Exam CISSP topic 1 question 199 discussion

A. Lower environment. The lower environment is known for development and testing. The patch should be applied first in a lower environment or a test lab environment. This is to thoroughly evaluate the patch before being applied to the production environment, as there is a chance that it will have issues.

The term "lower environment" refers to the development and testing stages of an application or system. In SDLC, it is the environment where developers and testers work on creating, modifying, and testing software applications before deploying them into a production environment. From a CISSP perspective, lower environments are testing and development environments that replicate the configurations of production systems as closely as possible. By applying the patch to a lower environment first, the security engineer can evaluate its performance and ensure that it doesn't negatively impact any critical system functionality or cause conflicts with existing applications. This approach also allows them to identify and fix any issues before deploying the patch into a production environment where live users may be affected.

D: It should be the Production environment, since the new patch has been researched and approved with recommendations...

The patch should be applied FIRST in the lower environment. This is because the lower environment is typically used for testing and staging, and any issues or problems with the patch can be identified and addressed before it is deployed in more critical environments such as the production environment. It is important to test patches and updates in a controlled environment before deploying them to the live production systems to ensure that they do not cause any disruptions or issues. This is especially important when working with vulnerability and patch management, as it is important to ensure that vulnerabilities are properly patched and that the patch does not cause any additional problems.

Lower environments are complete replicas of production and are designed to test new releases before installing them in production. They're only accessible internally and not to external consumers. The idea is simple, you build out a smaller scale model of your production solution. A percentage of your user base is provisioned on this system and they use it for day-to-day operations. In every way, the “lower environment” solution should be treated like production. Meaning, it is connected into your production network and uses the same security measures applied in production, Integrates with LDAP, uses the corporate antivirus, etc. etc. It should be subjected to the same change control policies or a special subset of those policies. The main difference is that the lower environment is where new software versions, feature sets, configurations, etc. pop up after they are researched and vetted in the lab.

D It is not clear what method they are using for patch approval. Normally - as per the best practice - patch is approved when the patch is already tested on non-production systems and there are no regressions/side effects. If this process is followed, then this should be immediately deployed to production to reduce the risk uncovered due to absence of patch. See: https://www.manageengine.com/patch-management/help/test-approve-patches.html

Given answer is correct. Lower environment is non-production. The rest of the answers are production equipment.

lower = development environment.