Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) Practice Exam 2025 – All-in-One Guide to Ace Your Certification!

The correct answer is Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). APIs are crucial in enabling software applications to interact with each other by providing a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software. They define the methods and data formats applications can use to communicate with one another, which is essential for accessing web-based software applications and services. This functionality allows developers to leverage the capabilities of existing services, building on top of them without needing to understand their internal workings.

In contrast, Software Defined Networking (SDN) refers to an architecture that allows network management to become more fluid and flexible, rather than defining how applications interact. Database Activity Monitoring (DAM) focuses on the security practices of monitoring and auditing database activities, which is unrelated to the fundamental mechanics of how applications communicate via web-based services. Federated Single Sign-on (SSO) pertains to user authentication across multiple systems or domains, simplifying access without focusing on the programming aspect of application interaction. Thus, APIs are the correct concept that encapsulates the defined set of routines, standards, protocols, and tools for building software applications.