hardMultiple Choice
CISA Practice Question: Is evaluating a cloud-based identity as a service…
An organization is evaluating a cloud-based identity as a service (IDaaS) for single sign-on (SSO). Which of the following security concerns is MOST critical to address?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often focus on technical protocol details like encryption (Option A) or operational risks like downtime (Option C), but the CISA exam emphasizes that the most critical security concern in any federated identity system is the protection of the identity provider's root of trust—its credentials—because a compromise there negates all other controls.
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
✓
Compromise of the identity provider's credentials
The compromise of the identity provider's (IdP) credentials is the most critical security concern because the IdP acts as the central trust anchor for all SSO transactions. If an attacker gains control of the IdP's signing key or administrative credentials, they can forge SAML assertions for any user, bypassing all downstream authentication and gaining unauthorized access to every connected service provider (SP). This represents a single point of failure that undermines the entire SSO trust model.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Lack of encryption for SAML assertions
Why it's wrong here
SAML assertions are signed and commonly encrypted in transit by the protocol, so this is a configuration check rather than the dominant risk; the critical concern is that a compromised IDaaS becomes a single point of authentication failure across all federated applications. It tempts because assertion confidentiality is a real SAML hardening step, and would matter most when integrating a provider lacking TLS enforcement.
- ✗
Incompatibility with legacy applications
Why it's wrong here
Legacy application incompatibility affects deployment scope and user experience, not the security of the federated trust itself; the critical concern is the concentration of authentication risk in one provider. It tempts because protocol gaps such as missing SAML or OIDC support genuinely block SSO rollout, and would be the deciding factor when selecting which applications to onboard first.
- ✗
Downtime of the IDaaS provider
Why it's wrong here
Provider downtime is an availability risk mitigated by redundancy and fallback authentication, whereas the critical concern is that compromising the IDaaS grants access to every connected application. It tempts because an outage visibly halts all logins, and would be the priority when negotiating SLAs and resilience for a business-critical SSO deployment.
- ✓
Compromise of the identity provider's credentials
Why this is correct
In SSO, the identity provider becomes the single authentication authority, so its credential compromise grants attackers access to every connected application. This concentration of trust makes IdP credential compromise the most critical concern, outweighing other IDaaS risks in the stem.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CISA practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISACA 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 CISA exam.