Be able to design multi-account logging: organization CloudTrail to a central S3 bucket, GuardDuty delegated administrator with associated members, and CloudWatch alarms on metric filters. The critical detail is getting cross-account S3 bucket policies and KMS key policies right so logs actually arrive.
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Domain overview
This domain covers collecting, centralizing, and analyzing security telemetry across AWS accounts and services. Questions test CloudTrail organization trails, CloudWatch Logs metric filters and alarms, GuardDuty multi-account administration, Security Hub aggregation, AWS Config, VPC Flow Logs, and cross-account S3 log delivery with correct bucket policies and KMS permissions.
Exam objectives
Configuring CloudTrail organization trails delivering logs to a central S3 bucket with bucket policy and KMS key permissions
Enabling GuardDuty across AWS Organizations and centralizing findings via delegated administrator and member account association
Creating CloudWatch Logs metric filters and alarms to detect API patterns such as unauthorized attempts or root usage
Aggregating findings and logs with Security Hub, AWS Config, and VPC Flow Logs for multi-account monitoring
Assuming a new AWS Organizations member account automatically inherits CloudTrail or GuardDuty; enrollment and delegated administrator setup are separate explicit steps.
Forgetting that central S3 log delivery requires a bucket policy granting the log-delivery account or organization access, plus KMS key policy permissions.
Confusing GuardDuty member invitation with Organizations delegated administrator management, or expecting findings to appear in the administrator account without association.
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A security engineer wants to capture all DNS queries made by EC2 instances to detect potential data exfiltration. Which AWS service should be used to log the DNS requests?
2A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log management events in all regions. The security team notices that some API calls made by an IAM user are not appearing in the CloudTrail event history. What is the most likely reason?
3A company requires real-time analysis of AWS CloudTrail logs to detect unauthorized API calls. The logs are stored in Amazon S3. Which architecture minimizes latency and cost?
4A security engineer needs to be alerted when an IAM user attempts to modify an S3 bucket policy. Which method is the MOST efficient?
5A company stores sensitive data in Amazon S3 and wants to detect and alert on any public read access to objects. Which combination of services provides the most comprehensive solution?
6A security engineer needs to centrally collect and analyze AWS CloudTrail logs from multiple accounts. Which service is designed for this purpose?
7A company uses AWS CloudTrail and wants to ensure that any modification to the trail itself is detected immediately. What should be done?
8A company wants to use AWS CloudTrail to monitor data events for all S3 buckets. Which THREE steps are necessary? (Choose THREE.)
9Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer reviews the CloudTrail trail configuration. What is a security concern?
10A security engineer wants to receive real-time notifications when an AWS API call is made to delete an S3 bucket. Which service should be used to capture and forward these events to an Amazon SNS topic?
11A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API calls. The security team notices that some expected log entries are missing for actions performed by an IAM role assumed by an EC2 instance. The instance has the required permissions. What is the MOST likely cause of the missing log entries?
12A security engineer is designing a monitoring solution for a multi-account AWS environment using AWS Organizations. The solution must provide a centralized view of all API activities and send alerts for suspicious events. Which TWO services together can achieve this? (Choose TWO.)
13A security engineer needs to ensure that all API calls made in an AWS account are captured and retained for auditing purposes. The engineer must be able to query the logs for specific user activity over the past 90 days. Which AWS service should the engineer use to meet these requirements?
14A company is using AWS CloudTrail to monitor API activity in its AWS account. The security team needs to be alerted when unauthorized API calls are made to delete Amazon S3 buckets. Which TWO steps should the security team take to meet this requirement? (Choose TWO.)
15Drag and drop the steps to set up AWS Shield Advanced with automatic application layer DDoS mitigation in the correct order.
16Drag and drop the steps to respond to a suspected AWS IAM credential compromise in the correct order.
17Match each AWS CloudTrail log type to its description.
18Match each AWS security tool to its purpose.
19A security engineer needs to monitor for suspicious API calls in near real-time and trigger an automated response. Which AWS service should be used to capture and analyze these API calls?
20A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to centralize security logs (CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, AWS Config) from all accounts into a single S3 bucket for analysis. What is the MOST secure way to set up this centralized logging?
21A company is using Amazon CloudWatch Logs to store application logs. The security team needs to retain logs for 7 years to comply with regulatory requirements. The logs are accessed infrequently after the first 90 days. What is the MOST cost-effective way to meet these retention and access requirements?
22A company wants to monitor failed SSH login attempts to its EC2 instances. Which AWS service should be used to collect and analyze these logs?
23A company uses Amazon S3 to store sensitive data. The security team needs to be alerted when an S3 bucket policy is changed to allow public access. Which combination of services should be used to meet this requirement?
24A security engineer is investigating a potential security incident involving an EC2 instance that was used to launch an outbound DDoS attack. The engineer needs to determine the source of the attack and the commands executed on the instance. Which logs should be analyzed?
25A company wants to detect and alert on suspicious IAM user behavior, such as accessing services that are not typically used. Which AWS service provides prebuilt anomaly detection for IAM users?
26A security engineer is setting up monitoring for AWS API calls. Which TWO AWS services can be used to capture and analyze API activity?
27A security engineer is troubleshooting why CloudTrail logs are not being delivered to an S3 bucket. The bucket policy allows CloudTrail to write objects, and the trail is configured to log management events. However, no log files appear in the bucket. What is the MOST likely cause?
28A company uses AWS Config to track resource changes. They notice that a weekly compliance report shows an S3 bucket as non-compliant with a rule that checks for server-side encryption. However, the bucket has default encryption enabled. What is the MOST likely reason for this discrepancy?
29A security team needs to be alerted when an IAM user generates a console login failure. Which combination of AWS services should be used to meet this requirement?
30A security engineer needs to ensure that all S3 buckets in an AWS account have server access logging enabled. Which AWS service should be used to continuously monitor for compliance?
31A company is using Amazon Route 53 and wants to log DNS queries for investigative purposes. The logs must be stored in a centralized S3 bucket in the security account. What is the MOST efficient way to achieve this?
