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RCE practice questions

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Question 1Data Resilience

In a data resilience plan, what does the recovery point objective (RPO) specify?

  1. The interval at which backups are shipped to an offsite vault
  2. The number of simultaneous failures a storage array can survive
  3. The maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time before an incident Correct answer.
  4. The maximum time a service may remain unavailable after an incident

Explanation

The RPO defines how much data the business can afford to lose, expressed as a time window, and it drives backup frequency and replication lag targets. It is a data-loss tolerance, not an availability target.

Question 2Data Resilience

A team states that its service must be restored within four hours of an outage. Which metric is being expressed?

  1. Recovery time objective Correct answer.
  2. Service level indicator
  3. Recovery point objective
  4. Mean time between failures

Explanation

The recovery time objective (RTO) is the target duration for restoring service after disruption. A four-hour restoration commitment is a downtime tolerance, so it maps directly to RTO.

Question 3Data Resilience

What distinguishes a backup from a replica in data resilience design?

  1. A backup is taken hourly, while a replica is taken daily
  2. A backup is always stored offsite, while a replica is always stored on the same host
  3. A backup is encrypted, while a replica is never encrypted
  4. A backup is a point-in-time copy retained for restore, while a replica is a live copy kept synchronized for failover Correct answer.

Explanation

Backups capture a historical point-in-time state intended for restoration, whereas replicas are continuously synchronized copies used for availability and failover. The two serve different recovery purposes and are usually both required.

Question 4Data Resilience

Which backup type captures only the data changed since the last full backup, regardless of intervening incremental backups?

  1. Incremental backup
  2. Archive log
  3. Differential backup Correct answer.
  4. Snapshot

Explanation

A differential backup records all changes since the most recent full backup, so it grows over time but restore needs only the full plus the latest differential. Incremental backups instead capture changes since the last backup of any type.

Question 5Data Resilience

In the 3-2-1 backup rule, what does the leading '3' represent?

  1. Verify three restore tests per year
  2. Keep at least three copies of the data Correct answer.
  3. Retain backups for three months
  4. Store copies in three geographic regions

Explanation

The 3-2-1 rule advises at least three copies of data, on two different media types, with one copy offsite. The '3' counts total copies including the production original.

Question 6Data Resilience

What is the primary purpose of performing periodic restore tests on backups?

  1. To prove that backups can actually be recovered within the required objectives Correct answer.
  2. To reduce the storage cost of the backup repository
  3. To increase the backup throughput of the source system
  4. To eliminate the need for offsite copies

Explanation

Backups only provide resilience if they can be restored successfully and within RTO and RPO targets. Restore testing validates integrity, procedure, and timing before a real incident occurs.

Question 7Data Resilience

What does a disaster recovery plan's failover procedure describe?

  1. The steps to delete stale backups from the repository
  2. The steps to patch operating systems during maintenance windows
  3. The steps to shift workloads to a standby environment when the primary site is unavailable Correct answer.
  4. The steps to onboard new users to the production system

Explanation

Failover procedures define how and in what order services move to a secondary environment during a disaster. They cover activation criteria, sequencing, and validation of the standby site.

Question 8Data Resilience

Which metric expresses the average time taken to repair a system after a failure occurs?

  1. Mean time to repair Correct answer.
  2. Mean time between failures
  3. Service level objective
  4. Recovery point objective

Explanation

Mean time to repair (MTTR) measures the average duration to restore a failed component or service. It complements MTBF, which measures time between failures.

Question 9Data Resilience

A database must lose no more than five minutes of committed transactions. Which configuration best satisfies this requirement?

  1. Asynchronous replication with a five-minute lag threshold
  2. Synchronous replication to a secondary site Correct answer.
  3. Snapshot every hour retained for seven days
  4. Nightly full backups with weekly archives

Explanation

Synchronous replication acknowledges a commit only after the secondary site has it, so data loss on failover is effectively zero and well within a five-minute tolerance. Asynchronous methods and periodic backups cannot guarantee such a tight RPO.

Question 10Data Resilience

An organization requires near-zero RTO for a critical trading platform. Which DR strategy pattern is most appropriate?

  1. Backup and restore to rebuilt infrastructure
  2. Pilot light with data replication only
  3. Active-active deployment across two regions Correct answer.
  4. Warm standby scaled to partial capacity

Explanation

Active-active runs workloads concurrently in multiple regions so traffic can shift with minimal interruption, approaching near-zero RTO. The other patterns require at least some rebuild or scale-up time during failover.

