A cloud architect is tasked with isolating traffic between subnets in an IaaS platform. The networks should be able to statefully communicate with each other. Given this scenario, which of the…

Security groups are stateful - they automatically allow return traffic for established connections without requiring an explicit inbound rule, making them ideal for inter-subnet communication. Unlike network ACLs which are stateless, security groups track the state of connections and apply rules bidirectionally based on that state.

HIPS (Host-based Intrusion Prevention System) operates at the endpoint/OS level to block malicious behavior, not to control stateful network traffic flow between subnets.

IDS (Intrusion Detection System) monitors and alerts on suspicious traffic but does not enforce access control or provide stateful traffic management between subnets.

Network ACLs are stateless and evaluate each packet independently, requiring explicit rules for both inbound and outbound traffic, which does not meet the stateful communication requirement.