32A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API calls. The security team notices that some PutObject API calls are not appearing in the CloudTrail logs. The S3 bucket in question has server access logging enabled. What is the MOST likely reason for the missing CloudTrail events?
33A security engineer needs to detect when an EC2 instance is terminated in an AWS account. The solution must provide near-real-time notification. Which combination of services should be used?
34A security engineer is investigating a potential security incident. The engineer has enabled CloudTrail and VPC Flow Logs. Which THREE pieces of information can the engineer obtain from CloudTrail logs that are NOT available in VPC Flow Logs? (Choose three.)
35A company wants to monitor for unauthorized API calls in real-time. The solution must meet the following requirements: - Detect calls that fail authentication (AccessDenied). - Detect calls that use a revoked IAM role. - Provide a centralized view across multiple accounts. Which THREE services should be used together to implement this solution? (Choose three.)
36A security engineer needs to detect unauthorized API calls in an AWS account. Which AWS service should be used to record and monitor API activity for auditing?
37A company needs to centralize security logs from multiple AWS accounts and on-premises servers. The logs must be encrypted at rest and stored in a cost-effective manner. Which solution meets these requirements?
38A Security Engineer is troubleshooting why AWS CloudTrail is not delivering logs to an S3 bucket. The bucket policy allows CloudTrail access. What is a likely cause of the issue?
39A company wants to monitor failed SSH login attempts to EC2 instances. Which approach should be used?
40A company has a CloudTrail trail that logs management events for all regions. The security team notices that some S3 data events are not being logged. How should the team enable logging for all S3 data events?
41A company needs to be alerted when root account credentials are used in their AWS account. Which service should be used to create a metric filter and alarm for this event?
42A company uses AWS Organizations to manage multiple accounts. The security team wants to enable CloudTrail for all accounts and centrally store logs. What is the most efficient way to achieve this?
43A security engineer needs to analyze VPC Flow Logs to identify traffic to a known malicious IP address. The logs are stored in Amazon S3. Which approach is the most cost-effective for querying the logs?
44A company wants to receive notifications when AWS CloudTrail logs are delivered to an S3 bucket. Which TWO AWS services can be used together to achieve this? (Choose TWO.)
45A security engineer needs to monitor DNS query logs for malicious domain names. Which THREE services can be used together to collect, analyze, and alert on DNS logs? (Choose THREE.)
46A company wants to ensure that all API calls in their AWS account are logged and immutable. Which TWO actions should be taken? (Choose TWO.)
47Refer to the exhibit. The security team is investigating a security incident in us-west-2 region. They notice that management events from us-west-2 are not appearing in the CloudTrail logs. Based on the exhibit, what is the most likely reason?
48A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API calls in their AWS account. They need to ensure that log files are not tampered with after they are delivered to the S3 bucket. Which feature should be enabled to provide integrity validation?
49A company uses Amazon RDS for MySQL and wants to monitor database activity for security analysis. Which AWS service should be used to capture detailed database activity logs such as login attempts and query execution?
50A security team wants to collect and analyze logs from multiple AWS services including CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, and AWS WAF. They need a centralized solution that can filter, transform, and route logs to multiple destinations in near real-time. Which AWS service should they use?
51A company wants to detect and alert on unauthorized API calls in their AWS account. Which AWS service can provide real-time notifications when specific API calls are made?
52A company uses AWS CloudTrail and wants to ensure that logs are encrypted at rest using a customer-managed KMS key. The CloudTrail trail is configured to deliver logs to an S3 bucket. After enabling SSE-KMS on the S3 bucket, the logs are not being delivered. What is the most likely cause?
53A security engineer is investigating a potential security incident. They suspect that an IAM user's credentials were compromised and used to launch EC2 instances in a region where the user normally does not operate. Which AWS service can help the engineer identify the source IP address and user agent of the API calls that launched the instances?
54Which TWO actions should a security engineer take to ensure that Amazon GuardDuty can effectively monitor for suspicious activity in a VPC? (Choose two.)
55Which THREE are best practices for securing AWS CloudTrail log files? (Choose three.)
56Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor and detect unauthorized changes to Amazon S3 bucket policies? (Choose two.)
57A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API calls. The security team needs to be alerted when an IAM user creates a new access key. Which approach is most efficient?
58A security engineer needs to centralize logs from multiple AWS accounts into a single S3 bucket. Which solution is most secure?
59A company is using Amazon GuardDuty to detect threats. The security team notices that GuardDuty findings are not triggering the intended automated response via a CloudWatch Events rule. What is the most likely reason?
60A company wants to monitor for unauthorized changes to its Amazon S3 bucket policies. Which AWS service should be used to detect such changes?
61A security analyst needs to review all failed SSH login attempts to an EC2 instance. Which combination will provide this information?
62A company has enabled AWS CloudTrail in all accounts and regions, with log file validation enabled. The security team needs to verify that a specific log file has not been modified since it was delivered. Which action should be taken?
63A company wants to receive real-time notifications for every root user login to the AWS Management Console. Which service should be used?
64A security engineer notices that an S3 bucket containing sensitive logs is publicly accessible. Which service should be used to automatically remediate this by applying a bucket policy?
65A company is using Amazon Macie to discover sensitive data in S3. The security team wants to be notified when Macie finds a high-severity alert. Which integration should be used?
66A security team needs to monitor for unauthorized API calls in their AWS account. Which TWO services can provide real-time alerts for such events?
67A company wants to ensure that all S3 buckets are encrypted at rest. Which THREE services can be used to detect and alert on unencrypted buckets?
68A security engineer needs to collect and analyze operating system logs from EC2 instances. Which TWO services are required?
69Which THREE actions can be performed using AWS CloudTrail to enhance security monitoring?
70A security engineer needs to capture all DNS queries made by EC2 instances in a VPC and send them to a security analytics tool. Which AWS service should be used to capture this traffic?
71A company uses AWS Organizations and wants to centralize security logs from all member accounts into a single S3 bucket in the management account. The bucket policy allows only the management account's root user to write objects. However, logs are not being delivered from member accounts. What is the MOST likely cause?