Question 11Data Resilience

A backup policy sets a recovery point objective of one hour. Which schedule meets this requirement with the least data at risk?

  1. Full backup weekly with monthly archives
  2. Full backup nightly at 02:00
  3. Incremental backup every hour Correct answer.
  4. Snapshot every six hours

Explanation

An hourly incremental backup bounds potential data loss to roughly one hour, matching the RPO. Less frequent full backups or six-hourly snapshots exceed the one-hour tolerance.

Question 12Data Resilience

During a restore, an operator discovers the latest incremental backup is corrupt. What is the most resilient recovery approach given a full plus daily incrementals?

  1. Restore the full backup and apply the most recent valid incremental chain Correct answer.
  2. Wait for the next scheduled backup before restoring
  3. Rebuild the database from application logs alone
  4. Restore only the corrupt incremental and skip the full backup

Explanation

Recovery should use the full backup plus the longest valid incremental chain up to the corruption point. This limits data loss to the interval covered by the missing incrementals rather than discarding all recovery options.

Question 13Data Resilience

A team wants protection against ransomware encrypting production and mounted backup volumes. Which control most directly addresses this threat?

  1. Shortening backup retention to seven days
  2. Increasing backup frequency to every fifteen minutes
  3. Storing immutable, offline copies of backups Correct answer.
  4. Enabling compression on backup files

Explanation

Immutable or offline copies cannot be altered or encrypted by ransomware that reaches production and mounted storage. This preserves a clean recovery source independent of the compromised environment.

Question 14Data Resilience

What is the key resilience advantage of storing one backup copy in an air-gapped location?

  1. It increases backup throughput to the repository
  2. It guarantees the backup completes within the RTO
  3. It isolates the copy from network-based attacks and accidental deletion Correct answer.
  4. It removes the need for encryption at rest

Explanation

An air-gapped copy is physically or logically isolated from production networks, so malware, compromised credentials, or operator error cannot reach it. It provides a trusted last-resort restore source.

Question 15Data Resilience

A company runs a pilot light DR pattern. What is kept running in the recovery region before a disaster?

  1. A minimal core of data replication and essential services Correct answer.
  2. Only static documentation with no infrastructure
  3. A complete duplicate of every application server
  4. Full production capacity for all workloads

Explanation

Pilot light keeps a minimal core, typically data replication and essential services, running in the standby region. The rest of the environment is provisioned and scaled during failover.

Question 16Data Resilience

Which practice best validates that a disaster recovery plan will meet its stated RTO?

  1. Running a timed failover exercise that measures actual recovery duration Correct answer.
  2. Storing a printed copy of the plan offsite
  3. Reviewing the plan document annually with stakeholders
  4. Encrypting the plan document at rest

Explanation

Only a timed exercise reveals the real duration of failover steps, dependencies, and validation, showing whether the RTO is achievable. Document review alone cannot measure actual recovery time.

Question 17Data Resilience

A storage system uses RAID 6. Which failure scenario can it survive without data loss?

  1. Corruption of all parity blocks
  2. Loss of the entire array controller pair
  3. Two simultaneous drive failures in the same array Correct answer.
  4. Three simultaneous drive failures in the same array

Explanation

RAID 6 tolerates the loss of up to two drives in an array because it maintains dual parity. A third failure or loss of parity data exceeds its protection.

Question 18Data Resilience

What does a point-in-time recovery capability on a database allow an administrator to do?

  1. Run queries against the live database without locks
  2. Replicate the database to a read-only secondary
  3. Restore the database to a specific timestamp using backups plus transaction logs Correct answer.
  4. Compress the database to reduce storage footprint

Explanation

Point-in-time recovery combines a base backup with transaction or archive logs to roll forward to a chosen moment. This is essential for recovering from logical errors such as accidental deletes.

Question 19Data Resilience

A team measures an RPO of fifteen minutes but replication lag regularly reaches forty minutes during peak load. What is the most accurate conclusion?

  1. The backup retention policy must be shortened
  2. The actual achievable RPO is violated during peak periods Correct answer.
  3. The RTO is automatically violated as well
  4. The RPO is satisfied because replication is configured

Explanation

Replication lag directly bounds achievable RPO; if lag reaches forty minutes, a failover during peak could lose up to that much data, breaching the fifteen-minute target. Configuration intent does not override observed lag.

Question 20Data Resilience

An organization compares hot standby and warm standby. Which statement correctly captures the trade-off?

