SCS-C02 Timed Practice Test 4 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A security team needs to audit all changes to IAM policies in their AWS account. Which AWS service should they use to record policy changes?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudTrail. AWS CloudTrail is the correct service because it records all API calls made in the AWS account, including IAM policy changes (e.g., CreatePolicy, PutRolePolicy, AttachUserPolicy). These events are captured as CloudTrail log entries, providing a complete audit trail of who made the change, when, and from which source IP. This directly meets the requirement to audit all changes to IAM policies.

Answer

Amazon Inspector

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Amazon GuardDuty

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AWS Config

Question 2

A company wants to implement least privilege access for a data analytics team that uses Amazon Athena to query data in S3. Which THREE steps should be taken?

Accepted Answer

Grant write access to an S3 bucket for query results. Option B is correct because Athena requires a dedicated S3 bucket to store query results, and granting write access to that specific bucket ensures the service can write output without exposing other data. This aligns with least privilege by limiting write permissions to only the necessary location.

Answer

Grant full S3 access to all buckets

Answer

Grant access to Amazon Redshift

Question 3

A security engineer is investigating a potential compromise. An EC2 instance running Amazon Linux 2 is sending outbound traffic to a known malicious IP address. The engineer needs to capture the network traffic for analysis without alerting the attacker. Which solution meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use VPC Traffic Mirroring to mirror the EC2 instance's ENI traffic to a monitoring appliance in a separate VPC.. Option C is correct because VPC Traffic Mirroring captures all network traffic at the packet level from the EC2 instance's Elastic Network Interface (ENI) and forwards it to a monitoring appliance without any inline processing or modification of the traffic. This allows the security engineer to perform deep packet analysis while remaining completely transparent to the attacker, as the mirrored traffic is a copy and does not affect the original flow. Unlike other options, Traffic Mirroring provides full packet capture (including headers and payloads) for forensic analysis, which is essential for investigating a compromise.

Answer

Enable VPC Flow Logs on the ENI and stream to Amazon S3 for analysis.

Answer

Attach a security group to the instance that logs all traffic to CloudWatch Logs.

Answer

Enable AWS Network Firewall on the VPC and configure a rule to log all traffic to the malicious IP.

Question 4

A 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?

Accepted Answer

Add a route in the private subnet's route table pointing to the NAT gateway.. Option B is correct because a NAT gateway, when deployed in a public subnet with an associated Elastic IP and a route to an internet gateway, allows instances in private subnets to initiate outbound connections to the internet (e.g., for software updates) while preventing any unsolicited inbound connections from the internet. The private subnet's route table must include a default route (0.0.0.0/0) pointing to the NAT gateway's private IP address to forward outbound traffic through it.

Answer

Configure the private subnet's security group to allow inbound traffic from 0.0.0.0/0.

Answer

Attach an internet gateway to the private subnet's route table.

Answer

Create a VPC gateway endpoint for Amazon S3.

Question 5

A security engineer is designing a governance framework for a multi-account AWS environment. The engineer needs to ensure that all accounts comply with the principle of least privilege for IAM roles and that any non-compliant resources are automatically reported. Which two AWS services should the engineer use together to achieve this? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

AWS Security Hub. AWS Security Hub is correct because it provides a comprehensive view of security alerts and compliance status across multiple AWS accounts, aggregating findings from various AWS services and third-party tools. AWS Config is correct because it continuously monitors and records AWS resource configurations, enabling you to define rules (e.g., IAM least privilege policies) and automatically evaluate resource compliance, triggering notifications or remediation actions for non-compliant resources. Together, Security Hub can ingest AWS Config rule compliance results as findings, allowing centralized reporting and automated response to IAM role violations.

Answer

AWS Service Catalog

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Amazon GuardDuty

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AWS CloudTrail

Question 6

A 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?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudTrail. AWS CloudTrail is the correct service because it records all API calls made in an AWS account, including the identity, source IP, request parameters, and response elements. By default, CloudTrail stores event history for the last 90 days, which can be queried via the Event History console or API, meeting the requirement to query logs for specific user activity over the past 90 days without additional configuration.

Answer

Amazon VPC Flow Logs

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Amazon CloudWatch Logs

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AWS Config

Question 7

A company wants to enforce encryption in transit for all data transferred between its Amazon EC2 instances and an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The company uses AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) to provision TLS certificates. Which TWO actions should the company take? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Configure the target group to use HTTPS protocol.. Option A is correct because configuring the target group to use HTTPS protocol ensures that traffic between the Application Load Balancer (ALB) and the EC2 instances is encrypted in transit. This enforces TLS encryption on the backend connection, meeting the requirement for data-in-transit protection between the ALB and instances.

Answer

Enable encryption at rest on the EC2 instances.

Answer

Use a network load balancer instead of an ALB.

Answer

Assign a certificate from ACM to the ALB listener.

Question 8

Which TWO actions can be performed using AWS IAM? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Define a password policy for IAM users. Option C is correct because AWS IAM allows you to define a password policy for IAM users, which enforces complexity requirements, rotation periods, and reuse prevention. This is a core IAM feature that helps secure user credentials without relying on external identity providers.

Answer

Change the instance type of an RDS database

Answer

Create a CloudFront distribution

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Configure a VPC peering connection

Question 9

A company wants to use AWS CloudFormation to manage infrastructure. The security team requires that all templates are scanned for security vulnerabilities before deployment. Which service should be integrated into the pipeline?

Accepted Answer

AWS CloudFormation Guard. AWS CloudFormation Guard (cfn-guard) is a policy-as-code tool that allows you to define rules to validate CloudFormation templates against security best practices before deployment. It integrates into CI/CD pipelines to enforce compliance with organizational policies, such as ensuring encryption is enabled or public access is restricted, directly addressing the requirement to scan templates for security vulnerabilities.

Answer

Amazon Inspector

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AWS Config

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AWS Shield Advanced

Question 10

A large enterprise uses AWS Organizations with hundreds of accounts. The security team needs to enforce that all accounts have AWS CloudTrail enabled and logs are delivered to a centralized S3 bucket in the management account. The team also wants to ensure that no account can disable CloudTrail or delete the bucket. Which combination of controls meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use a service control policy (SCP) to deny actions that disable CloudTrail or delete the bucket.. Service control policies (SCPs) are the correct mechanism because they allow the management account to centrally restrict permissions across all accounts in the organization. By creating an SCP that denies the `cloudtrail:StopLogging`, `cloudtrail:DeleteTrail`, `cloudtrail:UpdateTrail`, and `s3:DeleteBucket` actions, the security team can prevent any account (including root users) from disabling CloudTrail or deleting the centralized S3 bucket, regardless of IAM policies or direct resource-based policies.

Answer

Enable AWS CloudTrail in the management account and use S3 bucket policies.

Answer

Use an IAM policy in each account to prevent trail modifications.

Answer

Use AWS Config rules to detect and alert on disabled trails.