You can use an Azure network security group to filter network traffic to and from Azure resources in an Azure virtual network. A network security group contains security rules that allow or deny inbound network traffic to, or outbound network traffic from, several types of Azure resources. For each rule, you can specify source and destination, port, and protocol.

In the Microsoft Purview compliance portal, administrators can tailor the user experience to match the roles and responsibilities of users in the organization. One key feature provided to enable this customization is the “Customize navigation” option.

According to Microsoft’s Security, Compliance, and Identity (SCI) learning paths and SC-series certification materials (especially SC-400 and SC-900), the Customize navigation option in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal is used to add, remove, or rearrange features in the navigation pane. This is especially useful for compliance or security administrators who want to streamline the portal for ease of use or hide sections that are not relevant to their work.

The SCI documentation states:

“The Microsoft Purview compliance portal provides a Customize navigation option that allows admins to personalize the left-hand navigation pane. This feature supports removing unused features or rearranging the order in which services appear, improving navigation efficiency and reducing clutter.”

This setting does not change permissions or access to features but purely controls the visibility and layout for users. The other listed options like Compliance Manager, Policies, and Settings are functional sections of the portal, but only "Customize navigation" is explicitly designed to manage the visual layout and visibility of the features shown in the portal's navigation pane.

When you register an application through the Azure portal, an application object and service principal are automatically created in your home directory or tenant.

In Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Threat Trackers (also known as threat analytics in the security portal) surface curated intelligence on prevailing and emerging cyberthreats, giving security teams insight into current campaigns, affected regions, and recommended actions. Threat Explorer (Explorer/Real-time detections) is the investigation workspace that provides near real-time visibility into detected phishing, malware, and other malicious email content, allowing analysts to identify, filter, and analyze recent threats and take remediation actions (e.g., purge messages). Anti-phishing protection is configured via anti-phishing policies and uses machine learning and impersonation settings (user and domain impersonation) to detect and block impersonation attempts and other phishing techniques in Exchange Online. Together, these capabilities map directly to the statements: Trackers = intelligence on active threats, Explorer = real-time analysis and reporting, and Anti-phishing = detection of impersonation.

Microsoft’s sensitivity labels (Microsoft Purview Information Protection) support user-driven labeling: “Users can manually apply sensitivity labels to files and emails” and organizations can also configure automatic or recommended labeling. This confirms that end users are permitted to choose a label themselves when policy allows. Microsoft also clarifies the cardinality for items: “A document or email can have only a single sensitivity label applied to it at a time.” Therefore, applying multiple sensitivity labels to the same file is not supported (labels are mutually exclusive on a given item). In addition to classification, labels can enforce protection and visual markings: “When you configure a sensitivity label, you can add protection settings such as encryption and content marking (headers, footers, and watermarks).” Word, Excel, and PowerPoint honor these content markings, so a label can automatically stamp a watermark on a Word document while embedding the label metadata for persistent protection. Together, these authoritative statements from Microsoft’s SCI documentation establish the correct responses: Yes (manual application), No (only one label per file), and Yes (labels can apply watermarks).

In Microsoft’s Security, Compliance, and Identity materials, Azure AD B2B collaboration is the feature designed for working with external organizations. Microsoft describes it as follows: “Azure AD B2B collaboration allows you to securely share your company’s applications and services with guest users from any other organization, while maintaining control over your own corporate data. Guest users sign in with their own work, school, or social identities, and appear as guest users in your directory.” This directly matches the sentence in the prompt—enabling collaboration with suppliers, partners, and vendors while ensuring that external users appear as guest users in the tenant.

By contrast, Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) is an on-premises directory service for Windows domain joined resources and does not provide cloud guest user collaboration. Active Directory forest trusts establish trust relationships between AD DS forests for resource access, not modern cloud guest access using Conditional Access, MFA, or entitlement processes. Azure AD B2C is for consumer/retail scenarios where you build customer-facing apps, managing their identities in a separate customer directory; it is not intended for partner collaboration within your enterprise tenant. Therefore, the capability that fits the statement—external partner collaboration with users appearing as guest accounts—is Azure AD B2B.

Microsoft documents for Defender for Endpoint (MDE) describe it as an enterprise endpoint security platform that supports Windows 10/11, Windows Server, Linux, macOS, and mobile platforms (Android and iOS/iPadOS). The platform provides threat and vulnerability management, attack surface reduction, next-generation protection, endpoint detection and response, and automated investigation and remediation across those supported operating systems. Because MDE supports Windows client operating systems and servers, it can also be used on Azure virtual machines that run supported Windows versions; onboarding methods include local scripts, Microsoft Endpoint Manager, or cloud integrations, allowing VM endpoints to receive the same protection and EDR capabilities as physical devices.