  1. Hot standby recovers faster but costs more to run than warm standby Correct answer.
  2. Warm standby recovers faster but costs more to run than hot standby
  3. Both patterns offer identical recovery time and cost
  4. Hot standby requires no data replication while warm standby does

Explanation

Hot standby keeps full-capacity infrastructure running, giving the fastest failover at the highest ongoing cost. Warm standby runs at reduced capacity and requires scale-up, trading lower cost for longer recovery.

Question 21Data Resilience

A backup repository deduplicates data across all clients. What resilience risk should be considered?

  1. Deduplication prevents encryption of backup data
  2. Deduplication always doubles restore time for all workloads
  3. Corruption in a shared chunk can affect multiple clients' recoverability Correct answer.
  4. Deduplicated backups cannot be replicated offsite

Explanation

Because deduplication shares chunks across clients, a corrupt or poisoned chunk can impact many restore sets. Mitigations include chunk integrity checks and isolated or immutable copies.

Question 22Data Resilience

An application writes to a primary database and asynchronously replicates to a secondary. During a failover, the primary is unreachable and some recent transactions are missing on the secondary. What is the correct characterization?

  1. A violation of RAID fault tolerance
  2. Expected data loss bounded by the replication lag Correct answer.
  3. A failure of the backup retention policy
  4. A split-brain condition caused by dual writes

Explanation

Asynchronous replication cannot guarantee zero loss; transactions not yet shipped are lost on failover, bounded by the lag at failure time. This is an inherent RPO characteristic, not a separate fault.

Question 23Data Resilience

A resilience architect must choose between synchronous replication across regions and within a region. What is the primary trade-off of cross-region synchronous replication?

  1. Faster writes but weaker consistency
  2. Stronger loss protection but higher write latency Correct answer.
  3. Lower storage cost but higher data loss
  4. Elimination of the need for backups

Explanation

Cross-region synchronous replication protects against regional loss but adds round-trip latency to every commit, slowing writes. Architects often use synchronous within a region and asynchronous across regions.

Question 24Data Resilience

After a ransomware incident, an operator finds the deduplication database and catalog are corrupted but the backup data chunks are intact. What recovery challenge arises?

  1. The chunks can be restored directly without any catalog
  2. The catalog must be rebuilt or bypassed to locate and reassemble chunks Correct answer.
  3. The RTO is automatically met because chunks exist
  4. The data is unrecoverable because chunks are encrypted

Explanation

Deduplicated restores depend on the catalog mapping files to chunks; if it is lost, the mapping must be rebuilt or recovered to reassemble data. Intact chunks alone are insufficient without that index.

Question 25Data Resilience

A team wants to prove its DR plan meets a four-hour RTO while minimizing production impact. Which testing approach best balances evidence and risk?

  1. An annual review of the DR document by management
  2. A tabletop discussion with no execution of recovery steps
  3. A planned failover exercise in an isolated environment with timed steps Correct answer.
  4. A full unannounced production failover during business hours

Explanation

A planned, isolated failover exercise measures real recovery duration while limiting risk to production. It yields credible evidence for the RTO without exposing live customers to an unannounced outage.

Question 26Data Resilience

Which statement best defines the recovery time objective (RTO) for a service?

  1. The average interval between scheduled full backups
  2. The maximum acceptable elapsed time to restore the service after a disruption Correct answer.
  3. The maximum acceptable age of data that may be lost in a disruption
  4. The percentage of transactions that must survive a failover

Explanation

RTO is a time target: it states how long the business can tolerate the service being unavailable before restoration is complete. It is measured in elapsed time, not data volume or backup frequency, and it is distinct from the recovery point objective, which governs tolerable data loss.

Question 27Data Resilience

A compliance rule requires that archived records remain readable for ten years even if the primary application is decommissioned. Which resilience practice most directly addresses this requirement?

  1. Maintaining format-agnostic, self-describing archives with periodic readability verification Correct answer.
  2. Shortening the retention period to reduce storage cost
  3. Increasing the frequency of incremental backups
  4. Encrypting archives with keys held only by the retiring application team

Explanation

Long-term readability depends on the archive being interpretable without the original application, so self-describing formats plus scheduled readability checks are the key controls. Backup frequency and retention length do not by themselves guarantee that the data can still be decoded years later.

Question 28Data Resilience

What is the primary role of an immutable backup repository in a data resilience strategy?

