KCNA Question #132: Real Exam Question with Answer & Explanation

The correct answer is A: Authentication and authorization. A service mesh (e.g., Istio, Linkerd) provides infrastructure-level capabilities for service-to-service communication, with core features including mutual TLS (mTLS) for authentication, fine-grained authorization policies, traffic management, observability (metrics, traces, logs)

Submitted by suresh_in· May 4, 2026Cloud Native Architecture

Question

Which are the core features provided by a service mesh?

Options

AAuthentication and authorization
BDistributing and replicating data
CSecurity vulnerability scanning
DConfiguration management

Explanation

A service mesh (e.g., Istio, Linkerd) provides infrastructure-level capabilities for service-to-service communication, with core features including mutual TLS (mTLS) for authentication, fine-grained authorization policies, traffic management, observability (metrics, traces, logs), and load balancing. Authentication and authorization are fundamental pillars of a service mesh's security model. Distributing and replicating data (B) is a database/storage concern. Security vulnerability scanning (C) is handled by image scanners like Trivy or Clair. Configuration management (D) is handled by tools like Helm, Kustomize, or Ansible.

Topics

#Service Mesh#Security#Authentication#Authorization

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