Which of the following impacts application performance negatively?

The selection of misconfigured firewall policies as the answer highlights a significant cause of application performance degradation. Firewalls are crucial for maintaining security, but when their policies are not set up correctly, they can inadvertently block or delay legitimate traffic. This misconfiguration can lead to several performance issues, such as increased latency in application responses, failure to establish connections, or even complete loss of access to certain applications or services.

When firewall rules are overly restrictive or improperly implemented, the intended traffic flow can be disrupted. For instance, if critical ports or protocols necessary for an application’s operation are not allowed, legitimate requests might be dropped, causing noticeable slowdowns or interruptions in service. Additionally, the complexity of managing misconfigured rules can lead to increased troubleshooting time and further delays as administrators can struggle to identify and fix the underlying issues.

In contrast, unrestricted bandwidth use and properly managed security protocols generally do not negatively impact application performance. Instead, they can facilitate smoother operation and better user experience when managed correctly. Optimized application configurations also contribute positively to performance, making them unlikely candidates for issues related to application performance degradation.