  1. It prevents stored recovery points from being altered or deleted during their retention window Correct answer.
  2. It automatically fails over production workloads to a secondary site
  3. It replaces the need for any restore testing
  4. It compresses backups so that less capacity is consumed

Explanation

Immutability enforces write-once behavior for a defined retention period, so even a compromised administrator account or ransomware process cannot rewrite or erase recovery points. It is a protective control on the backup copy, not a capacity feature, failover mechanism, or substitute for validation.

Question 29Data Resilience

Which characteristic distinguishes a backup from an archive?

  1. Backups use tape media, while archives use only disk
  2. Backups are always stored offsite, while archives are always stored onsite
  3. Backups are encrypted, while archives are never encrypted
  4. Backups exist to restore operational data after loss, while archives retain records for long-term reference and compliance Correct answer.

Explanation

The distinction is purpose-driven: backups serve operational recovery of active systems, whereas archives preserve fixed records for long-term retention and legal or regulatory reference. Media type, location, and encryption are implementation choices that can apply to either.

Question 30Data Resilience

An administrator must restore a database to 09:45 after an erroneous batch job corrupted data at 10:00. The database uses continuous log shipping with full backups each Sunday. Which recovery approach is appropriate?

  1. Restore the secondary replica's current data files directly
  2. Restore the most recent differential backup and stop there
  3. Restore the most recent full backup only and accept the loss of all later changes
  4. Restore the latest full backup, then apply transaction logs in sequence up to 09:45 Correct answer.

Explanation

Point-in-time recovery requires a base full backup followed by replay of transaction logs up to, but not beyond, the target timestamp. Stopping at 09:45 excludes the corrupting batch that ran at 10:00, which is the whole point of the exercise.

Question 31Data Resilience

A team keeps three backup copies: one on production storage, one on a replicated repository, and one on removable media stored offline. What resilience property does the offline copy primarily provide?

  1. Automatic verification that the backups are restorable
  2. Reduced storage cost through deduplication
  3. Protection against a threat that compromises both production and the online repository Correct answer.
  4. Faster restore performance than the replicated repository

Explanation

An offline copy is isolated from the network, so an attacker or fault affecting production and the connected repository cannot reach it. That isolation is a threat-containment property, not a performance, validation, or cost feature.

Question 32Data Resilience

A workload has an RPO of zero and an RTO of thirty minutes. Which replication design is most consistent with the RPO requirement?

  1. Asynchronous replication with a fifteen-minute interval
  2. Nightly full backups shipped to a remote site
  3. Synchronous replication to a standby that can be promoted Correct answer.
  4. Hourly snapshot replication to object storage

Explanation

An RPO of zero means no committed transaction may be lost, which requires the write to be acknowledged only after it is durable at a second site, as with synchronous replication. The standby must also be promotable to satisfy the thirty-minute RTO.

Question 33Data Resilience

A disaster recovery plan lists a warm standby in a second region. Which statement correctly describes the state of that standby before a declared disaster?

  1. Only physical media are shipped to the second region on a schedule
  2. A full production-scale environment runs and serves live traffic continuously
  3. Core infrastructure and data are provisioned and kept current, but production-scale capacity is not running Correct answer.
  4. Nothing is provisioned in the second region until the disaster is declared

Explanation

A warm standby keeps the essential infrastructure and replicated data ready while scaling back or powering down production capacity, so recovery requires a short ramp-up. This sits between a pilot light, which keeps minimal components running, and a hot standby, which runs at full scale.

Question 34Data Resilience

A backup administrator notices that the only copy of a critical file server's data is a single full backup taken six months ago, with no subsequent backups succeeding. Which risk is most immediate?

  1. The backup set may exceed the recovery point objective by a large margin Correct answer.
  2. The backup will fail restore testing because of media rotation
  3. The repository will exceed its deduplication ratio
  4. The RTO will automatically improve

Explanation

With no successful backups for six months, any recovery would lose up to six months of changes, which is a severe RPO breach. The immediate exposure is data loss, not media rotation behavior, capacity ratios, or recovery speed.

Question 35Data Resilience

A regulated firm must retain financial transaction records for seven years and prove they were not altered after creation. Which combination best satisfies both requirements?

  1. Daily incremental backups with a thirty-day retention
  2. Nightly snapshots kept for one week
  3. Synchronous replication to a second data center
  4. Write-once archival storage with integrity hashes and retention locks Correct answer.

Explanation

Retention for seven years requires an archive with a matching retention period, and proving non-alteration requires integrity verification such as hashes plus write protection. Short backup retention windows and replication address availability, not long-term integrity attestation.

Question 36Data Resilience

A team must protect a virtualized environment where an attacker may delete snapshots through the hypervisor management plane. Which control most directly limits the blast radius?

