SY0-701 Question 354
Single answerInteroperabilityA healthcare company is integrating a cloud-based identity provider with several on-premises and SaaS applications from different vendors. The security team wants users to authenticate once and access all approved applications without maintaining separate credentials in each system. The solution must work across heterogeneous platforms and reduce password sprawl while preserving centralized control over access decisions. Which technology is the BEST choice to meet this interoperability requirement?
- A
SAML
- B
WPA3
- C
RAID 5
- D
NAT
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The key requirement is interoperability for identity and access across diverse systems. In Security+ terms, this commonly points to federation standards such as SAML, which enables an identity provider to authenticate a user and pass assertions to service providers in different environments. This is widely used for enterprise SSO across SaaS and internal applications. Best-practice guidance from standards bodies and vendor documentation consistently describes SAML as a core federation technology for cross-domain and cross-platform authentication. By contrast, WPA3 addresses wireless security, RAID 5 addresses storage resilience, and NAT addresses network address translation. None of those solve the problem of interoperable authentication and authorization across heterogeneous applications.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is an open standard commonly used to exchange authentication and authorization data between an identity provider and service providers. In this scenario, SAML supports federated identity and single sign-on (SSO) across different vendors and platforms, which is exactly what interoperability requires. It helps centralize authentication while allowing multiple applications to trust the same identity source.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. WPA3 is a wireless network security standard used to protect Wi-Fi communications. Although it improves authentication and encryption for wireless access, it does not provide federated identity or cross-platform application SSO between cloud and on-premises services.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. RAID 5 is a storage technology that provides fault tolerance through disk striping with parity. It has no role in identity federation, authentication interoperability, or single sign-on. A candidate might choose it by confusing infrastructure availability with access management.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. NAT translates private IP addresses to public ones for network communication. While it can support connectivity between systems, it does not address identity interoperability, centralized authentication, or SSO. Selecting NAT would reflect a misunderstanding between network communication and identity federation.