Infrastructure Security questions on this certification test your ability to deploy and manage infrastructure security concepts in scenario-based situations.
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Domain overview
Use this page to practise Infrastructure Security questions for this certification. Focus on how the exam tests infrastructure security in scenario format — understanding the why behind each answer builds more durable knowledge than memorising options.
Exam objectives
Core Infrastructure Security concepts and how they apply in real-world cloud scenarios.
How to deploy infrastructure security correctly and verify the outcome.
Troubleshooting infrastructure security issues by interpreting error output and system state.
Cloud best practices and Infrastructure Security design trade-offs tested by this certification.
Selecting the most expensive service when a simpler managed option meets the requirement.
Forgetting that cloud resources must be explicitly secured — defaults are rarely secure.
Choosing a global service fix when the issue is region-specific.
Overlooking cost implications of cross-region data transfer in architecture questions.
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A security engineer is troubleshooting connectivity issues between an Amazon EC2 instance in a VPC and an on-premises server over a Direct Connect virtual interface. The EC2 instance has a security group that allows outbound traffic to the on-premises CIDR block (10.0.0.0/16). The VPC has a route table entry pointing the on-premises CIDR to the virtual private gateway. The on-premises firewall shows that packets are received from the EC2 instance but responses are not reaching the instance. What is the most likely cause?
2A financial services company runs a critical application on Amazon EC2 instances in a VPC. The application processes sensitive financial data and must meet strict compliance requirements. The security team recently discovered that an EC2 instance was compromised due to an unpatched vulnerability. The attacker used the instance's IAM role to access an S3 bucket containing customer data and exfiltrated the data. The security team needs to prevent such incidents in the future. They have implemented the following controls: - All EC2 instances are launched in private subnets. - The IAM roles used by EC2 instances follow the principle of least privilege. - Security groups restrict inbound and outbound traffic. - AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager is used to patch instances. - AWS CloudTrail is enabled and logs are sent to a centralized S3 bucket. - Amazon GuardDuty is enabled. Despite these controls, the team is concerned about the blast radius if an instance is compromised again. Which additional measure would MOST effectively limit the blast radius of a compromised EC2 instance?
3A security engineer is designing a VPC with public and private subnets. The application servers in the private subnets need to access the internet for software updates, but must not be directly reachable from the internet. Which TWO actions satisfy these requirements?
4A security engineer is designing a VPC with public and private subnets. The application must be able to send outbound traffic to the internet, but inbound traffic from the internet must be blocked except for a single HTTP load balancer. The application also needs to access an S3 bucket in the same AWS region. Which combination of VPC components meets these requirements? (Choose two.)
5A company has a VPC with a public subnet and a private subnet. An EC2 instance in the private subnet needs to download patches from the internet. The instance is associated with a security group that allows outbound HTTPS (port 443) to 0.0.0.0/0. The private subnet route table has a default route (0.0.0.0/0) pointing to a NAT Gateway in the public subnet. The NAT Gateway's security group allows inbound HTTPS from the private subnet CIDR. However, the instance cannot download patches. What is the most likely cause?
6A company has a VPC with public and private subnets. An EC2 instance in a private subnet needs to access an S3 bucket to store logs. The security team wants to ensure that traffic does not traverse the internet. Which solution should be used? (Choose two.)
7A company uses Amazon CloudFront with an Application Load Balancer (ALB) as the origin. The security team wants to restrict access to the ALB so that it only accepts traffic from CloudFront. Which configuration should be used?
8A company is using AWS Direct Connect with a private virtual interface (VIF) to connect its on-premises network to a VPC. The security team wants to encrypt traffic over the Direct Connect connection. Which TWO options can be used? (Choose TWO.)
9Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer runs the CLI command and receives the output shown. The engineer expects to see flow logs for a specific subnet, but the output shows the resource ID as a VPC. What is the most likely reason?
10A company has an AWS Lambda function that needs to access an Amazon RDS database. The database is in a private subnet. Which configuration will allow the Lambda function to securely access the database without traversing the internet?
11A security engineer notices that an Amazon EC2 instance has a security group that allows inbound SSH (port 22) from 0.0.0.0/0. The instance is a bastion host. What is a more secure alternative to this configuration?