  1. Storing backups in a separate repository with credentials and network paths independent of the hypervisor Correct answer.
  2. Enabling deduplication on the hypervisor datastore
  3. Increasing the snapshot retention count in the hypervisor
  4. Taking more frequent hypervisor snapshots

Explanation

If the management plane is compromised, any protection that lives inside it can be destroyed, so backups must sit in a separate trust domain with independent authentication and network access. More snapshots or longer retention inside the same plane simply gives the attacker more to delete.

Question 37Data Resilience

A restore of a large database from object storage is projected to take nine hours, but the service RTO is four hours. Which change most directly closes the gap?

  1. Shortening the backup retention period
  2. Adding more compression to the backup files
  3. Keeping a warm standby with continuously applied changes that can be promoted Correct answer.
  4. Increasing backup frequency to every hour

Explanation

The gap is recovery speed, so the fix must reduce time to service, which a continuously updated standby achieves by avoiding a full data restore. Backup frequency affects how much data is lost, not how quickly the service returns.

Question 38Data Resilience

An organization runs active-active across two regions with synchronous replication. A network partition isolates the regions while both remain healthy. What is the central resilience decision the operators face?

  1. How to preserve availability without allowing both regions to accept conflicting writes Correct answer.
  2. Whether to fail over to backups taken the previous night
  3. How to reduce the deduplication ratio across regions
  4. Whether to increase the backup retention period

Explanation

When a synchronous link breaks, the system must choose between availability and consistency, typically by quiescing one side or requiring quorum so that two divergent write histories cannot form. Backups, retention, and deduplication do not resolve the split-brain risk.

Question 39Data Resilience

A backup catalog is lost while the backup data volumes remain intact. Which capability determines how quickly the environment can be recovered?

  1. The ability to rebuild the catalog by rescanning or importing the backup data Correct answer.
  2. The number of deduplication clients configured
  3. The compression ratio of the backup data
  4. The encryption key rotation schedule

Explanation

Without a catalog, the recovery team must reconstruct the index of what exists and where, either by importing metadata or rescanning the media, so that capability sets the recovery pace. The data itself is intact, so the constraint is metadata reconstruction rather than storage efficiency or key policy.

Question 40Data Resilience

A resilience team is asked to justify why it retains multiple recovery points rather than only the latest one. Which argument is most defensible?

  1. Corruption or malicious encryption may already be present in the latest point, so earlier points provide a clean fallback Correct answer.
  2. Multiple recovery points eliminate the need for restore testing
  3. Retaining more points reduces storage consumption
  4. Older recovery points restore faster than recent ones

Explanation

The value of a retention chain is that damage may not be discovered immediately, so the team needs a recovery point from before the corruption or encryption occurred. Older points are generally slower to restore and increase storage use, and they never remove the need for testing.

Question 41Identity Resilience

In an identity resilience strategy, which principle best describes the purpose of maintaining a secondary identity provider alongside the primary one?

  1. It guarantees that no user credentials are ever stored in the directory
  2. It removes the need for any authentication logging on the primary provider
  3. It provides a fallback authentication path if the primary provider becomes unavailable Correct answer.
  4. It permanently replaces the primary provider after the first failover event

Explanation

Identity resilience focuses on keeping authentication and authorization available when a component fails. A secondary identity provider offers an alternate path so users can still authenticate during an outage of the primary. It does not eliminate logging, remove credential storage, or automatically become the permanent provider.

Question 42Identity Resilience

An organization wants to reduce the blast radius of a compromised service account. Which control most directly limits what that account can reach if its credentials leak?

  1. Applying least-privilege scoping and short-lived credentials to the account Correct answer.
  2. Renaming the service account to a less predictable string
  3. Increasing the account password length to the maximum allowed
  4. Enabling verbose debug logging on the account's host

Explanation

Least privilege limits the resources the account can access, and short-lived credentials shrink the window in which leaked secrets remain usable. Together they directly reduce blast radius. Password length, logging, and naming affect other properties but do not constrain reachable resources.

Question 43Identity Resilience

Which statement accurately describes the role of a break-glass account in identity resilience planning?

  1. It is a backup copy of the primary directory database stored offline
  2. It is a temporary account automatically deleted after first login
  3. It is an emergency access path with tightly controlled, monitored, and audited use Correct answer.
  4. It is a shared everyday login used by the whole operations team

Explanation

A break-glass account exists to restore access when normal authentication paths fail. Because it bypasses usual controls, its credentials must be tightly held, its use monitored, and every invocation audited. It is not a shared routine login, a database backup, or a single-use disposable account.

