Telecom and Networking Test 1 Practice

SNMPv3 introduces dedicated security features that were not present in SNMPv1/v2c: authentication to verify who is sending the message, privacy to keep the message contents confidential through encryption, and granular access control to restrict what authenticated users can do and what data they can see. In SNMPv1/v2c, security relied on simple community strings sent in clear text, offering neither strong authentication nor encryption and giving limited, coarse access control. SNMPv3 uses the User-based Security Model (USM) for authentication and privacy and the View-based Access Control Model (VACM) for fine-grained access control, delivering the improvements described. The other options don’t capture these security enhancements: they either describe the old, insecure approach, or misstate the capabilities, or imply only backward compatibility.