12A company has a VPC with public and private subnets. The private subnets need to access the internet for software updates. Which component should be added to the VPC to enable this?
13A company uses an AWS Transit Gateway to connect multiple VPCs and on-premises networks. A security engineer needs to ensure that traffic between VPCs is inspected by a third-party firewall appliance. Which architecture should be used?
14Which THREE are AWS best practices for securing an Amazon EC2 instance? (Choose three.)
15A security engineer is designing a VPC with a public subnet and a private subnet. The private subnet will host a database instance that should only be accessible from the application instances in the public subnet. The application instances use an Auto Scaling group. Which configuration ensures that only the application instances can access the database?
16A company has a VPC with a single public subnet and a single private subnet. The private subnet contains an RDS MySQL database that should not be accessible from the internet. The public subnet contains a bastion host that is used for SSH access to the database instance. The security team wants to ensure that the database can only be accessed from the bastion host. Which two security group rules should be configured? (Choose TWO.)
17A security engineer is designing a VPC with public and private subnets. The private subnets will host databases that should not have direct internet access. Which three components are required to provide outbound internet access for these databases? (Choose THREE.)
18A company runs a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The security team requires that all traffic between the ALB and EC2 instances be encrypted. Which configuration ensures this requirement is met?
19A company wants to implement a defense-in-depth strategy for its web application running on EC2 instances. Which TWO AWS services should be used to provide both network and application-layer protection?
20A company has deployed a multi-tier web application on AWS. The web servers are in a public subnet, and the application servers are in a private subnet. The security team wants to ensure that the application servers cannot initiate outbound connections to the internet. What should the team do?
21A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The ALB is configured to terminate SSL/TLS and forward traffic to the instances over HTTP. The security team wants to ensure that the instances only accept traffic from the ALB, not from any other source. How can this be achieved?
22A company is designing a network architecture for a critical application that must meet strict compliance requirements. The application consists of Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. The instances need to access an Amazon RDS database in a different VPC. The company wants to minimize exposure to the internet. Which solution should the company use?
23A security engineer is investigating a potential data exfiltration from an Amazon S3 bucket. The bucket policy allows access to a specific IAM role, but the engineer suspects that the role has been compromised. The engineer wants to quickly block all access to the bucket without deleting the bucket or the policy. What is the BEST course of action?
24Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer deploys this CloudFormation template. An IAM role 'DataAccessRole' in the same account needs to read objects from the bucket. After deployment, users assume the role but get AccessDenied errors when trying to read objects. What is the MOST likely cause?
25A company uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to a fleet of EC2 instances in private subnets. The security team wants to ensure that only the ALB can communicate with the EC2 instances. Which security group configuration should be applied to the EC2 instances?
26A company runs a critical application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The security team wants to ensure that only traffic from the ALB reaches the EC2 instances, and that instances cannot initiate outbound connections to the internet. Which combination of security group rules should be implemented? (Select TWO.)
27A company wants to restrict access to an Amazon S3 bucket so that only users from a specific AWS account can upload objects. Which policy mechanism should be used?
28A company is using AWS CloudFormation to deploy infrastructure. The security team wants to ensure that all Amazon S3 buckets created by CloudFormation are encrypted by default. Which approach should be taken?
29A company wants to audit all changes to security group rules in their AWS account. Which AWS service should be used to record these changes?
30A security engineer sees the above security group configuration for an EC2 instance. The instance hosts a web application that should only be accessible from the internal network (10.0.0.0/8) over HTTPS, and SSH should not be open to the internet. What is the security issue with this configuration?
31A company wants to restrict access to an S3 bucket so that only traffic from a specific VPC can read objects. Which security mechanism should be used?
32A security engineer notices that an EC2 instance in a private subnet is able to make outbound connections to the internet. The instance does not have a public IP, and there is no NAT gateway or instance in the VPC. What is the most likely cause?
33A company hosts a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The security team wants to ensure that only traffic from the ALB can reach the EC2 instances. Which configuration should be applied?
34A company wants to block SSH access (port 22) to all EC2 instances from the internet, but allow SSH from a specific management VPN IP range (10.0.0.0/16). Which configuration should be used?
35A company uses AWS Transit Gateway to connect multiple VPCs and on-premises networks. The security team wants to inspect all traffic between VPCs using a third-party firewall appliance. Which architecture should be used?