Question 44Identity Resilience

A security team wants credentials to remain protected even if an authentication database is exfiltrated. Which design choice best supports that goal?

  1. Storing passwords with a salted, memory-hard password hashing function Correct answer.
  2. Storing passwords in plaintext but restricting table access to administrators
  3. Storing passwords with a fast unsalted hash function
  4. Encrypting the database with a key stored in the same table

Explanation

Salted, memory-hard hashing makes offline cracking expensive even after a database theft, so exposed hashes resist recovery. Fast unsalted hashes and same-store encryption keys fall quickly to attackers. Plaintext storage offers no protection once the data leaves the system.

Question 45Identity Resilience

What is the primary resilience benefit of federating authentication with an external identity provider that supports multiple regions?

  1. Federation removes the need to define any authorization policies
  2. Federation ensures passwords are never transmitted over the network
  3. Federation makes session tokens valid indefinitely across all regions
  4. Users can authenticate through a surviving region if one region suffers an outage Correct answer.

Explanation

Multi-region identity providers replicate authentication services so that a regional failure does not halt sign-in. Federation routes users to a surviving region and preserves continuity. It does not eliminate authorization policy, extend token lifetime, or by itself change how passwords traverse the network.

Question 46Identity Resilience

Which practice most directly supports recovery of identity services after a ransomware event encrypts directory servers?

  1. Rotating the directory's display name in the management console
  2. Granting all users domain administrator rights to speed restoration
  3. Disabling multi-factor authentication during recovery
  4. Keeping immutable, tested backups of directory data and configuration Correct answer.

Explanation

Immutable backups that are isolated from the production environment and regularly tested allow restoration without paying attackers or rebuilding from scratch. Disabling MFA or over-granting privileges increases risk during recovery. Renaming has no bearing on restoration.

Question 47Identity Resilience

Why should an identity resilience plan include regular testing of failover between primary and secondary authentication paths?

  1. Testing permanently disables the primary provider so the secondary must be used
  2. Testing reveals configuration drift and latent failures before a real outage occurs Correct answer.
  3. Testing removes the need to document recovery procedures
  4. Testing guarantees that no user will experience a login delay during an outage

Explanation

Failover paths often degrade silently through configuration drift, expired certificates, or stale replication. Exercising them surfaces these latent failures while impact is low. Testing does not disable the primary permanently, replace documentation, or guarantee zero user delay.

Question 48Identity Resilience

Which characteristic distinguishes a resilient identity architecture from one that is merely highly available?

  1. It avoids all automation so that changes are reviewed manually
  2. It stores all credentials in one central unbacked-up store
  3. It uses only a single identity provider to reduce complexity
  4. It can degrade gracefully and recover from partial failures while preserving core authentication Correct answer.

Explanation

Resilience goes beyond uptime to include graceful degradation, containment of partial failures, and recovery of essential identity functions. Single-provider designs, manual-only change, and unbacked-up central storage all undermine that capability. Resilience assumes failures will occur and plans for them.

Question 49Identity Resilience

A company issues hardware security keys to administrators. Which property of these keys most improves identity resilience against phishing?

  1. They store the user's password in plaintext for convenience
  2. They broadcast authentication codes over nearby Bluetooth by default
  3. They remove the need for any server-side session management
  4. They are bound to the relying party's origin so credentials cannot be replayed to a look-alike site Correct answer.

Explanation

Origin-bound authenticators such as FIDO2 security keys cryptographically tie assertions to the legitimate relying party, so a phishing site cannot replay them. Storing plaintext passwords, broadcasting codes, or eliminating session management are not resilience benefits and introduce risk.

Question 50Identity Resilience

During a regional cloud outage, an organization's primary identity provider is unreachable. Which sequence best preserves authentication continuity while maintaining security?

  1. Issue shared local administrator credentials to all staff until service returns
  2. Disable MFA globally, then restore the primary provider at leisure
  3. Fail over to the secondary provider with pre-provisioned trust, then revalidate sessions after recovery Correct answer.
  4. Suspend all access until the primary provider returns, regardless of duration

Explanation

Pre-provisioned trust in a secondary provider allows a controlled failover that keeps MFA and policy intact, and revalidating sessions after recovery closes any gaps opened during the outage. Disabling MFA or issuing shared credentials trades resilience for risk. Full suspension may be unnecessary when a tested fallback exists.