An organization designs an inbound firewall with a fail-open configuration while implementing a website. Which of the following would the organization consider to be the highest priority?

Question

Options

• AConfidentiality
• BNon-repudiation
• CAvailability
• DIntegrity

• A
  3% (1)
• B
  6% (2)
• C
  81% (25)
• D
  10% (3)

Explanation

A fail-open configuration means that if the firewall fails or becomes overwhelmed, it defaults to allowing traffic through rather than blocking it - the organization is deliberately choosing to keep the website accessible even at the cost of security controls. This directly prioritizes Availability (C): keeping the site up and reachable is valued more than enforcing security during failure states.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A. Confidentiality - fail-open actively sacrifices confidentiality by allowing unfiltered traffic when the firewall fails; a confidentiality-focused design would use fail-closed.
• B. Non-repudiation - this concerns audit trails and proving actions occurred; it has no direct relationship to firewall failure behavior.
• D. Integrity - like confidentiality, integrity would be harmed by fail-open, since unfiltered malicious traffic could tamper with data.

Memory tip: Think of the two failure modes as opposites - fail-closed = security first (CIA), fail-open = uptime first (Availability). A bank vault fails closed; a hospital emergency door fails open. Match the failure mode to the priority it protects.

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