72A security engineer needs to monitor for failed SSH login attempts to EC2 instances and send alerts. Which combination of AWS services should be used?
73A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API activity. A security analyst notices that some delete operations on S3 buckets are missing from the CloudTrail logs. What is the MOST likely reason?
74An organization has a requirement to retain all security logs for at least 7 years for compliance. The logs are stored in Amazon S3 and are rarely accessed. Which storage class is the MOST cost-effective for this retention period?
75A security team wants to receive real-time notifications when an IAM user makes a change to a security group. Which AWS service should be used to trigger the notification?
76A company has multiple AWS accounts and wants to centrally aggregate VPC Flow Logs from all accounts into a single S3 bucket in the logging account. What is the MOST secure way to configure cross-account delivery?
77A security engineer needs to ensure that all objects uploaded to an S3 bucket are automatically scanned for malware before being made accessible to users. Which solution is MOST appropriate?
78Which TWO actions are valid ways to send application logs from an EC2 instance to Amazon CloudWatch Logs? (Select TWO.)
79Which THREE are features of Amazon GuardDuty that help with threat detection? (Select THREE.)
80Which TWO AWS services can be used to centrally collect and analyze logs from multiple AWS accounts? (Select TWO.)
81Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer configured this S3 bucket policy to allow CloudTrail to deliver logs. However, logs are not being delivered. What is the MOST likely reason?
82Refer to the exhibit. This is a line from a VPC Flow Log. A security analyst notices that the log shows an ACCEPT record for a connection from 10.0.1.5 to 10.0.2.10 on port 443. However, the analyst expected the connection to be denied. Which field in the flow log record indicates that the connection was accepted?
83A security engineer notices that S3 server access logs are not being delivered to the specified destination bucket. The source bucket has a bucket policy that grants s3:PutObject permission to the Log Delivery group. The destination bucket is in the same AWS account but a different region. What is the most likely cause of the failure?
84A company wants to centrally collect CloudTrail logs from multiple AWS accounts and enable real-time analysis. Which combination of services should be used?
85A company is using AWS CloudTrail to monitor API activity. The security team wants to be alerted when an IAM user creates a new access key. Which CloudTrail event should be used to create a CloudWatch Events rule?
86A security analyst wants to monitor unsuccessful login attempts to the AWS Management Console. Which AWS service and log combination should be used?
87A company is using AWS Config to track resource changes. They want to receive notifications when a security group is modified to allow inbound traffic from 0.0.0.0/0. What is the most efficient way to achieve this?
88A company has a requirement to retain CloudTrail logs for 7 years to meet regulatory compliance. They want to minimize storage costs while ensuring logs are immutable and cannot be deleted by anyone, including the root user. What should they do?
89A security engineer is investigating a potential security incident and needs to determine if an EC2 instance was launched with a specific AMI ID. Which AWS log should be examined?
90A company uses Amazon GuardDuty and wants to automatically isolate a compromised EC2 instance by removing it from the security group. Which approach should be used?
91A security engineer is investigating a possible data exfiltration from an S3 bucket. Which THREE AWS services can be used to detect and alert on suspicious activity? (Choose THREE.)
92A security engineer needs to capture all API calls made to AWS services for forensic analysis. Which AWS service should be used to store these logs durably and cost-effectively for long-term retention?
93A company is using AWS CloudTrail to log API calls and wants to ensure that log files are not tampered with after delivery to S3. Which feature should be enabled to validate the integrity of CloudTrail log files?
94A security team notices that an S3 bucket containing sensitive data has been repeatedly accessed from an IP address outside the company's network. They need to set up a real-time alert when such access occurs. Which combination of services should they use?
95A company wants to monitor CPU utilization of their EC2 instances and receive an alert when utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should be used to set up this metric alarm?
96A security engineer is reviewing AWS CloudTrail logs and finds that an IAM user 'developer1' deleted an S3 bucket. The engineer needs to determine the source IP address of the delete operation. Which field in the CloudTrail log record contains this information?
97A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. They want to centralize logging of all API calls across all accounts and store them in a single S3 bucket. Which configuration should be used?
98A company uses AWS CloudTrail and wants to ensure that log files are encrypted at rest and that access to the logs is logged. Which combination of S3 features should be enabled on the destination bucket?
99A security engineer is implementing centralized logging across multiple AWS accounts. Which TWO actions should the engineer take to ensure logs are securely stored and immutable? (Choose TWO.)
100A company wants to monitor for suspicious IAM activity, such as a user creating access keys without authorization. Which THREE AWS services can be used together to detect and alert on this activity in real-time? (Choose THREE.)
101A company is using AWS CloudTrail and wants to detect when an IAM user performs a specific action, such as stopping an EC2 instance. The security engineer needs to set up a real-time notification. Which THREE steps should the engineer take? (Choose THREE.)
102Refer to the exhibit. An IAM policy is attached to an IAM user. The user reports that they can upload objects to the S3 bucket but cannot list the contents of the bucket. Which statement explains this behavior?
103Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer runs the above AWS CLI command to search for CreateKeyPair events in CloudTrail. The command returns no results, but the engineer knows that a key pair was created during that time. What is the most likely reason for the missing events?
104A company has a multi-account AWS environment using AWS Organizations. The security team has enabled AWS CloudTrail with an organization trail that delivers logs to a centralized S3 bucket in the management account. They have also enabled Amazon GuardDuty in all accounts. Recently, they noticed that some EC2 instances in a member account are exhibiting unusual network behavior, such as outbound traffic to known malicious IP addresses. The security engineer needs to quickly determine the source of the traffic and identify which EC2 instances are affected. The engineer has access to the management account and the member account. Which course of action should the engineer take to most efficiently investigate this incident?
105A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team needs to centralize CloudTrail logs from all accounts into a single S3 bucket in the management account. Which configuration ensures that only the management account can delete the log files?
106A company is required to retain CloudTrail logs for 7 years for compliance. Which solution meets this requirement with the LEAST operational overhead?
