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SCS-C02 · domain

Data Protection

Data Protection covers encryption at rest and in transit, KMS key policies and grants, ACM certificate management, S3 bucket policies and Object Lock, and Secrets Manager rotation. SCS-C02 tests these through scenario questions: choosing between SSE-KMS and SSE-S3, troubleshooting AccessDenied from key policies, enforcing TLS with aws:SecureTransport, and designing cross-account key access.

176 questions59 easy61 medium56 hard

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What this domain covers

What to know about Data Protection

Choose and troubleshoot SSE-KMS vs SSE-S3, KMS key policies and grants, ACM certificates, S3 Object Lock, and Secrets Manager rotation. Most critical: get KMS key policies and IAM permissions right, since AccessDenied errors usually stem from key policy gaps.

Selecting SSE-S3, SSE-KMS, or DSSE-KMS for S3 objects based on audit and key control needs

Writing KMS key policies and grants that permit cross-account decrypt without wildcard principals

Enforcing TLS-only access using aws:SecureTransport conditions in S3 and IAM policies

Configuring Secrets Manager automatic rotation with Lambda and KMS-encrypted secret values

Watch out for

Common Data Protection exam traps

  • ▸Assuming an IAM policy granting kms:Decrypt is enough; the KMS key policy must also allow the principal.
  • ▸Confusing SSE-KMS bucket default encryption with per-object encryption, missing that existing objects stay unencrypted.
  • ▸Forgetting that KMS grants are needed for temporary cross-account access when key policy edits are impractical.

Question index

All Data Protection questions (176)

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1

A company is designing a data protection strategy for its Amazon S3 bucket that stores sensitive customer data. The bucket must be encrypted at rest using a customer managed key (CMK) that is stored in AWS KMS. The company also needs to ensure that only authorized users can decrypt objects. Which TWO actions should the company take?

Hard
2

A financial services company must ensure that all data at rest in Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL is encrypted. The current database is unencrypted. What is the MOST operationally efficient way to enable encryption?

Hard
3

A company uses AWS Secrets Manager to store database credentials for an application running on EC2 instances. The security engineer needs to ensure that the credentials are automatically rotated every 30 days and that the application can retrieve the credentials without hardcoding them. The engineer has configured a rotation Lambda function and enabled rotation. However, the application is still using hardcoded credentials. What should the engineer do to ensure the application retrieves credentials dynamically?

Hard
4

A company is storing sensitive data in Amazon S3. They want to ensure that all data is encrypted at rest using server-side encryption. Which THREE options are available for server-side encryption in S3? (Select THREE.)

Easy
5

A company stores sensitive customer data in Amazon S3. They want to ensure that all objects are encrypted at rest using server-side encryption with AWS KMS. Which S3 bucket policy statement should be added to deny uploads that do not request SSE-KMS?

Easy
6

A security engineer is configuring AWS KMS to encrypt data in a new Amazon S3 bucket. The company requires that the KMS key used for encryption automatically rotate its key material every year, and that the rotation be transparent to applications. The engineer creates a customer managed key with key spec SYMMETRIC_DEFAULT and key usage ENCRYPT_DECRYPT. What should the engineer do next to meet the requirement?

Medium
7

A company uses AWS CloudHSM to generate and store encryption keys for a custom application. The security team needs to ensure high availability and durability of the keys. Which architecture should be recommended?

Hard
8

A company is designing a data protection strategy for Amazon S3. The compliance team requires that all objects be encrypted at rest and that any attempt to upload an unencrypted object be blocked. Which TWO steps should the company take? (Choose TWO.)

Hard
9

A company uses AWS Secrets Manager to store database credentials. The security team needs to ensure that secrets are automatically rotated every 30 days. The rotation function must be implemented with minimal operational overhead. Which approach should be used?

Hard
10

A company wants to protect data at rest in Amazon S3 using client-side encryption. The application will run on Amazon EC2 instances. Which approach meets these requirements?

Medium
11

A company wants to protect data in transit between an EC2 instance and an S3 bucket. Which method should be used?

Easy
12

A company uses AWS KMS to manage encryption keys for sensitive data stored in S3. The security team wants to ensure that keys are rotated automatically every year. What should they do?

Medium
13

A company wants to protect sensitive data stored in Amazon S3 by encrypting it at rest. Which AWS service can be used to manage the encryption keys?

Easy
14

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances that processes credit card data. The application must store the data in an encrypted format. The security team wants to minimize the performance impact of encryption and offload the encryption operations to a dedicated hardware security module (HSM). Which solution should the architect choose?

