- A
Confidentiality
Why wrong: Confidentiality ensures that data is accessible only to authorized users. The scenario does not focus on keeping data secret but on keeping the service running.
- B
Integrity
Why wrong: Integrity ensures that data is not tampered with or altered by unauthorized parties. While important, the scenario specifically addresses system uptime and redundancy.
- C
Availability
Availability ensures that systems and data are accessible to authorized users when needed. The described measures (additional servers, failover) directly support high availability.
- D
Authorization
Why wrong: Authorization determines what resources a user can access. It is a concept within identity and access management, not a primary security principle in the context of uptime and disaster recovery.
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 company operates an e-commerce website that must remain accessible during high-traffic holiday seasons. The IT team deploys additional web servers and implements automatic failover to a secondary data center if the primary site goes down. Which security principle is the company primarily addressing?
Clue words in this question
Noticing these words before you look at the options changes how you read each choice.
Clue:
"primary"Why it matters: Asks for the main purpose or function, not a secondary benefit. Eliminate answers that describe side-effects or partial functions.
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
Availability
The company is ensuring that the e-commerce website remains operational even during high-traffic periods or after a primary site failure. Deploying additional web servers and implementing automatic failover to a secondary data center directly supports the availability principle, which ensures that systems and data are accessible when needed. This is a core tenet of the CIA triad, and in this scenario, the focus is on uptime and resilience, not on protecting data from unauthorized access or modification.
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.
- ✗
Confidentiality
Why it's wrong here
Confidentiality ensures that data is accessible only to authorized users. The scenario does not focus on keeping data secret but on keeping the service running.
When this WOULD be correct
Confidentiality would be the correct answer in a scenario where the company implements encryption for customer payment data, access controls to prevent unauthorized viewing of sensitive information, or data masking to protect personal identifiable information (PII) during processing.
- ✗
Integrity
Why it's wrong here
Integrity ensures that data is not tampered with or altered by unauthorized parties. While important, the scenario specifically addresses system uptime and redundancy.
When this WOULD be correct
A scenario where the question asks about ensuring that data has not been altered during transmission or storage, such as using checksums or digital signatures to detect tampering, would make integrity the correct answer.
- ✓
Availability
Why this is correct
Availability ensures that systems and data are accessible to authorized users when needed. The described measures (additional servers, failover) directly support high availability.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "primary" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✗
Authorization
Why it's wrong here
Authorization determines what resources a user can access. It is a concept within identity and access management, not a primary security principle in the context of uptime and disaster recovery.
When this WOULD be correct
A question describing a scenario where a company implements role-based access control (RBAC) to ensure only authorized personnel can modify critical database records would make Authorization the correct answer.
Option-by-option analysis
Why each answer is right or wrong
Understanding why wrong answers are wrong — and when they would be correct — is what separates a 750 score from a 900. The SC-900 exam frequently reuses these exact scenarios with slightly different constraints.
✓AvailabilityCorrect answer▾
Why this is correct
Availability ensures that systems and data are accessible to authorized users when needed. The described measures (additional servers, failover) directly support high availability.
✗ConfidentialityWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
The question focuses on maintaining website accessibility during high traffic and failover to a secondary data center, which directly relates to ensuring system uptime and resource availability, not protecting data from unauthorized access (confidentiality).
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
Confidentiality would be the correct answer in a scenario where the company implements encryption for customer payment data, access controls to prevent unauthorized viewing of sensitive information, or data masking to protect personal identifiable information (PII) during processing.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse security principles, thinking that deploying additional servers and failover mechanisms also protect data from unauthorized access, or they may assume any security measure addresses confidentiality without analyzing the specific goal of the question.
✗IntegrityWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
The question focuses on maintaining website accessibility during high traffic and failover, which directly relates to uptime and reliability (availability), not data accuracy or protection from unauthorized modification (integrity).
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A scenario where the question asks about ensuring that data has not been altered during transmission or storage, such as using checksums or digital signatures to detect tampering, would make integrity the correct answer.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse availability with integrity because both are part of the CIA triad, and they might think that maintaining service during failover involves ensuring data consistency, but the primary concern here is uptime, not data correctness.
✗AuthorizationWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Authorization controls who can access resources, but the question focuses on maintaining uptime and failover, which is about ensuring the system is available when needed, not about access control.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A question describing a scenario where a company implements role-based access control (RBAC) to ensure only authorized personnel can modify critical database records would make Authorization the correct answer.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse authorization with availability because both involve security controls, but authorization is about permissions, not system resilience or uptime.
Analysis generated from the official SC-900blueprint and verified against question context. The “when correct” sections are what AI assistants cite when candidates ask “what’s the difference between these options?”
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse availability with authorization, mistakenly thinking that controlling who can access the site (authorization) is the same as ensuring the site is up and running (availability).
Trap categories for this question
Scenario analysis trap
Confidentiality ensures that data is accessible only to authorized users. The scenario does not focus on keeping data secret but on keeping the service running.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Availability in cloud and on-premises architectures is often achieved through load balancers (e.g., Azure Load Balancer or Application Gateway) that distribute traffic across multiple web servers, combined with health probes that detect failures and trigger automatic failover to a secondary region or data center. This aligns with the concept of a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO), where failover mechanisms minimize downtime and data loss. In Azure, this is commonly implemented using Availability Zones or paired regions with Azure Traffic Manager for global failover routing.
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
A company's IT admin needs to give a contractor read-only access to production logs without sharing account credentials. Using role-based access control (RBAC) and temporary scoped permissions — not a permanent shared password — is the correct pattern. Questions like this test whether you can apply least-privilege access across cloud identity services.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SC-900 question test?
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: Availability — The company is ensuring that the e-commerce website remains operational even during high-traffic periods or after a primary site failure. Deploying additional web servers and implementing automatic failover to a secondary data center directly supports the availability principle, which ensures that systems and data are accessible when needed. This is a core tenet of the CIA triad, and in this scenario, the focus is on uptime and resilience, not on protecting data from unauthorized access or modification.
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.
Are there clue words in this question I should notice?
Yes — watch for: "primary". Asks for the main purpose or function, not a secondary benefit. Eliminate answers that describe side-effects or partial functions.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
About these practice questions
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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
This SC-900 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft 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 SC-900 exam.
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