By contrast, malware scanning in SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams is provided by Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (Safe Attachments for SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams)—a different service within the Microsoft 365 Defender family. This service analyzes files as they are uploaded or shared to detect and block malicious content in collaboration workloads, which is outside the scope of MDE’s endpoint-focused protections. Therefore: Android protection (Yes), Azure VMs running Windows 10 (Yes), and SharePoint Online anti-virus protection by MDE (No, handled by Defender for Office 365).

Microsoft’s Identity Protection provides risk-based detections and automated policies—not group management. Microsoft Learn explains that Identity Protection “uses detections to identify potential vulnerabilities affecting your organization’s identities” and exposes user risk and sign-in risk for policy decisions. It does not support adding users to groups by “risk level”; group membership is handled by static or dynamic rules based on directory attributes, while risk is a transient signal surfaced to policies.

Identity Protection includes specific detections such as “Leaked credentials”, where Microsoft’s threat intelligence finds credentials “on the dark web or other dumps,” and flags the affected account as risky. This directly confirms the ability to detect whether credentials have been exposed publicly.

For enforcement, Identity Protection policies and Conditional Access can require stronger authentication when risk is present. The documentation states that you can configure policies to “require multi-factor authentication for sign-ins assessed as risky” and use Conditional Access conditions like User risk or Sign-in risk with the grant control Require multi-factor authentication. Thus, Identity Protection signals can invoke MFA based on risk, but they do not place users into groups.

Microsoft’s security and compliance learning content explains that digital signatures are built on public key (asymmetric) cryptography. In this model, each identity has a key pair: a private key that is kept secret and a public key that can be shared. The signing operation is performed with the private key to produce a signature bound to the content and the signer’s identity. Verification is then performed by anyone who has access to the corresponding public key, which mathematically validates the signature and confirms both integrity (the content wasn’t altered) and authenticity (it was signed by the holder of the private key). SCI materials (covering Microsoft Purview Information Protection, Azure Key Vault/PKI concepts, and identity fundamentals) emphasize that the private key must never be disclosed or required for verification; only the public key is used to validate signatures and certificates. This is the same principle used across Microsoft 365 for certificate-based trust, code signing, and document signing: sign with the private key; verify with the public key. Therefore, statements one and two are true, and the statement claiming verification requires the private key is false.

In Microsoft’s Security, Compliance, and Identity guidance, Microsoft Defender for Identity (formerly Azure ATP) is explicitly described as “a cloud-based security solution that leverages your on-premises Active Directory signals to identify, detect, and investigate advanced threats.” The service deploys lightweight sensors on domain controllers to collect and analyze Active Directory (AD) authentication and activity data. Using behavioral analytics and built-in detections, it helps security teams surface indicators of compromised identities, lateral movement, pass-the-ticket/NTLM relay, and other identity-driven attack techniques. Documentation further explains that Defender for Identity “profiles and learns entity behavior,” correlates events, and raises security alerts with investigation timelines and evidence to accelerate incident response in hybrid environments.

This precisely matches the sentence in the prompt: the only Microsoft security product whose core purpose is to use on-premises AD signals to identify, detect, and investigate advanced threats is Defender for Identity. By contrast, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint focuses on endpoint prevention and EDR; Microsoft Defender for Office 365 protects email and collaboration workloads from phishing and malware; and Microsoft Cloud App Security (now Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps) operates as a CASB for app discovery, control, and session monitoring. Therefore, aligning with SCI study guides and product descriptions, the correct completion is Microsoft Defender for Identity.

Multi-factor authentication is a process where a user is prompted during the sign-in process for an additional form of identification, such as to enter a code on their cellphone or to provide a fingerprint scan.

Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management is designed to identify, investigate, and act on risky activities by internal users—for example data exfiltration, data theft, policy violations, and user sentiments/signals that may indicate insider risk. SCI documentation explains that Insider Risk policies analyze signals such as file downloads, copying to USB, sharing to personal cloud, printing, or anomalous activity following events like performance warnings or resignation notices. Because it focuses on insider behaviors, it is not used to detect external threat vectors like phishing scams; those are addressed by Microsoft Defender for Office 365 and related anti-phishing protections—hence statement 1 is No. The solution is accessed in the Microsoft Purview (formerly Microsoft 365) compliance center under Insider risk management, where admins configure policies, alerts, and workflows—so statement 2 is Yes. Finally, its core purpose includes detecting and investigating potential data leaks by disgruntled or departing employees, using built-in policy templates (e.g., Data theft by departing employee, Data leaks), making statement 3 Yes.

