Question

Difficulty: MediumAuthentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA)

An enterprise security engineer is auditing identity lifecycle management and access control workflows across the organization. Match each operational access activity on the left with its corresponding identity management or AAA (Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting) component on the right.

  • A remote worker enters their user principal name (UPN) into a VPN client login window to claim an identity.Identification
  • An Identity Provider verifies a user's identity by validating a FIDO2 hardware security key challenge-response.Authentication
  • A network access server checks an Active Directory group membership policy to assign dynamic VLAN permissions to a connected device.Authorization
  • A centralized SIEM ingests RADIUS session logs containing connection start times, total bytes transferred, and disconnect reasons.Accounting

Answer

Entering a UPN maps to Identification; validating FIDO2 credentials maps to Authentication; enforcing dynamic VLAN access rights maps to Authorization; and recording connection metrics and duration maps to Accounting.
Each operational scenario directly aligns with a specific phase in identity and access governance: entering a UPN claims an identity (Identification); verifying FIDO2 credentials proves the claim (Authentication); evaluating group policies to set network privileges grants access boundaries (Authorization); and recording session metrics to SIEM maintains an audit log (Accounting).

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the first scenario (entering UPN).
Providing a username or UPN asserts a claim of identity without proof.
Identification is the process of presenting an identity claim to a system.
2
Analyze the second scenario (FIDO2 hardware key validation).
Cryptographically verifying the claim proves identity authentic state.
Authentication is the verification step that tests presented credentials.
3
Analyze the third scenario (group membership policy for dynamic VLAN assignment).
Determining privileges and applying access restrictions based on policy.
Authorization determines what rights, permissions, and resources an authenticated identity can access.
4
Analyze the fourth scenario (logging RADIUS connection start/end metrics).
Recording resource consumption and session duration for auditability.
Accounting monitors, tracks, and logs user activity and resource usage.

Key Concept

Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) Framework and Identification
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