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Difficulty: MediumWorkstation Hardening and Best Practices

An IT technician is hardening a workstation located in a shared medical clinic treatment room. To mitigate the risk of unauthorized access when clinical staff temporarily step away from the active session, the technician must ensure the desktop automatically secures itself after three minutes of inactivity and requires user authentication to resume. Which of the following configuration settings directly accomplishes this security objective?

  1. Screen saver timeout set to 3 minutes with the requirement to display the logon screen on resume enabledAnswer
  2. B
    Account lockout duration set to 3 minutes in the Local Security Policy snap-in
  3. C
    User Account Control (UAC) set to prompt for credentials on the secure desktop
  4. D
    Built-in Guest account disabled using the Computer Management MMC snap-in

Answer

Screen saver timeout set to 3 minutes with the requirement to display the logon screen on resume enabled
Enabling a screen saver timeout with password protection on resume automatically locks an unattended desktop after a specified duration of inactivity. This requires the user to re-enter credentials before granting access, effectively preventing unauthorized physical access to sensitive data when staff step away.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the primary threat presented in the scenario
The risk is an unattended, active user session remaining accessible to unauthorized individuals when staff step away.
Hardening workstation policies requires mitigating unauthorized physical access during staff absence.
2
Evaluate operating system controls for automated inactivity locking
Configuring a short screen saver timeout paired with requiring logon/password on resume forces the OS to lock the desktop session upon reaching the inactivity threshold.
This specific setting directly secures an active session without requiring manual logoff.
3
Distinguish from secondary workstation security settings
Account lockout policies restrict password guessing attacks, UAC restricts unauthorized privilege escalation, and disabling Guest accounts restricts default login access.
None of these secondary controls automatically lock an existing active idle session.

Key Concept

Workstation Hardening via Screen Saver Lockout Policies
Estimated Time:1m 15s
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Topics

Workstation Hardening and Best Practices

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