36A security engineer is configuring a new VPC with public and private subnets. The application servers in the private subnet need to download patches from the internet. Which component is required?
37A security engineer is designing a network architecture for a multi-tier application. The web servers must be accessible from the internet, while the application servers must only be accessible from the web servers. Which TWO configurations should be used? (Choose TWO.)
38A company wants to encrypt data at rest for an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. Which THREE options can be used to achieve this? (Choose THREE.)
39Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer creates the S3 bucket policy above to allow an IAM role to upload objects only from the corporate network IP range (10.0.0.0/16). However, users report that they can still upload objects from outside the range when assuming the role. What is the most likely cause?
40A company is designing a VPC with public and private subnets. The web servers in the public subnets must be accessible from the internet on port 443, but the database servers in the private subnets should only be accessible from the web servers on port 3306. Which combination of security group rules and network ACL rules should be used to meet these requirements with the least administrative overhead?
41A company has a VPC with public and private subnets. The private subnets need to access the internet for software updates. The security engineer has set up a NAT gateway in a public subnet and updated the route tables accordingly. However, instances in the private subnets cannot reach the internet. The engineer checks the security group for the NAT gateway and finds that it allows all outbound traffic. What is the most likely cause of the issue?
42A company wants to encrypt data at rest in an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. Which AWS service or feature should be used to achieve this?
43A security engineer is setting up a new VPC with public and private subnets. The VPC has an Internet Gateway attached. The public subnet's route table has a default route (0.0.0.0/0) pointing to the Internet Gateway. The private subnet's route table has a default route pointing to a NAT gateway. The engineer launches an EC2 instance in the private subnet and assigns it a public IP address. However, the instance cannot access the internet. What should the engineer do to resolve this issue?
44A company is deploying a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The security team requires that all traffic between the ALB and the EC2 instances be encrypted. Which configuration should the engineer implement?
45A company uses AWS Key Management Service (KMS) to encrypt data at rest. The security team needs to ensure that only specific IAM roles can use a particular KMS key to encrypt and decrypt data. What is the most secure way to achieve this?
46A security engineer is designing a secure VPC architecture. Which THREE components should be used to implement defense in depth? (Choose three.)
47A company wants to restrict access to an S3 bucket so that only traffic from a specific VPC can read objects. The VPC has a VPC endpoint for S3 configured. Which policy should be attached to the bucket?
48A Security Engineer is designing a network architecture for a multi-tier application. The web tier must be accessible from the internet, while the application tier should only be accessible from the web tier, and the database tier only from the application tier. All tiers are in the same VPC. Which configuration meets these requirements with minimal administrative overhead?
49A company wants to encrypt data at rest in an Amazon S3 bucket. Which AWS service can centrally manage the encryption keys?
50A company is using AWS Transit Gateway to connect multiple VPCs and on-premises networks. The Security Engineer needs to ensure that traffic between VPCs is inspected by a central network appliance. Which architecture should the Engineer implement?
51A Security Engineer needs to block SSH traffic (port 22) from the internet to all EC2 instances in a VPC. Which approach is the most secure and scalable?
52A Security Engineer is configuring a VPC with a public subnet for a web server and a private subnet for a database. The web server needs to download patches from the internet. Which TWO actions should the Engineer take to allow the web server internet access without exposing the database to the internet?
53A company is using Amazon EC2 instances in a VPC with a security group that allows inbound SSH from 0.0.0.0/0. A security engineer needs to restrict SSH access to only the company's public IP range (203.0.113.0/24) while maintaining all other existing rules. What is the MOST efficient way to accomplish this?
54A security engineer is designing a multi-tier web application on AWS. The web tier must be accessible from the internet, but the application tier should be accessible only from the web tier. The database tier should be accessible only from the application tier. Which combination of security groups provides the MOST secure configuration?
55A security engineer is configuring a VPC for a highly sensitive application. The VPC must not have a route to the internet, but the application needs to periodically download security patches from a specific domain (patches.example.com). Which solution meets these requirements with minimal operational overhead?
56A company uses AWS Organizations to manage multiple accounts. The security team wants to ensure that no resources can be created in a specific AWS Region except for the us-east-1 Region. Which policy type should the security team use?