107A company has enabled AWS Config to record resource changes. The security team needs to be notified when a security group is modified to allow inbound SSH from 0.0.0.0/0. Which AWS service should be used to evaluate the Config rules and trigger notifications?
108A security engineer notices that an S3 bucket containing sensitive data has been accessed from an IP address outside the allowed range. CloudTrail logs show the access was made using temporary credentials from an assumed role. What additional logging is needed to trace the access back to the original IAM user who assumed the role?
109A company uses Amazon GuardDuty for threat detection. The security team wants to automatically isolate an EC2 instance that is communicating with a known malicious IP address. Which combination of services should be used?
110A company is required to audit all changes to IAM policies. Which AWS service should be used to record these changes?
111A security engineer needs to monitor AWS API calls for potential unauthorized access. The engineer wants to be alerted when a specific IAM user performs a high-risk action like deleting a CloudTrail trail. What is the MOST efficient way to achieve this?
112A company wants to detect and alert on SSH brute force attacks on EC2 instances. Which AWS service should be used?
113A security engineer is designing a centralized logging solution for multiple AWS accounts. Which TWO services should be used to aggregate logs from all accounts into a single account? (Choose TWO.)
114A security engineer is investigating a potential security incident. Which TWO AWS services can be used to analyze historical network traffic patterns? (Choose TWO.)
115Refer to the exhibit. An IAM policy is attached to a user. The user reports that they cannot upload objects to the S3 bucket 'example-bucket' using the AWS CLI from a remote location. What is the MOST likely cause?
116A company has a multi-account AWS environment with 50 accounts. The security team uses AWS CloudTrail to log management events in each account and delivers logs to a centralized S3 bucket in the security account. Recently, the team noticed that some CloudTrail logs are missing from the central bucket for a few accounts. The logs appear to be delivered intermittently. The security engineer checks the CloudTrail configuration in one of the affected accounts and sees that the trail is configured to deliver to the central bucket. The bucket policy in the security account allows CloudTrail to write from all accounts. The engineer also checks the CloudTrail console and sees that the trail status is 'Logging'. What is the MOST likely cause of the intermittent log delivery?
117A company has an S3 bucket that stores sensitive data. The bucket policy allows access only from a specific VPC endpoint. The security team notices that an object was accessed from an IP address outside the allowed VPC. CloudTrail logs show that the access was made using temporary credentials from an assumed role. The role was assumed by an EC2 instance in the allowed VPC. What is the MOST likely reason the access was allowed despite the bucket policy restriction?
118A security engineer is investigating a potential data exfiltration incident. The engineer needs to determine whether an IAM user in account A accessed an S3 bucket in account B. The engineer has access to both accounts. Which combination of steps should the engineer take to identify the cross-account access?
119A security engineer needs to monitor for unauthorized changes to security group rules in an AWS account. The engineer wants to receive real-time notifications when a security group rule is added, modified, or removed. Which AWS service should the engineer use to capture these API calls?
120A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team needs to centrally monitor all API calls made in the member accounts. The team wants to ensure that all CloudTrail logs are delivered to a centralized S3 bucket in the management account. Which configuration should the security team implement?
121A security engineer is investigating a potential compromise. The engineer notices that an EC2 instance is sending outbound traffic to an unknown IP address on port 443. The engineer needs to determine if the instance is communicating with a known command and control (C2) server. Which AWS service can the engineer use to check the reputation of the destination IP address?
122A security engineer is designing a logging solution for an application that runs on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The engineer needs to capture and store the following logs for analysis: (1) HTTP request logs from the ALB, (2) operating system logs from the EC2 instances, and (3) network traffic logs for the VPC. Which combination of AWS services should the engineer use? (Choose three.)
123A company has a requirement to detect and alert on anomalous IAM user behavior, such as a user logging in from an unusual geographic location. The company uses AWS Organizations and has multiple accounts. Which services should the company use to meet this requirement? (Choose two.)
124A security engineer needs to ensure that all changes to IAM policies in an AWS account are logged and that the logs are immutable and cannot be deleted by any user, including the root user. Which actions should the engineer take? (Choose two.)
125A financial services company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API calls in their account. They store the logs in an S3 bucket with server-side encryption using AWS KMS (SSE-KMS). The security team needs to ensure that only authorized users can decrypt and read the logs. They have created a KMS key with a key policy that grants decrypt permissions to the security team's IAM roles. However, when a security engineer tries to download a log file from the S3 bucket using the AWS CLI, they receive an 'AccessDenied' error. The engineer has s3:GetObject permission on the bucket. What is the most likely cause?
126A company uses Amazon GuardDuty to monitor for malicious activity in their AWS account. The security team receives a GuardDuty finding that indicates an EC2 instance is communicating with a known cryptocurrency mining pool. The team needs to investigate the finding and determine which security group rules allowed the outbound traffic. The EC2 instance is in a VPC with a single security group attached. Which AWS service should the security team use to review the outbound traffic details?
127A security engineer is troubleshooting an issue where CloudTrail logs for a single AWS account are not being delivered to the centralized S3 bucket in the logging account. The engineer has verified that the CloudTrail trail is enabled, the S3 bucket policy allows CloudTrail to write, and the bucket exists. However, no log files have been delivered for the past 6 hours. The engineer checks the CloudTrail console and sees that the trail status shows 'Logging' but the latest log file time is from 8 hours ago. The engineer suspects a permission issue but cannot find any explicit deny in the bucket policy. What is the MOST likely cause of this issue?
128A company is using Amazon GuardDuty to detect threats in its AWS environment. The security team notices that GuardDuty is generating a high number of 'UnauthorizedAccess:IAMUser/MaliciousIPCaller' findings for an IAM user that is used by a legacy application. The security team has verified that the IP addresses flagged are not malicious but are legitimate IPs used by the application's third-party service. The company wants to suppress these findings without disabling GuardDuty entirely. Which solution is the MOST effective and secure?