Microsoft states that Security defaults are baseline protections in Azure Active Directory (now Microsoft Entra ID) that “make it easier to help protect your organization from identity-related attacks.” One of the core behaviors is that security defaults “require all users to register for Azure AD Multi-Factor Authentication,” and enforce “multi-factor authentication for all users,” with special emphasis that “administrators are required to do multi-factor authentication.” Security defaults also “block legacy authentication” and add protections for privileged operations, but the universal control that applies to every user is MFA. Importantly, enabling security defaults does not turn on paid capabilities such as Azure AD Identity Protection or Privileged Identity Management (PIM); those are separate, premium features. The baseline is intentionally simple and tenant-wide: require MFA registration, challenge with MFA when risk or sensitive operations are detected, and reduce exposure by disabling legacy protocols. Therefore, when you enable security defaults, multi-factor authentication (MFA) will be enabled for all Azure AD users, aligning with Microsoft’s guidance that security defaults “help protect all organizations by requiring MFA and disabling legacy authentication.”

Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager is designed to give organizations a continuous view of their compliance posture. In Microsoft’s Security, Compliance, and Identity guidance, Compliance Manager is described as a capability that assesses your compliance posture against regulatory standards and data protection baselines and updates the compliance score as you implement or fail controls. The platform aggregates signals from assessments, controls, and improvement actions, then recalculates your compliance score as evidence is collected and actions are marked complete or tested. Because these evaluations are tied to live improvement actions and mapped controls (such as access, data protection, and governance controls), your organization’s status isn’t limited to a fixed reporting cycle; rather, it reflects ongoing progress and gaps across supported regulations and standards.

SCI study materials also emphasize that the score is not a one-time audit: it’s a running indicator of risk reduction and control implementation. As you address recommendations, add or update evidence, or connect automated tests where available, the score and related dashboards refresh to show the latest compliance state. This makes Compliance Manager suitable for continuous assessment, enabling organizations to monitor posture, prioritize work, and demonstrate incremental improvements over time—hence, it assesses compliance data continually for an organization.

In Microsoft’s SCI learning content, the core objective of protecting information is framed by the CIA triad. Microsoft explains that “confidentiality, integrity, and availability are foundational security principles.” Within this model, integrity is described as the assurance that information remains trustworthy and unchanged from its intended state. The SCI materials state that integrity means “preventing unauthorized modification and ensuring the accuracy and completeness of data.” When a requirement says, “ensuring that the data you retrieve is the same as the data you stored,” it directly maps to this integrity principle—verifying that data hasn’t been altered, corrupted, or tampered with during storage or transmission.

Microsoft’s guidance further highlights that integrity is supported by controls that “detect or prevent unauthorized changes,” including cryptographic hashes, checksums, and digital signatures that can “provide proof that content hasn’t been modified.” By contrast, confidentiality focuses on restricting access (for example, through least privilege and encryption), and availability focuses on “reliable and timely access to information and systems.” Because the scenario emphasizes that the retrieved data is identical to the stored data, it is not about access or uptime but about preserving correctness and detecting alteration—which is precisely the integrity objective in Microsoft’s Security, Compliance, and Identity guidance.

Microsoft’s official description of Azure Key Vault in the Security, Compliance, and Identity learning materials states that Key Vault is “a cloud service for securely storing and accessing secrets.” The same guidance clarifies that “a secret is anything you want to tightly control, such as API keys, passwords, or connection strings.” In addition to secrets, Key Vault provides key management: “Azure Key Vault helps safeguard cryptographic keys and secrets used by cloud applications and services.” It further explains that organizations can “generate, import, rotate, disable, and delete keys” and use them for operations such as “encrypt and decrypt, sign and verify, wrap and unwrap.” These excerpts confirm that Key Vault’s core capabilities include the secure storage and lifecycle management of secrets and cryptographic keys.

By contrast, the SCI content makes clear that infrastructure features like Azure DDoS Protection and Network Security Groups (NSGs) are networking/security controls delivered by Azure networking services, not Key Vault. Likewise, ARM templates are deployment artifacts stored in repositories such as Azure Repos or GitHub; Key Vault does not store or manage template files. Therefore, the two correct actions you can perform with Azure Key Vault—aligned with Microsoft’s documentation—are to store (and manage) keys and store (and manage) secrets.

