SC-900 Practice Question: Describe the concepts of security, compliance, and identity
This SC-900 practice question tests your understanding of describe the concepts of security, compliance, and identity. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A financial institution uses digital signatures to ensure that a transaction record has not been altered after it was processed. Which security principle is primarily addressed?
Why wrong: Confidentiality is about preventing unauthorized access to information, not about ensuring data has not been altered.
B
B. Integrity
Integrity ensures that data has not been tampered with or altered, which is directly addressed by digital signatures.
C
C. Availability
Why wrong: Availability ensures that systems and data are accessible when needed, which is not the primary focus of digital signatures.
D
D. Non-repudiation
Why wrong: Non-repudiation prevents a party from denying an action, but the main purpose of digital signatures in this scenario is to verify data integrity, not to prove who sent it.
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
B. Integrity
Digital signatures use asymmetric cryptography (e.g., RSA or ECDSA) to create a hash of the transaction record, which is then encrypted with the sender's private key. Any alteration to the record after signing would cause the hash verification to fail, directly ensuring data integrity. This is why option B is correct.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✗
A. Confidentiality
Why it's wrong here
Confidentiality is about preventing unauthorized access to information, not about ensuring data has not been altered.
✓
B. Integrity
Why this is correct
Integrity ensures that data has not been tampered with or altered, which is directly addressed by digital signatures.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
C. Availability
Why it's wrong here
Availability ensures that systems and data are accessible when needed, which is not the primary focus of digital signatures.
✗
D. Non-repudiation
Why it's wrong here
Non-repudiation prevents a party from denying an action, but the main purpose of digital signatures in this scenario is to verify data integrity, not to prove who sent it.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse non-repudiation (which focuses on proving the origin of the signature) with integrity (which focuses on proving the data has not been altered), but the question's wording 'has not been altered' points directly to integrity.
Trap categories for this question
Scenario analysis trap
Non-repudiation prevents a party from denying an action, but the main purpose of digital signatures in this scenario is to verify data integrity, not to prove who sent it.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Under the hood, a digital signature algorithm (e.g., ECDSA with SHA-256) computes a hash of the transaction data, then encrypts that hash with the signer's private key. The recipient decrypts the hash with the public key and recomputes the hash from the received data; a mismatch proves tampering. In practice, this is used in blockchain transactions and signed audit logs where even a single bit change invalidates the signature.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this SC-900 question in full detail.
Describe the concepts of security, compliance, and identity — This question tests Describe the concepts of security, compliance, and identity — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: B. Integrity — Digital signatures use asymmetric cryptography (e.g., RSA or ECDSA) to create a hash of the transaction record, which is then encrypted with the sender's private key. Any alteration to the record after signing would cause the hash verification to fail, directly ensuring data integrity. This is why option B is correct.
What should I do if I get this SC-900 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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