Medium
15

A company is migrating on-premises databases to Amazon RDS for MySQL. The security team requires that data be encrypted at rest and in transit. Which combination of steps should the team take to meet these requirements?

Medium
16

Which TWO of the following are valid methods to enforce encryption at rest for an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance? (Choose 2.)

Hard
17

Which TWO methods can be used to encrypt data at rest in Amazon S3? (Choose 2.)

Easy
18

A company wants to encrypt data at rest in Amazon S3 using server-side encryption with Amazon S3-managed keys (SSE-S3). What is the minimum permission required for an IAM user to upload an object that will be encrypted with SSE-S3?

Easy
19

A security engineer is troubleshooting an issue where an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance encrypted at rest with AWS KMS is failing to launch. The error message indicates a KMS access issue. Which IAM role or policy is most likely missing?

Medium
20

A company wants to ensure that data stored in Amazon EBS volumes is encrypted at rest. What is the easiest way to achieve this?

Easy
21

A security engineer needs to protect sensitive data stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. The data must be encrypted at rest using a customer managed key in AWS KMS, and the engineer wants to ensure that all requests to upload objects without encryption are automatically denied. The bucket is in account 111122223333. Which S3 bucket policy statement should the engineer use?

Medium
22

A security engineer is investigating a potential data breach and finds this CloudTrail log entry. What does this entry indicate?

Easy
23

A company is designing a data protection strategy for its Amazon S3 bucket that stores sensitive documents. The security team requires that all data be encrypted in transit and at rest, and that any accidental deletion of objects can be reversed within 30 days. Additionally, the company must be able to audit all access attempts to the bucket, including failed attempts. Which TWO actions should the company take to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Medium
24

A company wants to protect sensitive data stored in S3 from being accessed by unauthorized users. Which TWO actions should be taken? (Choose two.)

Medium
25

Refer to the exhibit. A user named John encrypts a file using the AWS CLI. John then tries to decrypt the file but receives an AccessDenied error. John has full administrator permissions in IAM. What is the most likely cause?

Hard
26

An application running on Amazon EC2 needs to access an S3 bucket containing sensitive data. The security team wants to avoid storing long-term AWS credentials on the instance. How should the EC2 instance be configured to access S3 securely?

Easy
27

A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt data in Amazon RDS. They need to ensure that the key material is automatically rotated every year. Which key type should they use?

Medium
28

A security engineer needs to encrypt a 10 GB file before uploading it to Amazon S3. The encryption must use a customer managed key in AWS KMS, and the engineer wants to minimize the amount of data sent to KMS for encryption. Which approach should the engineer use?

Medium
29

A company uses S3 to store sensitive customer data. They want to ensure that all S3 buckets have encryption enabled at rest. Which S3 feature should be used to automatically enforce encryption on all newly created objects?

Medium
30

A company is designing a data protection strategy for its Amazon RDS for MySQL database. The database contains sensitive data that must be encrypted at rest. The company also needs to manage the encryption keys using its own HSM. Which solution should be used?

Medium
31

A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt data in Amazon S3. The security team receives an alert that an IAM user is attempting to decrypt data using a key that they do not have access to. Which AWS service can be used to monitor and alert on such unauthorized KMS API calls?

Hard
32

A company stores data in Amazon S3 and uses AWS KMS with Customer Master Keys (CMKs) for encryption. The security team wants to audit when the CMK is used to decrypt data. Which of the following will provide this information?

Hard
33

Which THREE of the following are required to use client-side encryption with Amazon S3 using AWS KMS? (Choose three.)

Hard
34

A company wants to protect sensitive data stored in Amazon S3 by enforcing encryption in transit. Which policy should be used to deny requests that do not use HTTPS?

Medium
35

A company stores sensitive customer data in Amazon S3. The security team has enabled default encryption with SSE-S3 on the bucket. The compliance team requires that all access to the bucket be logged and that any unauthorized access attempts be detected in real time. The company has AWS CloudTrail enabled. Which additional steps should the security team take to meet the compliance requirements?

Hard
36

A company uses AWS CloudHSM to generate and store encryption keys for a custom database. The security team needs to back up the keys to another AWS Region for disaster recovery. What is the most secure and efficient way to achieve this?

Hard
37

A company stores sensitive customer data in Amazon S3. To comply with data protection regulations, they need to automatically prevent any new objects from being made publicly accessible. Which S3 feature should they configure?

Medium
38

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application uses an Amazon RDS for MySQL database. The security team requires that all data in transit between the EC2 instances and the database be encrypted. The database is in a private subnet. The EC2 instances are in a public subnet. The security team also wants to minimize latency. What should be done to meet these requirements?