In Microsoft’s hybrid identity model, organizations keep their authoritative identities in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) and surface those identities in Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD). Microsoft guidance explains that hybrid identity is implemented by synchronizing on-premises directory objects (users, groups, and selected attributes) into Azure AD using Azure AD Connect or Cloud Sync. Azure AD Connect is explicitly documented as the Microsoft tool that establishes and maintains synchronization between AD DS and Azure AD and is therefore used to implement hybrid identity—hence statement 1 is Yes. Hybrid identity does not require two Microsoft 365 tenants; the standard design is one Azure AD tenant connected to one or more on-premises AD forests, so statement 2 is No. For users to authenticate to Microsoft cloud resources with their on-premises identity, Azure AD must have a corresponding cloud identity object, which is achieved by directory synchronization; sign-in can then be handled by cloud authentication (Password Hash Synchronization or Pass-through Authentication) or by federation (e.g., AD FS). Because these sign-in options depend on synchronized identities being present in Azure AD, statement 3 is Yes. This aligns with SCI guidance that hybrid identity = synchronized identities + a chosen authentication method (PHS/PTA or federation).

Microsoft’s Zero Trust guidance in the Security, Compliance, and Identity (SCI) materials frames three core principles: “Verify explicitly,” “Use least-privilege access,” and “Assume breach.” The guidance explains that identity is the new control plane in cloud-based environments: identity becomes the primary security boundary, with access decisions evaluated continuously using signals such as user identity, device health, location, and risk. In Zero Trust, organizations must “verify explicitly”—that is, require strong authentication and explicit authorization for every access request, not just initial logon, and base decisions on the permissions and context presented. The model also directs organizations to “assume breach”, operating with the expectation that an attacker may already be inside the environment and therefore applying containment practices such as micro-segmentation, telemetry, and rapid detection and response. Conversely, the traditional notion of defining the perimeter by physical locations or network boundaries is explicitly rejected; the documentation emphasizes that network location is no longer a reliable trust signal and should not be treated as the primary boundary. Therefore, the statements that align with Microsoft’s Zero Trust principles are: Use identity as the primary security boundary (B), Always verify user permissions explicitly (C), and Always assume the user/system can be breached (D).

Microsoft Entra Conditional Access (CA) evaluates signals from the user, device, location, and risk to make access decisions. The platform explicitly notes that CA decisions occur after primary sign-in: “Conditional Access policies are enforced after the first-factor authentication has been completed.” This means a user must successfully present their initial credentials (e.g., password, Windows Hello, FIDO2) before the CA engine evaluates policy logic. Therefore, the statement that CA is evaluated before a user is authenticated is not correct.

Regarding scoping, CA can target ordinary and privileged identities. The assignment options allow administrators to aim policies at users, groups, and directory roles: “You can include or exclude users and groups… [and] include or exclude specific Azure AD directory roles from a Conditional Access policy.” Because Global Administrator is a directory role, policies can be applied to those accounts (with Microsoft’s best-practice guidance to maintain at least one excluded break-glass account to prevent lockout).

For signals/conditions, CA supports device platform filtering. The documented device platform condition states: “This condition is based on the operating system platform of the device… iOS, Android, Windows, macOS (and others).” Administrators commonly use this to require different controls (like MFA or compliant device) based on Android or iOS.

Putting these together:

CA can apply to Global Administrators (Yes).

CA is evaluated after first-factor authentication (No to “before”).

Device platform (e.g., Android/iOS) is a valid CA signal (Yes).

In Microsoft 365 Defender (Microsoft 365 security center), Incidents are designed to consolidate and correlate security signals so analysts can see the full scope of an attack. Microsoft’s documentation explains that an incident is “a collection of related alerts that, when viewed together, provide a richer context for the attack and its impact.” The service “automatically groups alerts that are likely to be associated with the same threat activity,” which allows security teams to investigate a single incident rather than many fragmented alerts. Microsoft further notes that incidents “aggregate alerts, affected assets (users, devices, mailboxes), evidences, and entities into one view,” helping analysts triage, investigate, and remediate more efficiently.

This is distinct from other areas in the portal: Reports provide trend and posture reporting; Hunting offers proactive, query-based threat hunting across raw data; and Attack simulator (in Defender for Office 365) is used to run training and awareness simulations (e.g., phishing), not to aggregate real alerts. Therefore, when you need to “view an aggregation of alerts that relate to the same attack” in the Microsoft 365 security center, the correct place is Incidents, which presents the correlated attack story and enables end-to-end response and remediation from a single, consolidated record.

