The implementation of least privilege primarily reduces which risk?

• A. Cost of security hardware.
• B. Unauthorized access, errors, and misuse.
• C. Time to restore data from backups.
• D. User training duration.

Answer: (B)

Giving each user the minimum permissions they need to do their job limits what they can access or change. When rights are restricted, a compromised account or a simple mistake can’t cascade into broad access or major changes. That’s how least privilege directly reduces unauthorized access, as well as the chance of errors and misuse. The other options aren’t the primary target of this approach—costs of hardware, data restoration time, or training duration may be affected indirectly, but they aren’t what least privilege is designed to minimize. For example, a user who only needs to view a file should not have rights to edit or delete it, so even if their account is compromised, the attacker’s ability to cause damage is limited.