You have an Azure subscription named Sub1 that contains 50 virtual machines.

Plan: Defender Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM); Feature: Agentless machine scanning

The scenario asks for plaintext token and SSH private key discovery on virtual machines with minimal changes to the machines. Defender CSPM with agentless machine scanning is the correct combination because it scans disks without requiring an agent deployment to each VM. Defender for Key Vault protects secrets stored in the vault but does not detect developers placing credentials on VM file systems. Azure Monitor Agent would add operational overhead and still would not provide this secret scanning capability. This answer also follows operational scalability. Microsoft security architecture favors policy-driven deployment, agentless assessment, managed identities, and Defender workload plans where possible. Those mechanisms reduce manual configuration while keeping enforcement tied to the resource type, which is why the selected choice is stronger than manual or after-the-fact alternatives. The result is a direct exam-style implementation choice: it changes the required security behavior without relying on unrelated monitoring, manual cleanup, or excessive privilege. Official Microsoft source/topic: SC-500 Study Guide > Defender CSPM secret scanning; Microsoft Learn > agentless machine scanning.

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