129A security engineer is configuring CloudTrail to log all management events across all regions. The engineer wants to ensure that log files are delivered to an S3 bucket owned by a separate AWS account for centralized auditing. Which additional configuration is required to allow the S3 bucket in the other account to receive these logs?
130A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to centralize VPC Flow Logs from all accounts into a single S3 bucket in the security account. The flow logs are created in the member accounts and sent to the centralized bucket. However, the security team notices that flow logs from some member accounts are not being delivered. What is the most likely cause?
131A company's security team is investigating a potential security incident. They have enabled CloudTrail and CloudWatch Logs. They want to receive real-time alerts when an IAM user creates a new access key. Which combination of services should be used to achieve this?
132A company is using Amazon GuardDuty to monitor for malicious activity. The security team wants to automatically isolate an EC2 instance that is flagged for outbound communication with a known malicious IP address. Which approach is the most efficient and scalable?
133A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log API activity. The security team wants to ensure that any modification to CloudTrail configuration is logged and that the logs are tamper-proof. Which feature should be enabled?
134A security engineer is configuring Amazon GuardDuty for the first time. The engineer wants to receive alerts when GuardDuty generates a finding of severity HIGH or higher. What is the simplest way to achieve this?
135A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API calls. The security team wants to ensure that any attempt to disable CloudTrail logging is detected and alerted within minutes. Which solution should they implement?
136A security engineer is troubleshooting an issue where CloudTrail is not delivering logs to an S3 bucket. The bucket policy appears correct. Which TWO additional steps should the engineer take to diagnose the issue? (Choose TWO.)
137A company has enabled Amazon GuardDuty in multiple AWS accounts. The security team wants to centralize GuardDuty findings into a single account for analysis. Which THREE steps are required to achieve this? (Choose THREE.)
138A security engineer is configuring VPC Flow Logs to capture network traffic metadata. Which TWO attributes can be captured in VPC Flow Logs? (Choose TWO.)
139Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer created this S3 bucket policy to allow CloudTrail to deliver logs from account 123456789012 to the bucket my-trail-bucket. However, CloudTrail logs are not being delivered. What is the most likely reason?
140Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer is reviewing a CloudTrail event. What security concern does this event raise?
141A security team needs to detect unauthorized API calls made from a compromised IAM user. Which AWS service should be used to monitor and alert on specific API activities?
142A company has enabled CloudTrail in all regions and is logging to a single S3 bucket. The security team needs to ensure that any attempted deletion of CloudTrail logs generates an immediate alert. Which solution meets this requirement?
143A company wants to centrally collect and analyze logs from multiple AWS accounts. Which AWS service should be used to aggregate logs from various sources for monitoring and alerting?
144A security team needs to monitor for failed login attempts to an EC2 instance running Linux. The team wants to send a real-time alert when more than 10 failed SSH attempts occur within 5 minutes. Which solution is the most efficient?
145A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team needs to ensure that all accounts have CloudTrail enabled and that logs are delivered to a centralized S3 bucket in the management account. Which solution meets these requirements?
146A security analyst needs to receive an alert when an IAM user attempts to perform an action they are not authorized to perform. Which AWS service can be used to monitor and alert on such authorization failures?
147A company has a requirement to retain CloudTrail logs for 7 years for compliance. The logs are stored in an S3 bucket. The security team needs to ensure that logs are not deleted before the retention period ends, even by users with full S3 permissions. Which action should be taken?
148A security team wants to detect and alert on potential security threats such as compromised instances or malicious activity within their AWS environment. Which TWO AWS services should be used together to provide comprehensive threat detection?
149A security engineer is designing a logging strategy for a multi-account environment. The engineer needs to ensure that all API activity across accounts is logged and that logs are immutable and centrally accessible. Which THREE actions should the engineer take?
150A company wants to monitor for unauthorized changes to security group rules in their VPC. Which TWO AWS services can be used together to detect and alert on such changes?
151Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer finds this CloudTrail log entry. What is the most significant security concern indicated by this event?
152Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer has attached this IAM policy to a user. What is the effect of this policy?
153Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer runs this CloudWatch Logs Insights query on a log group. What is the purpose of this query?
154A DevOps engineer needs to monitor failed SSH login attempts to Amazon EC2 instances. Which AWS service should the engineer use to collect and analyze the login events?
155A security team has enabled AWS CloudTrail in all regions and is delivering logs to an S3 bucket. The team has also enabled S3 server access logging for the CloudTrail bucket. The team needs to detect any unauthorized access to the CloudTrail logs. Which combination of services should the team use to achieve near-real-time detection?
156A company uses Amazon Route 53 for DNS and wants to log all DNS queries made from its VPC. The logs must be stored in Amazon S3 for compliance purposes. Which solution meets these requirements?
157A security engineer needs to monitor AWS account activity for suspicious API calls and receive alerts. Which AWS service should the engineer use to meet this requirement?
158A company has a requirement to retain AWS CloudTrail logs for 7 years for compliance. The logs are stored in an S3 bucket. The company wants to reduce storage costs by automatically moving older logs to a cheaper storage class. Which solution should the company implement?
159A company is using Amazon CloudWatch Logs to collect logs from its EC2 instances. The security team wants to ensure that logs are encrypted at rest and that access to the logs is controlled. Which solution should the team implement?
160A security engineer needs to identify which IAM users have been inactive for the past 90 days. Which AWS service should the engineer use?
161A security team wants to implement a centralized logging solution for multiple AWS accounts. The team needs to collect VPC Flow Logs, CloudTrail logs, and DNS query logs from all accounts. Which THREE services should the team use to aggregate these logs? (Choose THREE.)
162A security engineer needs to ensure that all API calls made to AWS are logged and retained for at least 7 years for compliance. Which AWS service should be enabled to meet this requirement?
163A company is experiencing unauthorized access attempts to an S3 bucket. Which AWS service can be used to detect and alert on such events in real time?
164A security team wants to centrally collect and analyze VPC Flow Logs from multiple AWS accounts for security monitoring. Which solution is MOST scalable and cost-effective?
165A company needs to monitor for root account usage and receive immediate notifications. Which combination of AWS services should be used?
