Enforcing the principle of least privilege primarily reduces which risk?

• A. Reduced risk of unauthorized access and lateral movement.
• B. Increases system complexity unnecessarily.
• C. Eliminates all cyber threats.
• D. Increases the time to complete tasks.

Answer: (A)

Giving users the minimum permissions necessary to perform their tasks limits what they can access or modify. If a credential is compromised or a process is hijacked, the attacker is confined to those narrow rights, making it much harder to reach sensitive resources and to move from one system to another within the network (lateral movement). This is why least privilege most directly reduces the risk of unauthorized access and lateral movement. It doesn’t eliminate every cyber threat, and while there can be some impact on efficiency or administration, the primary protection comes from restricting privilege to prevent abuse and spread.