In Microsoft cloud identity, access to Azure resources follows the classical order of authenticate, then authorize. Microsoft Learn defines the two steps clearly: “Authentication is the process of establishing the identity of a person or service,” while “Authorization is the process of determining what a person or service can do.” In an Azure sign-in, Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) first validates the user’s credentials (password, MFA, Conditional Access, device compliance, risk evaluation). Upon success, a security token is issued that proves the user’s identity. Only after this identity is established does Azure proceed to authorization, where the Azure Resource Manager evaluates role-based access control (RBAC) assignments to decide what actions are allowed. SCI guidance emphasizes this sequence for Zero Trust: “Verify explicitly” (authenticate with strong signals) and then “use least privilege access” (authorize by RBAC or Privileged Identity Management). Therefore, when users sign in to the Azure portal, the first step is authentication—verifying who they are. The subsequent step is authorization, which determines what resources and operations they can access based on roles, scope, and policy. This ordering underpins secure identity and access management across Microsoft 365 and Azure.

In Microsoft identity and access management terminology, federation refers to the establishment of a trust relationship between identity providers, which enables single sign-on (SSO) across different organizations or platforms.

According to the Microsoft Security, Compliance, and Identity (SCI) learning path, particularly in the SC-900 and SC-300 certifications, the following definition is provided:

“Federation is a means of establishing trust between two identity systems. This trust allows users from one domain to access resources in another domain without needing to authenticate again, typically using SAML, WS-Federation, or OAuth protocols.”

This concept is essential in cross-organization SSO scenarios, such as enabling users from one enterprise (or identity provider) to authenticate with services hosted in another, using existing credentials.

SCI documentation further states:

“Single sign-on (SSO) between multiple identity providers is enabled through federation protocols, which delegate authentication and allow token-based identity propagation across systems.”

The other options are not accurate in this context:

Integration is a vague term and not specific to SSO configuration.

Password hash synchronization and pass-through authentication are Azure AD authentication methods used for hybrid identity with on-premises AD, not for federating with external identity providers.

✅ Therefore, SSO configured between multiple identity providers is best classified as an example of federation.

 An external email address can be used to authenticate self-service password reset (SSPR). → Yes

 A notification to the Microsoft Authenticator app can be used to authenticate self-service password reset (SSPR). → Yes

 To perform self-service password reset (SSPR), a user must already be signed in and authenticated to Azure AD. → No

For Microsoft Entra self-service password reset (SSPR), users must register one or more authentication methods that can later be used when they forget their password or are locked out. Microsoft’s end-user guidance states that an email address option lets users configure “an alternate email address that can be used without requiring your forgotten or missing password,” and that this method is available only for password reset. In practice, this alternate address is typically a personal or external email (for example, Gmail), so using an external email to authenticate SSPR is valid.

SSPR can also use the Microsoft Authenticator app as an authentication method. Microsoft documents that Authenticator push notifications, including number matching, are supported for several scenarios, explicitly listing self-service password reset (SSPR) among them. This means a push notification to the app on the user’s device can be used to verify identity during SSPR.

Finally, SSPR is designed for situations where the user cannot sign in. Official SSPR process descriptions explain that users start from the “Can’t access your account?” or password-reset page, provide their username, and then use their registered methods to prove identity. They do not need to be already authenticated to Azure AD; SSPR exists precisely to recover access when sign-in fails.

In Microsoft’s Security, Compliance, and Identity learning content for Microsoft Defender for Cloud, the service is described as providing ongoing posture management and threat protection. The official description states that Defender for Cloud “continuously assesses your resources to identify security misconfigurations and weaknesses” and “continuously discovers and evaluates resources” across your subscriptions. The recommendations and secure-score updates are produced as the platform “continuously analyzes your environment using security policies and analytics,” surfacing issues the moment they’re detected and mapping them to remediation guidance. This continuous assessment model underpins Defender for Cloud’s cloud security posture management (CSPM) capability and ensures that newly created or modified resources are evaluated without waiting for a scheduled job. By design, there is no fixed interval (such as hourly, every 15 minutes, or daily) required to trigger assessments—policy-driven evaluation and data collection run as changes occur and signals are received. Therefore, the sentence “Microsoft Defender for Cloud assesses Azure resources ____ for security issues” is correctly completed with continuously, reflecting Microsoft’s emphasis on persistent, real-time security posture evaluation rather than periodic scans.