Medium
39

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer reviews the bucket policy for an S3 bucket. The engineer attempts to upload an object to the bucket using the AWS CLI without the --ssl flag (HTTP). What is the outcome?

Easy
40

A company uses AWS KMS with a custom key store backed by AWS CloudHSM. The security team wants to ensure that the key material never leaves the HSM and that all cryptographic operations are performed within the HSM. Which of the following actions should the team take?

Medium
41

A company needs to encrypt data in transit between an EC2 instance and an RDS database. Which option should be used?

Easy
42

A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt data in Amazon S3. The security team needs to audit all KMS key usage, including who used the key, when, and what operation was performed. Which AWS service should be used to meet this requirement?

Hard
43

A company is using Amazon S3 to store backup files that must be retained for 7 years. The files are accessed infrequently but must be available within minutes when needed. The company wants to minimize storage costs while ensuring data is encrypted at rest. Which storage class and encryption combination is most cost-effective?

Medium
44

A company uses S3 to store sensitive customer data. Which AWS service can automatically discover and classify this data to help meet compliance requirements?

Easy
45

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer is reviewing the bucket encryption configuration. The bucket is used to store sensitive data. The company policy requires that all objects be encrypted using AWS KMS with a customer managed key. What should the engineer do to meet the policy?

Hard
46

A security engineer is troubleshooting an issue where an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance is not encrypting data at rest. The DB instance was created without encryption. The engineer needs to enable encryption without significant downtime. What is the MOST effective approach?

Hard
47

A security engineer applies the above S3 bucket policy. An application tries to upload an object with the header "x-amz-server-side-encryption: AES256". What will happen?

Hard
48

A company needs to ensure that data in transit between an EC2 instance and an RDS database is encrypted. Which solution meets this requirement?

Easy
49

A company wants to protect data in transit between an on-premises data center and Amazon S3. Which AWS service should be used to establish a dedicated, encrypted connection?

Easy
50

A company needs to protect data in Amazon S3 by ensuring that only authorized users can access objects, and all access is logged. Which TWO services should be used together? (Choose TWO.)

Hard
51

A company wants to encrypt data stored in Amazon S3 using server-side encryption with customer-provided keys (SSE-C). Which statement is correct regarding SSE-C?

Easy
52

A company needs to encrypt data at rest in its Amazon EBS volumes. The company wants to use an encryption key that is automatically rotated every year without any manual intervention. Which key type should be used?

Easy
53

A company needs to ensure that data in transit between an on-premises data center and Amazon S3 is encrypted. Which AWS service should be used to establish a dedicated encrypted connection?

Easy
54

A company is migrating sensitive data to Amazon S3. The data must be encrypted at rest using keys managed by the company. The company also requires an audit trail of key usage. Which solution meets these requirements?

Easy
55

Which TWO of the following are valid ways to enforce encryption at rest for data in Amazon S3? (Choose TWO.)

Medium
56

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer runs the above AWS CLI command to encrypt a secret file. The command succeeds and returns a base64-encoded ciphertext. Which of the following statements is correct?

Easy
57

A company uses AWS Secrets Manager to rotate database credentials automatically. The security team wants to ensure that while the secret is being rotated, applications can always retrieve a valid credential. Which rotation strategy should be used?

Medium
58

A company stores sensitive data in an Amazon S3 bucket. The security team wants to ensure that all objects are encrypted with SSE-KMS using a specific customer managed key, and that any attempt to upload an object without this encryption is denied. The bucket policy must enforce this. Which bucket policy statement should the security engineer use?

Hard
59

A financial services company uses AWS KMS to encrypt sensitive data. The security team has a requirement to rotate the CMK every 90 days and to maintain a record of all previous key versions for decryption of historical data. The team creates a new CMK every 90 days and manually updates applications to use the new key. This process is error-prone and causes downtime. What is the MOST operationally efficient solution that meets the requirements?

Hard
60

Refer to the exhibit. An AWS KMS key policy includes the statement shown. The AdminRole tries to decrypt a ciphertext that was encrypted using the same KMS key with encryption context 'department=engineering'. What will happen?

Easy
61

A company is designing a data protection strategy for Amazon EFS file systems. The security team requires encryption at rest and in transit. Additionally, the team needs to control which KMS keys can be used to encrypt the file system. Which THREE steps should the team take?