166A security engineer is troubleshooting an issue where CloudTrail logs are not being delivered to the specified S3 bucket. The bucket policy allows CloudTrail to write objects. What is the MOST likely cause?
167A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all management events and data events for S3. The security team wants to detect any PutObject API calls that upload objects with server-side encryption disabled. Which solution is MOST efficient?
168A company wants to receive an alert when an IAM user creates a new access key. Which AWS service should be used to trigger the alert?
169A security engineer needs to monitor for unusual outbound network traffic from an EC2 instance. Which AWS service provides this capability?
170A company is using AWS CloudTrail to log all management events and has enabled log file validation. What additional security benefit does log file validation provide?
171A company needs to monitor for unauthorized changes to security group rules. Which TWO AWS services can be used together to achieve this?
172Which TWO AWS services can be used to detect and alert on suspicious activity in near real-time?
173A security engineer configured the S3 bucket policy shown above for CloudTrail log delivery, but CloudTrail is not delivering logs. What is the MOST likely reason?
174A security engineer runs the CLI command above to investigate a console login event. The output shows: {"type":"Root","principalId":"123456789012","arn":"arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root"}. What does this indicate?
175A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to centrally monitor and analyze all CloudTrail logs from all accounts. The logs must be stored in a centralized S3 bucket with encryption and access logging enabled. Additionally, the team needs to detect anomalous API activity across accounts using machine learning. Which combination of services meets these requirements?
176A company wants to receive real-time notifications when specific API calls are made in their AWS account, such as IAM user creation or S3 bucket policy changes. Which AWS service should be used to trigger notifications based on these API events?
177A company runs a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The security team wants to analyze web request logs to identify potential SQL injection attacks. Which AWS service should be used to collect and analyze the ALB access logs?
178A security engineer needs to monitor for unauthorized changes to IAM roles and policies in an AWS account. The engineer wants to receive an email notification whenever an IAM policy is attached to a role. Which AWS services should be combined to achieve this?
179A company uses Amazon RDS for MySQL and needs to monitor database activity for suspicious queries, such as unauthorized access attempts or SQL injection. The security team wants to centralize the logs from multiple RDS instances and analyze them in near real-time. Which solution should be implemented?
180A security engineer is investigating a potential security incident involving an EC2 instance. The engineer needs to determine if any unauthorized SSH keys were added to the instance's authorized_keys file. Which AWS service should be used to detect this change?
181A company is designing a centralized logging solution for multiple AWS accounts. The solution must meet the following requirements: 1) Logs from all accounts must be stored in a centralized S3 bucket. 2) The logs must be encrypted at rest using AWS KMS. 3) Access to the logs must be logged and monitored. Which TWO services should be used to meet the requirements? (Choose TWO.)
182A security engineer is configuring Amazon GuardDuty in a multi-account environment using AWS Organizations. The engineer needs to ensure that all findings from member accounts are visible in the administrator account. Additionally, the engineer wants to receive real-time notifications for high-severity findings. Which TWO actions should the engineer take? (Choose TWO.)
183A company needs to monitor its AWS environment for compliance with the CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark. The security team wants to automatically check for non-compliant resources and receive reports. Which THREE services should be used together to meet these requirements? (Choose THREE.)
184A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log API activity across multiple accounts. The security team wants to ensure that any S3 bucket created with public read access is detected within minutes. Which solution is MOST efficient?
185A security engineer is investigating a potential compromise. They notice that an IAM user 'svc-backup' has been making unusual API calls from an IP address outside the company's VPC. The engineer wants to ensure all future API calls from this user are logged with full event details. However, the current CloudTrail trail is set to log only management events. What should the engineer do to capture the required details?
186A company wants to centralize security logs from multiple AWS accounts into a single S3 bucket. The logging accounts (e.g., security, production) each have their own CloudTrail trails. Which configuration is required to allow cross-account log delivery?
187A company uses AWS Organizations and wants to enable Amazon GuardDuty across all member accounts. The security team wants to centrally manage findings and automate responses. What is the MOST efficient way to achieve this?
188A company is using Amazon CloudWatch Logs to store application logs. The security team needs to ensure that logs are encrypted at rest using a customer-managed KMS key (CMK). What configuration is required?
189A security engineer is configuring Amazon Inspector to assess EC2 instances for software vulnerabilities. The engineer has installed the SSM Agent on all instances and ensured that the instances have internet access. However, Amazon Inspector shows the instances as 'Unmanaged'. What is the MOST likely cause?
190A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log management events. The security team wants to be alerted when an IAM user creates a new access key. Which solution would meet this requirement with the least operational overhead?
191A company wants to detect and respond to potential security threats in near real-time. Which THREE AWS services should the company use together? (Select THREE.)
192A security engineer is investigating a potential data breach. The engineer wants to analyze historical API calls made by a specific IAM user. Which TWO AWS services can be used together to achieve this? (Select TWO.)
193A security engineer has attached the above IAM policy to a role used by an application to write logs to an S3 bucket. However, the application is unable to write logs. What is the MOST likely reason?
194A security engineer needs to ensure that all S3 object-level API calls (e.g., GetObject, PutObject) on the bucket 'my-bucket' are logged. The current CloudTrail configuration is as shown in the exhibit. What change should the engineer make?
195A security engineer is configuring a multi-account CloudTrail setup. The above bucket policy is attached to the central logging bucket. Despite the policy, CloudTrail in the member account (123456789012) cannot deliver logs. What is the MOST likely issue?
196A security engineer notices that an Amazon S3 bucket has been accessed from an IP address outside the company's allowed range. The engineer needs to identify the IAM user who made the request. Which AWS service should be used to find this information?
197A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to centralize the collection of VPC Flow Logs and AWS CloudTrail logs from all accounts into a single Amazon S3 bucket in the management account. The S3 bucket policy must allow cross-account log delivery. Which condition in the bucket policy should be used to restrict log delivery to only the organization's accounts?
198A security engineer is configuring Amazon GuardDuty in a multi-account environment using AWS Organizations. The engineer wants to ensure that all member accounts send findings to the delegated administrator account. However, some member accounts are not sending findings. What is the most likely cause?