Microsoft describes hybrid identity as integrating on-premises Active Directory with Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) so that “your on-premises identities are synchronized to Azure AD” for a single identity across cloud and on-prem apps. In this model, directory objects (users, groups, and selected attributes) flow from on-premises AD to Azure AD using Azure AD Connect or Cloud Sync; this is the canonical direction for provisioning in hybrid environments. Microsoft further explains that while certain writeback features (such as password writeback, device or group writeback scenarios) are supported, cloud-created users do not automatically sync down to on-premises AD; account provisioning remains authoritative on-prem unless you deploy specific, limited writeback features—there is no default “user account creation from Azure AD to AD DS.” For authentication, Microsoft states that hybrid identity supports cloud authentication (Password Hash Synchronization or Pass-through Authentication) where Azure AD performs the sign-in, or federation with another identity provider (e.g., AD FS or a third-party IdP) where that provider validates credentials and issues tokens to Azure AD. These statements align with Microsoft’s SCI guidance on hybrid identity: on-prem to cloud sync is standard; automatic reverse user sync is not; and authentication can be handled by Azure AD or a federated IdP depending on the chosen sign-in method.

Microsoft’s identity guidance for Azure resources states there are two kinds of managed identities: system-assigned and user-assigned. The documentation describes that a system-assigned identity is scoped to a single resource and follows its lifecycle: “A system-assigned managed identity is created in Microsoft Entra ID and is tied to the lifecycle of that Azure service instance. When the resource is deleted, Azure automatically deletes the identity.” By contrast, a user-assigned identity is reusable across resources: “A user-assigned managed identity is a standalone Azure resource… It can be assigned to one or more Azure service instances and is managed independently of the resources that use it.”

Because the scenario requires multiple Azure web apps to use the same identity, the only managed identity type that supports this sharing model is the user-assigned managed identity. This allows you to grant RBAC permissions once to the identity and then attach that same identity to several App Service instances, simplifying secretless access to Azure resources (Key Vault, Storage, SQL, etc.) and providing centralized lifecycle and rotation management. Certificates or generic service principals would reintroduce credential management, while a system-assigned identity cannot be shared across multiple apps. Therefore, a user-assigned managed identity is the correct choice.

In Microsoft 365 Defender, security signals from across Microsoft 365 services are raised as alerts. Microsoft’s documentation defines an incident as “a collection of correlated alerts” that represent the end-to-end story of an attack. The incident object aggregates the related signals, entities, and evidence so analysts can triage and remediate holistically rather than handling individual alerts in isolation. Microsoft further explains that incidents “group together related alerts, assets, users, and evidence” to reduce noise and provide context for investigation, and that automated correlation “helps SOCs focus on what matters most” by stitching alerts from Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, Defender for Identity, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps into one case. Within an incident, analysts see a timeline, impacted assets and users, alert details, and recommended actions, and they can trigger response measures (for example, isolate device, block URL/file, or disable user). This contrasts with events (raw telemetry), vulnerabilities (exposure findings managed by Defender Vulnerability Management), and Microsoft Secure Score improvement actions (posture recommendations). Therefore, in the Microsoft 365 Defender portal, an incident is specifically a collection of correlated alerts, designed to streamline investigation and coordinated remediation across the Microsoft 365 security stack.

No

No

Yes

Microsoft states that Communication Compliance is administered in Microsoft Purview, not the Microsoft 365 admin center. The Learn article shows configuration and policy templates “in the Microsoft Purview portal” and directs admins to “configure Communication Compliance” there, confirming the management plane is the Purview compliance portal, not the M365 admin center.

Regarding supported locations, Microsoft lists the communication channels that policies can inspect: “Microsoft Teams… Exchange Online… Viva Engage… [and] Third-party sources.” SharePoint Online is not listed among supported channels, so SharePoint content isn’t monitored by Communication Compliance policies.

Finally, Communication Compliance includes built-in workflows to address findings. The Learn page explicitly provides a Remediate step: “Remediate Communication Compliance issues you investigate by using the following options:” such as “Notify the user” and “Escalate to another reviewer.” These actions demonstrate that the solution does more than detect; it supports remediation within the Purview portal workflow.

Exact extracts (selected):

“You can choose from the following policy templates in the Microsoft Purview portal.”

“Communication Compliance policies check… Microsoft Teams… Exchange Online… Viva Engage… Third-party sources.”

“Remediate Communication Compliance issues you investigate by using the following options: Notify the user… Escalate to another reviewer.”

