This CKAD practice question tests your understanding of application environment, configuration and security. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A developer wants to enforce that containers in a namespace cannot run as privileged. Which Pod Security Standard profile should they apply to the namespace?
privileged
Why wrong: privileged allows all, including privileged containers.
restricted
Why wrong: restricted also prevents privileged but is more strict than necessary.
baseline
baseline prevents privileged containers among other things.
custom
Why wrong: There is no custom standard; PSA defines three: privileged, baseline, restricted.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
baseline
Option C (baseline) is correct because the baseline Pod Security Standard (PSS) profile enforces the minimum restrictions necessary to prevent known privilege escalations, including the prohibition of privileged containers (i.e., `privileged: true` in the security context). This profile is designed to be applied to namespaces where most workloads run, blocking the most common security issues without breaking typical applications. The restricted profile would also block privileged containers but imposes additional constraints (e.g., dropping all capabilities, read-only root filesystem) that are not required by the question's specific goal.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
privileged
Why it's wrong here
privileged allows all, including privileged containers.
restricted
Why it's wrong here
restricted also prevents privileged but is more strict than necessary.
baseline
Why this is correct
baseline prevents privileged containers among other things.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
custom
Why it's wrong here
There is no custom standard; PSA defines three: privileged, baseline, restricted.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates often confuse the 'restricted' profile as the only option to block privileged containers, not realizing that 'baseline' also blocks them and is the appropriate choice when the goal is simply to prevent privileged escalation without imposing the full set of restricted constraints.
Detailed technical explanation
Pod Security Standards are implemented via admission controllers (e.g., PodSecurity admission plugin) that evaluate pods against policies defined at the namespace level using labels like `pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce: baseline`. The baseline profile specifically checks for `securityContext.privileged: true` and blocks it, while also preventing other escalations like hostPID, hostNetwork, and hostIPC access. In a real-world scenario, a team might apply baseline to a general-purpose namespace to allow typical application containers while still preventing the most dangerous privilege escalations, reserving restricted for high-security namespaces.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A junior network technician can log in to a core router but cannot reach the enable prompt or configuration mode. The AAA server is authenticating the login — but the authorisation policy only grants privilege level 1, not 15. Authentication (who you are) is working; authorisation (what you can do) is not.
What to study next
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FAQ
Application Environment, Configuration and Security — This question tests Application Environment, Configuration and Security — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: baseline — Option C (baseline) is correct because the baseline Pod Security Standard (PSS) profile enforces the minimum restrictions necessary to prevent known privilege escalations, including the prohibition of privileged containers (i.e., `privileged: true` in the security context). This profile is designed to be applied to namespaces where most workloads run, blocking the most common security issues without breaking typical applications. The restricted profile would also block privileged containers but imposes additional constraints (e.g., dropping all capabilities, read-only root filesystem) that are not required by the question's specific goal.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 25, 2026
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