199A company wants to receive real-time notifications when specific API calls are made in their AWS account, such as creating a new IAM user. Which AWS service should be used to trigger a notification based on CloudTrail events?
200A security engineer is investigating a potential security incident involving an EC2 instance. The engineer needs to capture network traffic to and from the instance for analysis. Which method should be used to capture this traffic without installing any software on the instance?
201A security engineer needs to monitor for unauthorized changes to security group rules in an AWS account. Which AWS service can evaluate security group rules against a desired configuration and alert on changes?
202A company uses AWS CloudTrail and wants to ensure that all log files are encrypted at rest using a customer-managed AWS KMS key. The CloudTrail trail is configured to use a KMS key, but some log files appear to be encrypted with the default Amazon S3 managed key (SSE-S3). What is the most likely cause?
203An organization wants to detect and alert on the use of root user credentials in their AWS accounts. They have multiple accounts managed via AWS Organizations. What is the most efficient way to centralize this monitoring?
204A security engineer is configuring logging for an application running on Amazon EC2 instances. The engineer needs to capture both operating system-level logs and application logs. Which TWO services can be used together to achieve this? (Choose two.)
205A security engineer is troubleshooting why CloudTrail is not delivering logs to an S3 bucket. The bucket policy allows CloudTrail to write objects, and the trail is configured with the correct bucket name. However, no log files appear. What is the most likely cause?
206A company uses Amazon GuardDuty to monitor for threats. The security team receives a high-severity finding: 'UnauthorizedAccess:EC2/SSHBruteForce'. The finding indicates a single EC2 instance with a public IP is receiving SSH connection attempts from multiple external IPs. The instance is part of an Auto Scaling group and is fronted by an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The security team wants to block the attacking IPs without disrupting legitimate traffic. What is the MOST effective approach?
207A company wants to detect and alert on changes to IAM roles and policies in their AWS account. Which combination of AWS services should they use?
208A DevOps engineer notices that an EC2 instance's CloudWatch agent is not sending custom metrics to CloudWatch. The agent is installed and the configuration file is valid. The instance has an IAM role attached. What is the most likely reason for the failure?
209A security team uses Amazon Macie to discover sensitive data in S3. They have configured Macie to run automated sensitive data discovery jobs. After reviewing the findings, they notice that some S3 objects containing personally identifiable information (PII) are not being flagged. What is the most likely cause?
210A company wants to centralize logs from multiple AWS accounts into a single S3 bucket for analysis. The accounts are part of an AWS Organizations organization. Which set of steps will accomplish this?
211A security engineer is investigating a potential data exfiltration incident. They see that an EC2 instance with an IAM role is making API calls to S3 to download objects. The IAM role has an S3 bucket policy that allows access from that role. However, CloudTrail logs show that the calls are being made from an IP address outside the company's network. What is the most likely explanation?
212A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API activity. They want to ensure that log files are tamper-proof and can be validated for forensic purposes. Which of the following should they enable?
213A security analyst wants to receive a notification whenever a new security group is created in their AWS account. Which AWS service should they use to trigger an SNS notification based on the CloudTrail event?
214A security team is designing a logging solution for a multi-account AWS environment using AWS Organizations. They need to collect CloudTrail logs, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs from all accounts. Which TWO services can be used to centralize this logging?
215A company wants to monitor unauthorized API calls in their AWS account. Which TWO AWS services can provide real-time alerting on such events?
216A company wants to centralize CloudTrail logs from multiple AWS accounts into a single S3 bucket for security analysis. The logs must be encrypted at rest and access must be logged. What is the MOST secure way to grant cross-account access to the central S3 bucket?
217A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team needs to ensure that all accounts have CloudTrail enabled and that logs are delivered to a central S3 bucket. A new member account is created and the security engineer wants to enforce this configuration automatically. Which approach meets these requirements with the least operational overhead?
218A company uses Amazon GuardDuty to detect threats. The security team wants to receive real-time notifications for all GuardDuty findings with a severity of HIGH or CRITICAL. What is the MOST efficient way to achieve this?
219A company has a multi-account AWS environment using AWS Organizations. The security team wants to ensure that all API activity across all accounts is logged and immutable. CloudTrail is enabled in all accounts, but the logs are stored in individual account buckets. The team wants to centralize logs and prevent any account from disabling logging. What should they do?
220A security engineer is reviewing CloudTrail logs and notices an event with the key 'eventType' set to 'AwsServiceEvent'. What does this indicate?
221A company uses Amazon S3 to store sensitive data. The security team wants to detect when objects are made publicly accessible. Which combination of services provides the MOST comprehensive detection with minimal false positives?
222Which TWO AWS services can be used to centrally collect and analyze logs from multiple AWS accounts? (Choose two.)
223Which TWO actions should a security engineer take to ensure that CloudTrail logs are protected from unauthorized deletion? (Choose two.)
224Which THREE AWS services can be used to detect and alert on suspicious network traffic patterns? (Choose three.)
225A financial services company has a production AWS account with hundreds of EC2 instances running a mix of Linux and Windows workloads. The security team is responsible for detecting and responding to security incidents. They have enabled CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, and GuardDuty. Recently, GuardDuty generated a finding indicating that an EC2 instance is communicating with a known malicious IP address. The security engineer needs to investigate the incident. The engineer examines the GuardDuty finding and sees the affected resource is an EC2 instance ID. The engineer wants to identify which user or role launched the instance and what security groups were associated with it at launch time. Which approach should the engineer take to gather this information?
226A company runs a multi-tier web application on AWS. The application consists of an Application Load Balancer (ALB), a fleet of EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group, and an RDS MySQL database. The security team wants to monitor for SQL injection attempts. They have enabled AWS WAF on the ALB and are logging all requests. The security engineer needs to analyze the WAF logs to identify if any SQL injection attacks have been attempted. The logs are stored in an S3 bucket. The engineer needs to query the logs for patterns like 'SELECT * FROM' or 'DROP TABLE' in the URI. Which service should the engineer use to perform this analysis?
