SC-900 Microsoft Security Compliance and Identity Fundamentals Free Practice Exam Questions (2026 Updated)

Microsoft states that Azure AD Multi-Factor Authentication “adds a second form of verification” to sign-ins and supports multiple verification methods. The documented methods include Microsoft Authenticator app notifications or verification codes, text message (SMS) codes, and phone call verification. In Microsoft’s description, users can approve a push notification in the Microsoft Authenticator app or enter a code from the app; they can receive a text message containing a verification code; or they can answer a phone call to complete the challenge. Email verification and security questions are not listed as supported MFA methods for Azure AD sign-ins and are not valid second factors in Azure AD MFA. Consequently, the correct methods from the options provided are Phone call, Text message (SMS), and Microsoft Authenticator app. These align with Azure AD’s core MFA capabilities used in Conditional Access and per-user MFA to strengthen authentication beyond the password and to meet compliance and security requirements for strong user verification.

Microsoft Cloud App Security (now Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps) is Microsoft’s CASB that “discovers and controls shadow IT,” integrates with identity and endpoint signals, and enforces data protection in SaaS and custom apps. SCI materials describe three core use cases relevant here: (1) Discovery and control of shadow IT by analyzing network logs and app usage, rating risk, and applying governance—matching A. (2) Protect sensitive information hosted anywhere in the cloud via policies such as DLP, information protection label awareness, and integration with apps through API connectors—matching C. (3) Prevent data leaks to noncompliant apps and limit access to regulated data using Conditional Access App Control and session controls that can block download, apply protections, or monitor in real time—matching E. In contrast, secure connections to Azure virtual machines are provided by Azure Bastion, not the CASB (eliminating B), and pass-through authentication to on-premises apps is delivered by Azure AD features such as Azure AD Application Proxy or PTA (not Cloud App Security), eliminating D.

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.

Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service designed to secure traffic inside and across Azure Virtual Networks. Microsoft describes Azure Firewall as a stateful firewall that “protects Azure Virtual Network resources” by enforcing network and application rules, central logging, and threat intelligence–based filtering. Because it is deployed into a VNet/subnet (often as the hub in a hub-and-spoke), it directly governs East/West and North/South flows to workloads such as Azure virtual machines and platform services reachable through the VNet, using DNAT/SNAT and rule collections. Microsoft guidance highlights capabilities to “centrally create, enforce, and log application and network connectivity policies across subscriptions and virtual networks,” and to filter traffic for peered VNets, branch connections (VPN/ExpressRoute), and internet traffic. These capabilities explicitly map to protecting Azure virtual networks and the VMs and subnets inside them. In contrast, Azure AD users, Exchange Online inboxes, and SharePoint Online sites are SaaS/identity resources protected by Microsoft Entra controls, Exchange/SharePoint security, and Purview/Defender for Office 365—not by a VNet firewall. Therefore, the Azure Firewall–protectable resource types among the options are Azure virtual machines and Azure virtual networks.

 Security defaults require an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Premium license. No

 Security defaults can be enabled for a single Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) user. No

 When Security defaults are enabled, all administrators must use multi-factor authentication (MFA). Yes

Microsoft explains that Security defaults are baseline identity protections that are “available to all tenants at no additional cost” and are intended to “help protect your organization from common identity-related attacks.” They are a tenant-wide setting: Microsoft states that security defaults are “either on or off for the entire tenant” and “can’t be customized or targeted to specific users or groups.” If you require per-user or granular targeting, Microsoft directs customers to use Conditional Access policies instead.

A core behavior of security defaults is enforcing MFA: “All users are required to register for Azure AD Multi-Factor Authentication,” and “administrators are required to perform MFA.” In addition, security defaults “block legacy authentication” and apply other baseline requirements, but they do not enable premium features such as Azure AD Identity Protection or PIM. Summarizing the implications for the statements: no premium license is required; you cannot enable security defaults for just one user because the control is global; and when enabled, administrators must use MFA, with Microsoft recommending exclusion only for a break-glass account if necessary.

In Microsoft’s shared responsibility model, responsibilities vary by service type. For IaaS (for example, Azure Virtual Machines), Microsoft states that it is responsible for protecting and maintaining the cloud infrastructure that runs customer workloads, while customers secure what they deploy in that infrastructure. Microsoft’s guidance explains that Microsoft “operates and secures the datacenters, physical hosts, networking, and the virtualization fabric,” and handles the underlying platform maintenance, including “hardware and firmware” that support those hosts. Conversely, customers are responsible for what runs inside their VM: “the guest operating system (including updates and security configuration), applications, identity, and data.”

