300-745 Dumps 2026 Free PDF Questions
Exam Details
| Vendor: | Cisco |
| Exam Code: | 300-745 |
| Exam Name: | Designing Cisco Security Infrastructure (SDSI) |
| Certification: | Cisco Certified Network Professional CCNP |
| Total Questions: | 58 |
| Last Updated: | Mar 04, 2026 |
Original price was: $79.00.$59.00Current price is: $59.00.
Description
Free 300-745 Exam Actual Questions & Detailed Explanations
Author: David R. Jenkins, CCIE Security
Bio: David is a Senior Security Architect and Certified IT Instructor with over 12 years of enterprise-level experience designing and implementing robust Cisco security infrastructures. He specializes in Zero Trust, DevSecOps integration, and multi-cloud security architectures.
Last updated on: March 5, 2026
The Cisco 300-745 Designing Cisco Security Infrastructure (SDSI) exam is a pivotal milestone for professionals aiming to achieve the CCNP Security certification. In today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape, simply deploying firewalls is no longer sufficient; organizations demand cohesive, intelligently designed architectures. This 90-minute assessment rigorously validates your capability to engineer secure infrastructures, protect cloud-native applications, seamlessly integrate DevSecOps workflows, and leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance threat detection.
Mastering this exam demonstrates to employers that you possess the critical thinking and design reasoning required to translate complex business requirements into scalable, compliance-driven security deployments. Use the comprehensive guide and verified actual questions below to solidify your knowledge and approach exam day with absolute confidence.
Official Syllabus & Core Topics
- Secure Infrastructure: Evaluating endpoint security, identity intelligence (MFA, passwordless), and hybrid worker architecture. Selecting appropriate VPN/tunneling solutions (SD-WAN, IPsec, DMVPN) and firewall architectures.
- Applications: Designing robust security for cloud-native applications, microservices, and containers. Applying segmentation and microsegmentation while adapting to emerging tech like generative AI and quantum computing.
- Risk, Events, and Requirements: Leveraging SOC tools for incident response, modifying designs to mitigate risks, and mapping compliance frameworks (MITRE CAPEC, NIST SP 800-37, SAFE) to technical requirements.
- Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and DevSecOps: Implementing Infrastructure as Code (IaC), container scanning, API tooling, and integrating AI into automated security response workflows to minimize deployment risks.
Key Exam Domains & Weightage
| Domain Number | Official Topic | Weightage |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | Secure Infrastructure | 30% |
| 2.0 | Applications | 25% |
| 3.0 | Risk, Events, and Requirements | 30% |
| 4.0 | Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and DevSecOps | 15% |
Exam Structure at a Glance
- 🔹 Exam Code: 300-745 SDSI
- 🔹 Duration: 90 Minutes
- 🔹 Number of Questions: Approximately 55 – 65 Questions
- 🔹 Passing Score: Typically 750-850 out of 1000 (Subject to Cisco’s scaling)
Preparation Guidance
- Week 1 (Infrastructure & Frameworks): Focus heavily on Domain 1.0 and 3.0. Understand the mechanics of Zero Trust, identity intelligence, and how to map technical architectures to frameworks like NIST SP 800-37 and MITRE CAPEC.
- Week 2 (Application Security & Cloud): Dive into Domain 2.0. Differentiate between WAF, NextGen Firewalls, and distributed firewalls. Master microsegmentation principles for containers and serverless deployments.
- Week 3 (Automation & DevSecOps): Tackle Domain 4.0. Familiarize yourself with CI/CD pipeline security gates, infrastructure as code (IaC) drift monitoring, and the specific roles AI plays in SOC telemetry and alerting.
- Week 4 (Practice & Review): Complete full-length practice tests to condition your time management. Analyze the detailed explanations for any incorrect answers, paying special attention to scenario-based design constraints (e.g., balancing budget vs. highest encryption).
Get the PDF 300-745 Exam Questions Updated 2026
Strengthen your preparation with up‑to‑date resources from validexams.com. These materials align to 300-745 and cover practical scenarios with clear explanations.
- ✅ Verified Accurate Questions: Curated by certified IT experts to mirror the exact difficulty and format of the live 300-745 exam.
- ✅ In-Depth Technical Explanations: Understand the ‘why’ behind every correct and incorrect option to build true design reasoning instead of just memorizing.
- ✅ Continuous Real-Time Updates: Gain access to 90 days of free updates, ensuring your prep material reflects the latest Cisco syllabus shifts and newly introduced DevSecOps topics.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What topics carry the most weight on the 300-745 SDSI exam?
Secure Infrastructure (30%) and Risk, Events, and Requirements (30%) carry the highest weight, making up 60% of the exam syllabus combined. Applications account for 25%, while AI, Automation, and DevSecOps account for 15%.
2. What are the prerequisites for the 300-745 exam?
There are no formal prerequisites to take the 300-745 exam, but candidates should have a solid understanding of fundamental security architecture concepts and ideally possess three to five years of experience implementing security solutions.
3. Is the 300-745 exam heavily focused on configuration or design?
The 300-745 (Designing Cisco Security Infrastructure) exam is heavily focused on design reasoning, requiring candidates to evaluate business requirements and select the appropriate security framework, architecture, or policy rather than configuring command-line interfaces.
