A technician needs to strengthen security controls against brute-force attacks. Which of the following options best meets this requirement?

Multifactor authentication requires a user to provide two or more verification factors from independent categories (e.g., something you know, something you have, something you are). This makes brute-force attacks far less effective because even if a password is guessed, the attacker would still need the second factor to gain access.

Encryption protects data at rest or in transit from being read by unauthorized parties but does not directly prevent brute-force attempts against login credentials.

Increased password complexity makes it harder to guess a single password but does not prevent a brute-force attack from eventually succeeding given enough time and resources.

A secure password vault helps users store their passwords safely but does not directly strengthen the authentication mechanism against brute-force attacks on the system itself.