57A company is designing a shared services VPC architecture with multiple VPCs connected via a transit gateway. The security engineer needs to ensure that all traffic between VPCs is inspected by a centralized firewall appliance deployed in the shared services VPC. What configuration is required?
58A company is deploying a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The security engineer needs to protect the application from common web exploits such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting. Which TWO services can be used together to achieve this? (Choose TWO.)
59A security engineer is designing a network architecture in AWS. The engineer needs to ensure that all outbound traffic from a VPC goes through a centrally managed NAT device for logging and filtering. The VPC has multiple private subnets. Which TWO steps are required to accomplish this? (Choose TWO.)
60A security engineer is investigating a potential security incident in an AWS account. The engineer needs to determine which user or role performed a specific API call that created a new security group. Which THREE AWS tools can the engineer use to find this information? (Choose THREE.)
61A security engineer is investigating a potential breach. The engineer notices that an EC2 instance's security group allows inbound SSH (port 22) from 0.0.0.0/0. The instance is in a public subnet and has a public IP address. However, the engineer finds that SSH access is only possible from a specific IP address. What is the most likely explanation?
62A company is designing a VPC with public and private subnets. The application servers in the private subnets need to download patches from the internet. Which architecture provides the highest security while allowing internet access?
63A security engineer reviews the above IAM policy attached to an IAM user. The user reports that they cannot download objects from the S3 bucket 'example-bucket' when connected from the office network (IP range 10.0.0.0/16). What is the most likely cause?
64A security engineer runs the above AWS CLI command. The engineer notices that the security group has no outbound rules. What is the implication of this configuration?
65A company configures a Route 53 alias record to point to a CloudFront distribution. The security team wants to ensure that users can only access the website via CloudFront and not directly via the S3 bucket origin. What additional configuration is needed?
66A security engineer is designing a web application that will run on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application must be protected from common web exploits like SQL injection and cross-site scripting. Which AWS service should be used to provide this protection?
67A company has a multi-account AWS environment using AWS Organizations. The security team needs to enforce that all new S3 buckets created in any account in the organization are encrypted with a specific KMS key. Which approach should be used?
68A company wants to ensure that all data transmitted between its EC2 instances and an Application Load Balancer (ALB) is encrypted. Which configuration should be applied?
69Which TWO actions can be taken to improve the security of an Amazon RDS for MySQL database instance? (Choose TWO.)
70A security team notices that an S3 bucket containing sensitive data is publicly accessible. The bucket policy is as follows: { "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Principal": "*", "Action": "s3:GetObject", "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::example-bucket/*" } ] } Which step should be taken to secure the bucket while maintaining access for authorized users?
71A company has a VPC with multiple subnets. An EC2 instance in a private subnet needs to access an S3 bucket. Which configuration provides the most secure and efficient access?
72A company wants to restrict access to an RDS database to only EC2 instances that have a specific tag 'Environment: Production'. Which TWO steps should be taken?
73A security engineer is reviewing the following IAM policy attached to an S3 bucket: { "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Principal": "*", "Action": "s3:GetObject", "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::example-bucket/*", "Condition": { "IpAddress": { "aws:SourceIp": "10.0.0.0/8" } } } ] } The bucket contains sensitive data and should only be accessible from the corporate network (CIDR 10.0.0.0/8). However, the engineer is concerned that this policy might not be effective. What is the primary security concern with this policy?
74A security engineer is designing a multi-account strategy using AWS Organizations. The engineer needs to centrally manage network security across all accounts. Which TWO AWS services are most appropriate for this task?
75A company wants to restrict access to an S3 bucket so that only objects with specific tags can be accessed by a certain IAM role. Which THREE steps are required to implement this?
76Refer to the exhibit. A developer receives an 'UnauthorizedOperation' error when launching an EC2 instance with the specified security group. The developer has permissions to use ec2:RunInstances. What is the most likely cause?
Deep-dive questions
The most-searched questions in this domain — detailed explanations, worked examples, full answer breakdowns.
Infrastructure Security questions on this certification test your ability to deploy and manage infrastructure security concepts in scenario-based situations.
The Courseiva SCS-C02 question bank contains 76 questions in the Infrastructure Security domain, covering the 20% of the exam attributed to this domain in the official Amazon Web Services blueprint. Click any question to see the full explanation and answer breakdown.
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