SNMP Options for Confidential Data Transfer

A network administrator would like to collect information from several networking devices using SNMP.

Which of the following SNMP options should a network administrator use to ensure the data transferred is confidential?

A.

authpriv

B.

SHA

C.

MD5

D.

Authentication passphrase.

A.

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a widely used protocol that allows network administrators to monitor and manage network devices. SNMP uses a set of standard messages to communicate between SNMP agents (running on network devices) and SNMP managers (running on network management systems).

To ensure the confidentiality of SNMP data, the administrator should use the authpriv option. This option provides both authentication and encryption of SNMP messages. The authentication is performed using either the SHA or MD5 algorithm, which ensures that messages are not tampered with during transmission. The encryption is performed using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm, which provides confidentiality of the message contents.

The other options listed in the question are not sufficient for ensuring confidentiality:

• SHA and MD5 are algorithms used for message authentication, but they do not provide encryption, so messages can still be intercepted and read by an attacker.
• An authentication passphrase could be used for authentication, but it does not provide encryption, so messages can still be intercepted and read by an attacker.

Therefore, the correct answer is A, authpriv.