hardMultiple Choice
220-1102 Practice Question: A company's cloud-based CRM application is…
A company's cloud-based CRM application is experiencing intermittent outages. The IT team suspects a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Which cloud characteristic is most directly impacted by such an attack?
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA A+ often tests the distinction between availability and other cloud characteristics, and the trap here is that candidates confuse 'broad network access' (which involves network connectivity) with 'availability' (which is about service uptime and accessibility), leading them to incorrectly select Option B.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Availability
A DDoS attack floods the CRM application with malicious traffic, overwhelming its resources and causing service disruption. This directly impacts the cloud characteristic of availability, which ensures that services remain accessible to authorized users when needed. In cloud computing, availability is often measured by uptime percentages and is critical for business continuity.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
On-demand self-service
Why it's wrong here
On-demand self-service lets consumers provision capacity without provider interaction; a DDoS flood does not disable that provisioning interface. It is tempting because rapid scaling is often cited as DDoS mitigation, and on-demand self-service would be correct if the scenario asked how a customer could quickly obtain extra capacity during an attack.
- ✗
Broad network access
Why it's wrong here
Broad network access describes services reachable over the network from diverse devices; it is not the characteristic a DDoS attack degrades. It is the correct answer when asked what enables access from anywhere, whereas a DDoS attack targets availability, the characteristic guaranteeing uptime and access.
- ✓
Availability
Why this is correct
A DDoS attack floods the CRM with malicious traffic, exhausting resources so legitimate users cannot connect. Availability, the guarantee that a system remains accessible when required, is therefore directly degraded. The stem's intermittent outages are the symptom of this characteristic being undermined, whereas elasticity, scalability and pay-as-you-go pricing remain unaffected.
- ✗
Resource pooling
Why it's wrong here
Resource pooling concerns the provider sharing physical hardware across tenants; a DDoS flood consumes network bandwidth and connection state, not the pooled-resource abstraction itself. It is tempting because multi-tenancy can amplify blast radius, and resource pooling would be the answer if the question asked which characteristic spreads an attack's impact across customers.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Windows Services Management
Key term
DDoS
A DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming it with a flood of internet traffic from multiple compromised systems.
Key term
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet, allowing users to access computing power, storage, and applications without owning physical hardware.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This 220-1202 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the 220-1202 exam.