IBM Security Verify Access V10.0 Deployment Advanced Practice Exam: Hard Questions 2025

An enterprise is designing IBM Security Verify Access (ISVA) to protect 300 internal web applications and multiple APIs. Requirements include: (1) no inbound connectivity from DMZ to internal network except established, tightly controlled flows, (2) centralized policy decisions and auditing, (3) ability to continue serving cached authorization decisions during short outages of the policy infrastructure, and (4) support for step-up authentication based on risk signals at the edge. Which architecture best satisfies these requirements with the fewest security exceptions?

A security architect must choose between two patterns for protecting a large microservices environment: (1) WebSEAL fronting a set of API gateways, or (2) WebSEAL as the primary edge with junctions directly to services. The environment requires consistent SSO for browser and non-browser clients, strong token translation (SAML/OIDC/JWT), and the ability to apply centralized access policies that consider claims and context. Which approach is most appropriate and why?

A deployment uses two WebSEAL instances behind a load balancer. Users intermittently lose their session after authenticating, especially when the load balancer reassigns them to a different WebSEAL node. The organization cannot enable source-IP persistence. What is the best corrective action to maintain session continuity and security?

After a certificate rotation, TLS connections from WebSEAL to a back-end application suddenly fail. The back-end team confirms their server certificate is valid and chains to an internal CA. WebSEAL logs indicate certificate validation failures. You must fix the issue without disabling TLS verification. What is the most appropriate action?

You are hardening a production ISVA deployment. A penetration test finds that sensitive headers from the back-end application (including internal server version details) are being exposed to clients through WebSEAL. The back-end cannot be modified quickly. What is the best mitigation that maintains functionality and minimizes risk?

An application uses large request bodies (multi-MB JSON) and long-lived responses (server-sent events). After enabling WebSEAL protection via a junction, clients see intermittent 502/504 errors during peak hours. Back-end health is normal, and errors correlate with increased concurrency. Which change is most likely to address the issue while preserving security controls?

A team implements step-up authentication: users authenticate with password for basic access, but must perform MFA when accessing a high-risk URL path. After rollout, some users are repeatedly prompted for MFA even after successfully completing it. The access policy uses attributes and session state. What is the most likely root cause and best corrective action?

You must design authorization for an application where access depends on user department, the client’s network zone, and the presence of a specific OIDC claim provided by an external IdP. The customer wants a single policy definition reused across multiple WebSEAL instances and environments (dev/test/prod) with minimal duplication and clear governance. Which approach best meets these requirements?

A WebSEAL-protected application requires the original client IP for security analytics. However, after adding a load balancer and WebSEAL, the application only sees the proxy IP. The load balancer already inserts X-Forwarded-For, but the application still reports WebSEAL’s IP. You need a robust solution without trusting arbitrary client-supplied headers. What should you do?

In a production cluster, authentication latency spikes and occasionally fails during directory maintenance windows. WebSEAL logs show intermittent LDAP bind/search failures, while Policy Server remains healthy. The directory team confirms brief periods of slow response but no full outage. You must improve resilience without relaxing authentication requirements. Which action is most appropriate?