227A company uses AWS Organizations to manage multiple accounts. The security team needs to implement a centralized logging solution where all VPC Flow Logs from all accounts are sent to a central S3 bucket in the security account. The flow logs must be encrypted with a customer-managed KMS key (CMK) that is owned by the security account. The security engineer has enabled VPC Flow Logs in each account and configured the destination to be the central S3 bucket. However, the flow logs are not being delivered. The engineer checks the S3 bucket policy and confirms that it grants the required permissions to the Flow Logs service principal. What is the MOST likely cause of the failure?
228A security engineer notices that CloudTrail logs for a production account are not being delivered to the S3 bucket. The bucket policy allows CloudTrail to write objects. What is the MOST likely cause?
229A company wants to monitor AWS API calls for suspicious activity and automatically remediate by revoking IAM roles in real time. Which combination of services should be used?
230A security team needs to audit all changes to IAM policies in their AWS account. Which AWS service should be used?
231A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to ensure that all CloudTrail trails are enabled in all accounts and log to a central S3 bucket. What is the MOST efficient way to enforce this?
232A company needs to monitor for unauthorized S3 bucket deletions. Which CloudWatch Logs metric filter should be used on CloudTrail logs?
233A security engineer wants to detect and alert on AWS account root user activity. Which THREE services can be used together to achieve this? (Select THREE.)
234Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor network traffic for malicious activity? (Select TWO.)
235Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer configured this S3 bucket policy for CloudTrail, but CloudTrail logs are not being delivered. What is the MOST likely missing permission?
236A company has a multi-account AWS Organization with 50 accounts. The security team wants to monitor for unauthorized IAM role assumption across all accounts. They have enabled AWS CloudTrail in all accounts and are delivering logs to a central S3 bucket in the security account. They also have Amazon GuardDuty enabled in all accounts. The security team wants a centralized dashboard to visualize cross-account role assumption events. They have limited budget and want to use existing services. What should they do?
237A company wants to ensure that all API calls made to their AWS account are logged and immutable. They have enabled AWS CloudTrail and are delivering logs to an S3 bucket. The security team requires that logs cannot be deleted or modified by anyone, including the root user. What should they do?
238A company uses Amazon CloudWatch Logs to collect application logs from EC2 instances. The security team wants to create an alarm that triggers when a specific error pattern appears in the logs. They have set up a metric filter and an alarm. However, the alarm is not triggering even though the error pattern exists in the logs. What is the most likely cause?
239A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API calls across multiple accounts in AWS Organizations. The security team notices that management events are being logged, but data events for Amazon S3 are not appearing in the CloudTrail logs for any account. The team needs to enable data event logging for S3 across all accounts. Currently, the organization trail is configured in the management account, and all member accounts have default CloudTrail configurations. What is the MOST efficient way to enable S3 data event logging for all current and future accounts in the organization?
240A company uses Amazon GuardDuty to monitor for malicious activity in its AWS environment. The security team receives a high number of findings, many of which are false positives. They want to reduce noise by suppressing findings for known benign activities, such as internal vulnerability scans performed by the security team. GuardDuty has a feature to create suppression rules based on finding criteria. However, the team also wants to ensure that if a new type of threat is detected, it is immediately escalated. What is the MOST effective way to manage GuardDuty findings?
241Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer reviews IAM permissions for the 'admin' user. The user is a member of the 'Administrators' group, which has the 'AdministratorAccess' managed policy attached. Additionally, the user has an inline policy named 'AllowSSH'. The engineer wants to ensure that the user can only start SSM sessions on instances with the tag 'SSH: enabled'. However, the user can still start sessions on any instance. What is the most likely reason?
242Refer to the exhibit. After invoking the Lambda function, why are there no log streams in the log group?
243Refer to the exhibit. An AWS Config rule checks that S3 buckets deny HTTP requests. The bucket 'my-bucket' is reported as non-compliant. Which change would make the bucket compliant?
244A security engineer needs to ensure that all API activity in an AWS account is logged and that the logs are retained for 10 years for compliance. The engineer enables AWS CloudTrail with a multi-Region trail and delivers logs to an Amazon S3 bucket. The engineer must prevent any user, including administrators, from deleting or altering the logs during the retention period. Which solution meets these requirements?
245A security engineer manages a VPC with a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances running behind an Application Load Balancer. The engineer needs to capture, in near real time, metadata about all IP traffic entering and leaving the network interfaces in the VPC, including source and destination IP, ports, and protocol, and then store the records in Amazon S3 for later analysis. Which solution meets these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?
246A security engineer is configuring a new AWS account and wants to ensure that all API activity is logged and that logs are protected from deletion. The engineer plans to use AWS CloudTrail and Amazon S3. Which TWO actions should the engineer take to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)
247A security engineer is reviewing AWS CloudTrail logs and notices a large number of DeleteBucket API calls from an unfamiliar IAM role. The engineer wants to automatically notify the security team when similar suspicious API activity occurs in the future. The notification must be sent within minutes and should include details such as the IAM role and the bucket name. Which solution should the engineer implement?
248A security engineer is using Amazon GuardDuty in a multi-account environment managed by AWS Organizations. The engineer wants to ensure that GuardDuty findings from all member accounts are centrally visible and that new accounts are automatically enrolled. What should the engineer do?
249A security engineer needs to monitor AWS account activity for suspicious API calls, such as disabling AWS CloudTrail or deleting an AWS Config recorder. The engineer wants to receive near-real-time alerts when such events occur. Which AWS service should the engineer use to meet these requirements?
250A security engineer needs to detect when an IAM access key is created for a user and then used from an unusual location. The engineer wants to receive an alert when such activity occurs. Which AWS service should be used to meet this requirement?
Deep-dive questions
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Be able to design multi-account logging: organization CloudTrail to a central S3 bucket, GuardDuty delegated administrator with associated members, and CloudWatch alarms on metric filters. The critical detail is getting cross-account S3 bucket policies and KMS key policies right so logs actually arrive.
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