ISC2 Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP) Practice Question
Your organization is enabling multifactor authentication for field engineers who access an internal support portal from customer sites. The second factor must satisfy these constraints: it has to generate a unique code for every login, work even when no cellular or Wi-Fi service is available, incur minimal ongoing cost by using devices engineers already carry, and avoid the need for dedicated smart-card readers. Which MFA method best meets these requirements?
Send one-time passcodes via SMS to the engineers' registered mobile phone numbers.
Deploy a time-based one-time password (TOTP) software token delivered through a smartphone authenticator app.
Issue hardware smart cards containing X.509 certificates and require engineers to authenticate with a card reader.
Email a single-use authentication link to engineers each time they log in.
A time-based one-time password (TOTP) generated by a software token authenticator app fulfills every stated constraint. It produces a new numeric code for each login attempt, relies only on the phone's clock and a pre-shared secret, and therefore functions without any network connectivity. Because the app runs on engineers' existing smartphones, there is no additional hardware to purchase or manage.
SMS one-time codes depend on cellular connectivity and are considered less secure and can incur per-message costs. Smart cards with X.509 certificates provide strong security but require dedicated card readers and the expense of issuing physical tokens. Email one-time links need network access and do not meet the offline requirement. Thus, a TOTP software authenticator is the only option that aligns with all the constraints.
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ISC2 Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP)
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