Applied to the options in this question:

Updating the operating system and updating installed applications are customer tasks because they are inside the guest VM.

Configuring permissions for shared folders is also a customer responsibility because it’s an OS/application configuration within the guest.

Updating the firmware of the disk controller belongs to Microsoft, because firmware and hardware on the physical hosts (including storage controllers) are part of the infrastructure of the cloud that Microsoft manages and secures.

This aligns with SCI study materials that summarize: Microsoft secures “the security of the cloud” (physical datacenter, hosts, network, and hypervisor/firmware), while customers secure “security in the cloud” (guest OS, apps, and data).

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.

In Microsoft’s Security, Compliance, and Identity materials, Customer Lockbox is described as the feature that controls any Microsoft engineer access to your tenant content during support operations. Microsoft states that Customer Lockbox “ensures that Microsoft cannot access your content to perform a service operation without your explicit approval.” It is specifically applicable to Microsoft 365 workloads that store customer data, including “Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business.” When a support case requires elevated access, “a lockbox request is created and routed to the customer for approval or rejection,” and access is only granted if the organization’s authorized admin approves the request within the defined window. The request contains who is requesting access, the reason, the scope, and the duration, and all actions are audited for compliance reporting. This capability aligns with Microsoft’s zero standing access principles by making engineer access time-bound, least-privileged, and customer-approved. By contrast, Information barriers segregate communications between groups, Privileged Access Management (PAM) governs privileged tasks inside Microsoft 365, and Sensitivity labels classify and protect data. Therefore, the feature that “can be used to provide Microsoft Support Engineers with access to an organization’s data stored in Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business” is Customer Lockbox.

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.

In Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), Conditional Access is the policy engine that evaluates signals about the user, device, app, and session to determine whether to grant access and under what conditions. Microsoft’s guidance explains that Conditional Access is “the tool used by Azure AD to bring signals together, make decisions, and enforce organizational policies.” In device-centric scenarios, Conditional Access integrates with Microsoft Intune device compliance so you can enforce controls such as “Require device to be marked as compliant” or “Require approved client app” before granting access to corporate resources like Microsoft 365 and Azure apps. This allows organizations to block or limit access from unmanaged or noncompliant devices, and to allow access only from devices that meet your compliance policies (encryption, OS version, jailbreak/root status, etc.).

By contrast, Network Security Groups (NSGs) filter traffic at the virtual network/subnet/NIC level and are not identity-aware; Privileged Identity Management (PIM) governs just-in-time elevation and access reviews for privileged roles; and resource locks prevent accidental deletion or modification of Azure resources. Therefore, the Azure AD feature specifically designed to restrict access by Intune-managed device state and enforce device-based access conditions to corporate resources is Conditional Access.

The Content Search tool in the Security & Compliance Center can be used to quickly find email in Exchange mailboxes, documents in SharePoint sites and OneDrive locations, and instant messaging conversations in Skype for Business.

The first step is to starting using the Content Search tool to choose content locations to search and configure a keyword query to search for specific items.

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.

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

Yes

NO

NO

YES - As an administrator, you can lock a subscription, resource group, or resource to prevent other users in your organization from accidentally deleting or modifying critical resources. The lock overrides any permissions the user might have.

NO - The most restrictive lock in the inheritance takes precedence.

NO - If you delete a resource group with a locked resource, the portal UI will give you an error and no resources are deleted.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/management/lock-resources?tabs=json

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 Defender for Cloud can detect vulnerabilities and threats for Azure Storage. Yes

 Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is available for all Azure subscriptions. Yes

 Microsoft Defender for Cloud can evaluate the security of workloads deployed to Azure or on-premises. Yes

Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides both workload protection and posture management. For Azure Storage, the Defender plan (Microsoft Defender for Storage) offers threat detection such as anomalous access, malware scanning, and sensitive-data threat alerts, while the CSPM guidance in Defender for Cloud flags misconfigurations that create vulnerabilities (for example, public blob access, weak TLS settings). CSPM capabilities—secure score, recommendations, and baseline assessments—are available to all Azure subscriptions (foundational CSPM), giving every tenant visibility into security posture without requiring a premium add-on for basic posture features. Beyond Azure, Defender for Cloud supports hybrid and multicloud: using Azure Arc and the Defender for Servers plan, it can onboard and assess on-premises servers and resources in other clouds, applying recommendations, security assessments, and threat protections across those environments. Collectively, these capabilities confirm that Defender for Cloud can detect storage-related threats and posture weaknesses, CSPM is broadly available to Azure subscriptions, and the service evaluates workloads running in Azure or on-premises.

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.