fetches the Conjur seed files from the master cluster and distributes them to the follower clusters. The seed files contain the configuration and encryption keys that are required to join a follower node to the Conjur cluster. The seed fetcher service ensures that the follower clusters are always updated with the latest seed files and can join the Conjur cluster without manual intervention.
• 2 Windows servers for the CyberArk Central Credential Provider (CCP), one in each region. The CCP is a component that provides secure and centralized credential management for applications and clients that need to access secrets from the CyberArk PAM Vault. The CCP exposes a web service interface that allows applications and clients to request credentials based on their identity and permissions. The CCP integrates with the Conjur Synchronizer service to retrieve the secrets from the Conjur database and cache them locally for faster access.

Therefore, the total number of servers required for this deployment is 9 Linux servers and 2 Windows servers. This deployment architecture is based on the Conjur documentation1 and the Conjur training course2.

o enable synchronous replication on a Conjur cluster, you need to run the command evoke replication sync that on the Leader node of the cluster. This command will configure the Leader to wait for confirmation from all Standbys before committing any transaction to the database. This ensures that the data is consistent across all nodes and prevents data loss in case of a failover. However, this also increases the latency and reduces the throughput of the cluster, so it should be used with caution and only when required by the business or compliance needs.

References:

• Conjur Cluster Replication
• Sentry - Secrets Manager - Sample Items & Study Guide

This is the correct answer because the Conjur CLI is a tool that allows users to interact with the Conjur REST API from the command line. The Conjur CLI can be run on Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and macOS operating systems, as well as in Docker containers. The Conjur CLI can be installed using various methods, such as downloading the executable file, using a package manager, or pulling the Docker image. The Conjur CLI supports Conjur Enterprise 12.9 or later versions. This answer is based on the CyberArk Secrets Manager documentation1 and the CyberArk Secrets Manager training course2.

The other options are not true statements for the Conjur CLI. The Conjur CLI can be run from any machine that has network access to the Conjur server, not only from the Conjur Leader node. The Conjur Leader node is the node that performs read/write operations on the Conjur database and policy engine, and hosts the Conjur UI and API endpoints. The Conjur CLI is not required for working with the Conjur REST API, as users can also use other tools, such as curl, Postman, or web browsers, to send HTTP requests to the Conjur REST API. The Conjur CLI does implement the Conjur REST API for managing Conjur resources, such as roles, policies, secrets, and audit records. The Conjur CLI provides a set of commands that correspond to the Conjur REST API endpoints and allow users to perform various operations on the Conjur resources.

Summon is a utility that allows applications to access secrets from a variety of trusted stores and export them as environment variables to a sub-process environment. Summon does not require any changes to the application code to retrieve secrets from the CyberArk Central Credential Provider (CCP), as it uses a provider plugin that handles the communication with the CCP. However, the application code must be able to access secrets from a configuration file or environment variable, as these are the methods that Summon uses to inject secrets into the application. Summon reads a secrets.yml file that defines the secrets that the application needs and maps them to environment variables. Then, Summon fetches the secrets from the CCP using the provider plugin and exports them as environment variables to the application sub-process. The application can then read the secrets from the environment variables as if they were hard-coded in the configuration file. References: Summon-inject secrets, .NET Application Password SDK