CCSP Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Security Practice Question
A cloud architect is designing a multi-tenant environment. To ensure that a tenant's virtual machine cannot access another tenant's memory, which resource isolation technique should be enforced at the hypervisor level?
⚠ Common exam trap
CCSP often tests whether candidates confuse device isolation (IOMMU), CPU scheduling (pinning), or network isolation (VLANs) with memory isolation — the trap is picking a control that addresses a different resource than the one named in the question.
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
✓
Memory isolation via hardware-enforced page tables
Memory isolation via hardware-enforced page tables (using CPU features like Intel VT-x EPT or AMD-V NPT) ensures that each VM's memory is mapped in separate address spaces managed by the hypervisor, so a guest cannot address or read another guest's physical memory. This is the fundamental hypervisor-level mechanism that enforces memory isolation between tenants. It directly addresses the requirement that one tenant's VM cannot access another's memory.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
IOMMU for device isolation
Why it's wrong here
IOMMU isolates DMA-capable devices by remapping their memory accesses, preventing a passed-through device from reading arbitrary host memory; it does not partition guest physical memory between VMs. It is tempting because IOMMU is genuinely the correct control when the threat is a malicious PCIe device rather than a co-tenant VM.
- ✓
Memory isolation via hardware-enforced page tables
Why this is correct
Hardware-enforced page tables give each tenant VM its own second-level address translation, so the hypervisor maps guest physical addresses to distinct machine frames. This satisfies the stem's requirement that one tenant's VM cannot read another tenant's memory, since no shared mapping exists.
- ✗
CPU pinning
Why it's wrong here
CPU pinning binds vCPUs to physical cores to reduce scheduling jitter and cache contention, improving performance predictability; it does not prevent one VM reading another's memory. It is tempting because pinning is a real hypervisor-level isolation technique, and would be correct for latency-sensitive workloads needing deterministic CPU allocation.
- ✗
Network segmentation with VLANs
Why it's wrong here
VLANs segment Layer 2 broadcast domains and filter traffic between subnets, but they do not mediate CPU memory access; a tenant VM on the same VLAN could still read another's RAM. Segmentation is tempting because it isolates tenants logically, and it would be correct for limiting lateral network movement, not hypervisor memory isolation.
About these practice questions
This CCSP question is part of Courseiva's 934-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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 CCSP 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 CCSP exam.