In Microsoft guidance, network segmentation and isolation are core security principles. Azure virtual networks (VNets) are “a fundamental building block… that enable isolation and segmentation of resources,” and multiple VNets are commonly used to separate environments, business units, or security boundaries. This aligns with Zero Trust and SCI guidance that recommends isolating workloads to reduce blast radius and to apply least privilege and policy-based controls per boundary. Microsoft also emphasizes governance alignment, stating that enterprises should structure Azure resources so that policies, RBAC, and compliance requirements can be applied at appropriate scopes (management group, subscription, resource group, or network boundary). Deploying multiple VNets supports these goals by enabling per-environment policy assignment (for example, dev/test vs. production), differentiated security controls (such as NSGs, ASGs, and firewalls), and independent address spaces to prevent overlap across organizations or regions. Options A and D are not primary drivers: budgeting is handled at subscription/resource group scopes rather than VNet count, and a single VNet can already host and connect many resource types; creating multiple VNets is therefore primarily about governance and isolation that reduce risk and enforce organizational policies.

In Microsoft Azure, an NSG consists of ordered security rules evaluated by priority. The Azure documentation specifies that every rule includes identifying metadata and must be uniquely named within the NSG: “Each security rule has a name that is unique within the network security group.” Rule evaluation is deterministic: “Security rules are processed in priority order… once a rule matches traffic, processing stops.”

Azure creates several default security rules in every NSG to provide a safe baseline. These defaults are protected: “You can’t remove the default security rules, but you can override them by creating rules with a higher priority.” This means deletion of default rules is not allowed; administrators add custom rules with lower priority numbers to supersede the defaults as needed.

Regarding protocols, NSG rules can target specific L4/L3 protocols. The platform guidance states that the rule Protocol field supports TCP, UDP, ICMP, or Any: “For Protocol, specify TCP, UDP, ICMP, or Any.” Therefore, configuring rules to check TCP, UDP, or ICMP traffic types is fully supported.

Putting this together: (1) unique rule names are required (Yes), (2) default rules cannot be deleted (No), and (3) NSG rules can indeed be configured for TCP/UDP/ICMP (Yes). These behaviors align with Azure’s prescribed NSG design and management model used across Microsoft Security, Compliance, and Identity learning content.

In Microsoft’s Security, Compliance, and Identity guidance, Microsoft Cloud App Security (now Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps) integrates with Azure AD Conditional Access to provide Conditional Access App Control. This capability enables organizations to “monitor and control user sessions in real time” by routing traffic through a reverse proxy once a Conditional Access policy is triggered. With session controls, admins can enforce actions such as block, allow with inspection, apply download restrictions, require label application, or limit access to web apps based on context (user, device state, location, risk). SCI learning paths describe that Defender for Cloud Apps works with Conditional Access policies to provide session-based conditional access that “protects data in real time,” giving granular control after authentication while a session is active.

By comparison, Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM) focuses on just-in-time elevation and governance of privileged roles, not real-time in-app session control. Azure Defender (Defender for Cloud) provides cloud workload protection and posture management, not Conditional Access session enforcement. Azure Sentinel (Microsoft Sentinel) is a SIEM/SOAR platform for analytics, hunting, and automation and does not apply Conditional Access session policies. Therefore, the Microsoft product that uses Conditional Access policies to control sessions in real time is Microsoft Cloud App Security (Defender for Cloud Apps).

Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) is a cloud-based directory and identity platform. In Microsoft’s SCI materials, Entra ID is described as “Microsoft’s cloud-based identity and access management service that helps your employees sign in and access resources,” underscoring that it’s not deployed on-premises; instead, organizations can synchronize or federate with on-premises Active Directory using tools like Entra Connect. The same documentation explains that Entra ID is included with Microsoft 365 subscriptions, providing tenant identity services for apps such as Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Teams. Core capabilities listed include authentication, single sign-on (SSO), Conditional Access, device registration, and application access management, all of which classify Entra ID as an identity and access management (IAM) service. Thus: (1) on-premises deployment — No (it’s cloud-native), (2) provided with Microsoft 365 — Yes (a directory is created for each tenant), and (3) IAM service — Yes (it delivers identity, access, and governance controls used across Microsoft cloud services).

Security Center

In the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) for Azure, the methodology is organized into sequential stages that guide an organization from initial intent through operations. Microsoft describes the flow as: “Strategy → Plan → Ready → Adopt → Govern → Manage.” The guidance explains that before building landing zones or preparing environments (Ready), organizations should complete the Strategy and Plan work. Microsoft states that the framework “helps you create and align your business strategy, define business outcomes, and justify cloud adoption” in the Strategy stage; then, in Plan, you “translate that strategy into an actionable adoption plan, rationalize portfolios, and prepare a cloud adoption backlog.” Only after these two stages does the Ready phase occur, where you “prepare your cloud environment (landing zone) to host the workloads.”

