hardMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
CISSP Practice Question: Implementing a secure multi-tenant cloud…
A company is implementing a secure multi-tenant cloud environment. The primary security requirement is that tenants cannot access each other's data even if the hypervisor is compromised. Which architecture best meets this requirement?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to choose MAC or VLANs because they associate them with isolation, but they fail to recognize that these controls operate at the OS or network layer and do not protect against a compromised hypervisor that has direct memory access.
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
✓
Use a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) such as Intel SGX to isolate tenant processes and memory.
A Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) like Intel SGX creates hardware-enforced enclaves that isolate tenant processes and memory at the CPU level. Even if the hypervisor is compromised, the enclave's memory is encrypted and inaccessible to the host OS or hypervisor, ensuring tenant data remains confidential. This directly meets the requirement that tenants cannot access each other's data despite a hypervisor breach.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Encrypt each tenant's data with a single master key stored in the hypervisor.
Why it's wrong here
This approach creates a critical single point of failure within the cloud infrastructure. If the hypervisor, which is part of the Trusted Computing Base (TCB), is compromised, the single master key becomes accessible to an attacker. This immediate exposure would render the encryption ineffective for all tenants' data, completely undermining multi-tenancy isolation and confidentiality guarantees. Secure multi-tenancy demands tenant-specific, isolated key management.
- ✓
Use a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) such as Intel SGX to isolate tenant processes and memory.
Why this is correct
A Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), such as Intel SGX, provides robust hardware-enforced isolation for tenant processes and memory regions. It creates secure "enclaves" where code and data are protected from unauthorized access, even by privileged software like the hypervisor or host operating system. This ensures that a compromise of the underlying cloud infrastructure or hypervisor does not allow an attacker to inspect or tamper with sensitive tenant data or execution within the enclave, providing a strong security boundary crucial for multi-tenant environments.
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Implement Mandatory Access Control (MAC) on the hypervisor.
Why it's wrong here
While Mandatory Access Control (MAC) on the hypervisor provides a strong policy-driven access control mechanism, its effectiveness is entirely dependent on the integrity of the hypervisor itself. If the hypervisor is compromised, an attacker can bypass or modify the MAC policies, gaining unauthorized access to tenant resources. Therefore, MAC alone does not provide sufficient isolation against a malicious or compromised hypervisor, which is a primary concern in secure multi-tenant cloud environments.
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Use VLANs to isolate tenant traffic at the network layer.
Why it's wrong here
VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks) are effective for segmenting network traffic and providing logical isolation between tenants at the data link layer. However, they only address network-level separation and do not provide any isolation for tenant processes, memory, or storage on the host server. A compromise of the hypervisor or underlying host operating system could allow an attacker to bypass VLAN segmentation, access other tenants' virtual machines, or directly access their memory and data.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CISSP 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 CISSP exam.