What does blast radius refer to in deployment security?

• A. The physical distance between servers
• B. The size of the data backup
• C. The scope of potential impact when a component fails or is compromised
• D. The range of network monitoring

Answer: (C)

Blast radius is the scope of potential impact when a component fails or is compromised. In deployment security, it describes how far the consequences of a breach or failure could spread through the system, across services, data, and trust boundaries. The goal is to minimize this radius by designing strong isolation, network segmentation, and strict access controls so that a problem in one part cannot easily cascade into others. For example, if a single service is breached but its permissions and connections are tightly constrained, the blast radius remains small and containment is easier. If segmentation is weak, a compromise can cascade to multiple services and data stores, enlarging the blast radius and complicating recovery. So the essential idea is that blast radius measures how much of the environment could be affected, and reducing it is a key design objective in secure deployments. (Physical distance, data backup size, and monitoring range describe different concepts and do not capture the spread of impact.)