Additionally, CAF emphasizes that Govern and Manage are ongoing disciplines that operate alongside and after adoption rather than preceding Ready: “Govern and Manage provide iterative guardrails and operational baselines that evolve as you adopt more workloads.” Therefore, the two phases addressed before the Ready phase are Define Strategy and Plan, aligning with Microsoft’s prescribed order and intent of the Cloud Adoption Framework methodology.

Biometrics templates are stored locally on a device. Reference:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/identity-protection/hello-for-business/hello-overview

In Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager, the built-in Compliance score and assessments are designed for ongoing, risk-based monitoring of your organization’s compliance posture. Microsoft’s SCI materials describe Compliance Manager as a solution that “helps you track, improve, and demonstrate your compliance posture” by mapping regulations and standards to improvement actions and assessments. The experience is not a one-time or periodic snapshot; it is intended to be continuous. As you implement controls, provide evidence, or when automated tests record results, “your score is updated as you complete actions,” reflecting current progress toward data protection and regulatory requirements.

Assessments in Compliance Manager persist over time and are maintained through continuous evaluation: actions can be automatically tested when supported (for example, configuration-based controls in Microsoft 365) or manually assessed on an ongoing basis by compliance teams. This design enables organizations to prioritize and remediate issues as they arise, rather than waiting for monthly or quarterly reviews. Because of this continuous scoring and reassessment model, Compliance Manager assesses compliance data continually for an organization, providing near real-time insight into control effectiveness and residual risk across standards such as GDPR, ISO 27001, and NIST frameworks.

Azure DDoS Protection Standard is a platform-native service designed to mitigate distributed denial of service attacks against Azure-hosted workloads that expose public IP addresses. Microsoft’s guidance explains that DDoS Protection Standard is “enabled on a virtual network” and, once enabled, “automatically protects resources within the virtual network with public IP addresses” (for example, Application Gateway, Azure Load Balancer, and virtual machines). The service is “tuned to the traffic patterns of the protected resources” and provides adaptive real-time mitigation with telemetry and attack analytics.

Critically, the scope of enablement is at the virtual network (VNet) level, not at the resource group level, and it does not apply to Azure Active Directory (Microsoft Entra ID) users or applications, which are identity services rather than network resources. Microsoft’s materials emphasize that by associating a DDoS protection plan to a VNet, you “protect all public IPs assigned to resources in that VNet”, giving layered protection alongside Azure’s always-on basic protections.

Therefore, the only option that correctly completes the sentence is virtual networks, because Azure DDoS Protection Standard is configured on, and provides coverage for, resources inside a VNet that have public endpoints—exactly matching Microsoft’s SCI/Azure security documentation.

You can use an Azure network security group to filter network traffic to and from Azure resources in an Azure virtual network. A network security group contains security rules that allow or deny inbound network traffic to, or outbound network traffic from, several types of Azure resources.

In Microsoft identity architecture, federation establishes trust between different identity providers to enable single sign-on (SSO) across organizational and platform boundaries. Microsoft Learn explains that federation uses standards such as SAML, WS-Federation, and OpenID Connect/OAuth 2.0 so a user can authenticate with their home identity provider and obtain tokens that are accepted by a relying party (the application or service). This trust relationship lets organizations share identities securely without copying passwords or synchronizing credentials, providing a seamless sign-in experience across multiple systems and clouds.

By contrast, Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) and a domain controller provide on-premises directory and authentication services primarily within a single Windows domain/forest using Kerberos/NTLM, not cross-provider SSO on their own. Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) manages just-in-time, approval-based elevation for roles and does not deliver SSO capabilities. Therefore, the technology explicitly intended to provide SSO across multiple identity providers is federation.

Microsoft’s hybrid identity guidance explains that Microsoft Entra Connect (formerly Azure AD Connect) is the tool used to synchronize identities from on-premises AD DS to a Microsoft Entra tenant, enabling hybrid identity. Microsoft states that hybrid identity is achieved by connecting your on-premises directory with your cloud directory so users have a single identity to access both environments. This does not require two Microsoft 365 tenants; rather, it requires one Microsoft Entra tenant integrated with your on-premises AD DS. For authentication models—Password Hash Synchronization (PHS), Pass-through Authentication (PTA), or federation (AD FS)—Microsoft specifies that directory synchronization is required so that user objects exist in Entra ID and can authenticate to cloud services while maintaining a consistent identity. Thus, Entra Connect is used to implement the synchronization underpinning hybrid identity; two M365 tenants are unnecessary; and synchronization between AD DS and Entra ID is required for authenticating hybrid identities across Microsoft cloud services.