ISC2 Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP) Practice Question

Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) with a 256-bit key provides security strength comparable to 3072-bit RSA while using far smaller keys and requiring much less CPU processing-benefits that are critical for constrained IoT hardware. Large-key RSA (for example, 4096-bit) delivers equivalent security only at a significantly higher cost in processing time, power, and bandwidth. Pre-shared symmetric keys such as 3DES do not offer scalable asymmetric authentication, and a simple SHA-256 hash with a shared secret is an HMAC, which cannot supply the public-key-based authentication required for mutual TLS. Therefore, ECDSA with a 256-bit curve is the best fit.