ISC2 CC Access Controls Concepts Practice Question
A retail chain wants store managers to approve refunds above $500, but the managers should not be able to approve their own refund transactions. The security team must enforce this separation in the point-of-sale system. Which access control model best fits this requirement?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is choosing role-based access control alone, when plain RBAC grants permissions by role without preventing one person from holding conflicting roles.
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
✓
Separation of duties enforced through constrained RBAC
The requirement is that one person must not both create and approve a refund, which is the principle of separation of duties. Constrained RBAC enforces it by making the refund initiation and refund approval roles mutually exclusive, so no single account can hold both. Label-based, role-only, and global rule models cannot express that interpersonal conflict.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Separation of duties enforced through constrained RBAC
Why this is correct
Separation of duties splits sensitive tasks among different people, and constrained RBAC enforces it by defining mutually exclusive roles so one account cannot hold both the initiating and approving permissions. This directly prevents a manager from approving their own refund while still allowing them to approve transactions created by others.
- ✗
Rule-based access control
Why it's wrong here
Rule-based access control applies global rules such as time-of-day or IP restrictions to all subjects uniformly. It can restrict when or where refunds are approved, but it cannot express the relationship between the person who created a transaction and the person approving it, so it fails to enforce the self-approval prohibition.
- ✗
Mandatory access control (MAC)
Why it's wrong here
MAC enforces access decisions through system-assigned labels such as classification levels, and users cannot alter those labels. The refund approval problem is about conflicting duties held by the same person rather than sensitivity labels, so a label-based model does not address the requirement that a manager cannot approve their own transaction.
- ✗
Role-based access control (RBAC)
Why it's wrong here
RBAC assigns permissions to roles such as store manager, and the manager would hold the refund approval permission through that role. RBAC alone does not prevent the same individual from both initiating and approving a refund, because the conflict is about duties rather than role membership, so it does not satisfy the separation requirement.
Quick reference
Access Control Model Comparison
| Model | Acronym | Who Controls Access? | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discretionary Access Control | DAC | Resource owner | Small teams, file shares |
| Mandatory Access Control | MAC | System / security labels | Classified govt / military |
| Role-Based Access Control | RBAC | Administrator (via roles) | Enterprise environments |
| Attribute-Based Access Control | ABAC | Policy engine (user + resource attributes) | Fine-grained, dynamic policies |
| Rule-Based Access Control | RuBAC | System rules / ACLs | Firewall rules, network ACLs |
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Access Control Fundamentals
Key term
Least privilege
Least privilege is a security principle that means giving users, systems, or programs only the minimum permissions they need to do their job and nothing more.
Key term
Role
A role is a named set of permissions that can be assigned to users or groups to control access to resources in an IT environment.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official ISC2 exam blueprint
This CC practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISC2 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 CC exam.