4. Who is the target audience for the 300-745 certification?
This exam is ideal for Security Architects, Network Security Engineers, Systems Engineers, and IT professionals looking to achieve their CCNP Security certification and validate their expertise in enterprise security design.
Free Practice Questions & Rationale
Question 1:
A restaurant distribution center recently suffered a password spray attack targeting the Cisco Secure Firepower Threat Defense VPN headend. The attack attempts to gain unauthorized access by trying common passwords across many accounts. To enhance the security of the VPN setup and minimize the risk of similar attacks, which technique effectively reduces the risk of this type of attack?
- Implement an access list to block addresses from the previous password spray attack.
- Disable group aliases in the connection profiles.
- Change the AAA authentication method from RADIUS to TACACS+.
- Enable AAA authentication for the DefaultWEBVPN and DefaultRAGroup Connection Profiles.
Correct Answer: D
Detailed Explanation: A password spray attack systematically tests a few common passwords against many user accounts to bypass lockout thresholds. In Cisco Secure Firepower Threat Defense, attackers often scan the internet and exploit default connection profiles (like DefaultWEBVPN and DefaultRAGroup) if they are left unprotected. Enabling AAA authentication (such as requiring certificate-based authentication or strict Multi-Factor Authentication via AAA) directly on these default profiles prevents unauthorized access attempts from blindly iterating through credentials. While blocking IPs (Option A) is reactive, it doesn’t prevent future attacks from distributed botnets. Changing to TACACS+ (Option C) changes device administration protocols, not remote access VPN validation logic.
Question 2:
A software development company uses multiple cloud providers to host its applications. The company is designing a scalable firewall solution that requires consistent security policies across multiple cloud environments, centralized visibility, and massive scalability. Which type of firewall architecture best meets these requirements?
- Traditional physical firewall
- Zone-based firewall
- Distributed firewall
- Host-based firewall
Correct Answer: C
Detailed Explanation: A distributed firewall architecture is the optimal choice for multi-cloud and highly virtualized environments. Unlike traditional perimeter firewalls (Option A) that create network bottlenecks, distributed firewalls enforce security policies directly at the virtual network interface (vNIC) of each workload, enabling granular microsegmentation. This architecture allows policies to be managed centrally while enforcement scales elastically out with the workloads, regardless of which cloud provider hosts the application. Host-based firewalls (Option D) lack centralized orchestration in complex multi-cloud deployments, and zone-based firewalls (Option B) are tied to router interfaces, making them less agile for dynamic cloud-native scalability.
Question 3:
A security engineer on an application design team must select the appropriate framework of attack patterns to systematically evaluate threats during application threat modeling. Which framework provides a comprehensive and standardized dictionary of common attack patterns?
- Cisco SAFE
- GDPR
- MITRE CAPEC
- SOC2
Correct Answer: C
Detailed Explanation: MITRE CAPEC (Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification) is specifically designed to provide a comprehensive, structured dictionary of known attack patterns employed by adversaries to exploit weaknesses in applications and networks. It is the industry standard for application threat modeling. Cisco SAFE (Option A) is an architectural framework for designing secure networks, not an attack dictionary. GDPR (Option B) is a privacy and data protection regulation. SOC2 (Option D) is an auditing procedure for secure data management, none of which provide an enumeration of tactical attack patterns.
Question 4:
When designing a DevSecOps pipeline for an organization transitioning to Infrastructure as Code (IaC), which two controls are critical to help detect and prevent configuration drift in the managed infrastructure? (Choose two.)
- Continuous configuration monitoring
- Manual change log entries
- Immutable infrastructure patterns
- DHCP snooping
- SNMP trap logging
Correct Answers: A and C
Detailed Explanation: Configuration drift occurs when the actual state of infrastructure deviates from the baseline state defined in IaC templates. Implementing immutable infrastructure patterns (Option C) ensures that servers are never modified after deployment; if an update is needed, the old instance is destroyed and a new one is provisioned from code, severely limiting the possibility of manual drift. Continuous configuration monitoring (Option A) involves using automated tools to frequently compare the live infrastructure’s state against the approved IaC baseline, instantly detecting any unauthorized out-of-band changes. Manual logs (Option B) are prone to human error, and DHCP snooping/SNMP (Options D and E) handle network layer tracking, not IaC state management.
Question 5:
What is the primary architectural benefit of conducting a rigorous root cause analysis (RCA) following a major security incident?
- Validate OSI model compliance for edge routers.
- Enable strict compliance with Network Time Protocol (NTP) log standards.
- Drive design improvements to mitigate risk and prevent recurrence.
- Improve FTP throughput securely.
Correct Answer: C
Detailed Explanation: The fundamental goal of incident response and root cause analysis in a design context is the continuous improvement of the security architecture. By understanding the exact mechanism, entry point, and lateral movement of an attack, security architects can drive design improvements (Option C) to patch vulnerabilities, modify network segmentation, and update access policies to prevent the same type of attack from occurring again. The other options describe disconnected, granular operational tasks that do not represent the primary, holistic benefit of RCA.
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