Hard
62

A company uses AWS CloudHSM to generate and store encryption keys for a custom application. The application runs on Amazon EC2 instances and uses the PKCS#11 interface to interact with the HSM. The security team recently discovered that a former employee may have obtained a copy of the cryptographic materials from the HSM. What should the security team do to minimize the impact?

Hard
63

A company uses Amazon SQS to decouple its microservices. The messages contain personally identifiable information (PII). The security team requires that all messages be encrypted at rest. Currently, SQS is configured with SSE enabled using a customer managed KMS key. However, the team discovers that some messages are still being stored in plaintext in the dead-letter queue (DLQ) after the maximum receives are exceeded. The DLQ is also an SQS queue. What is the MOST likely reason?

Hard
64

A company is using AWS KMS to encrypt S3 objects. The security team wants to ensure that only a specific IAM role can decrypt objects in a particular S3 bucket. Which KMS key policy configuration should be used?

Medium
65

A company has an Amazon S3 bucket with versioning enabled. They want to ensure that all objects in the bucket are encrypted at rest using server-side encryption with AWS KMS (SSE-KMS). They also want to prevent any future uploads that are not encrypted with SSE-KMS. Which combination of actions should they take?

Hard
66

A company is storing sensitive data in Amazon S3 buckets. They want to ensure that all uploaded objects are encrypted at rest using server-side encryption with AWS KMS (SSE-KMS). Which bucket policy statement will enforce this?

Easy
67

A company needs to share an encrypted Amazon S3 object with another AWS account. The object is encrypted with an AWS KMS customer managed key. Which steps are required?

Easy
68

A company uses AWS CloudHSM to store encryption keys for a custom database encryption application. The application runs on Amazon EC2 instances and uses the PKCS#11 library to communicate with the HSM. Recently, the application started failing with 'CKR_SESSION_HANDLE_INVALID' errors. Which of the following is the most likely cause?

Hard
69

A company uses Amazon S3 to store sensitive documents. The security policy requires that all objects be encrypted using server-side encryption with customer-provided keys (SSE-C). An application fails when trying to read an object with the error 'The request includes an invalid header.' What is the MOST likely cause?

Hard
70

A company has an S3 bucket with versioning enabled. They want to ensure that all deleted objects are retained for 90 days before permanent deletion. Which S3 feature should be used?

Hard
71

A security engineer needs to protect data in transit between an EC2 instance and an RDS database. The RDS database uses SSL/TLS certificates. What is the MOST secure way to ensure that the connection is encrypted?

Medium
72

A company wants to ensure that data at rest in Amazon EBS volumes is encrypted. What is the simplest way to achieve this?

Easy
73

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer runs the AWS CLI command shown and receives an AccessDenied error. The IAM user Alice has a policy that grants kms:Decrypt on all resources. What is the most likely cause of the error?

Hard
74

A company is designing a data protection strategy for its Amazon S3 buckets. Which TWO actions can help protect data from accidental deletion or overwrite?

Medium
75

A company needs to securely store database credentials for a legacy application running on Amazon EC2. The credentials are currently hardcoded in the application code. Which service should be used to rotate and retrieve secrets automatically?

Easy
76

A company uses AWS Secrets Manager to store database credentials. They need to rotate the secrets automatically every 30 days. Which rotation strategy should they use?

Easy
77

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer is troubleshooting a decryption failure. The command uses the AWS CLI to decrypt a file. The decryption fails with an 'AccessDeniedException' error. The IAM user has the following policy attached: { "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": "kms:Decrypt", "Resource": "*" } ] } What is the most likely cause of the failure?

Hard
78

A security engineer applies the bucket policy shown in the exhibit to an S3 bucket. What is the effect of this policy?

Hard
79

Which TWO of the following are valid options for encrypting data at rest in Amazon EBS? (Choose two.)

Easy
80

A financial services company is designing a data protection strategy for its DynamoDB table containing sensitive customer data. The table has a global secondary index (GSI). The company needs to encrypt the data at rest using a customer managed key (CMK) that is rotated annually. Which solution meets these requirements?

Hard
81

A company wants to protect data in transit between its on-premises network and Amazon VPC using IPsec VPN. Which AWS service should be used to establish this VPN connection?

Medium
82

A company is designing a data protection strategy for Amazon EBS volumes. Which TWO practices should be implemented? (Choose TWO.)

Medium
83

Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor and audit data access patterns to Amazon S3 buckets? (Choose 2.)

Medium
84

A company wants to ensure that data stored in Amazon S3 is encrypted at rest using keys managed by AWS. Which encryption option should they choose?

Easy
85

A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application handles payment card information (PCI) and must comply with PCI DSS. The security team wants to ensure that all data in transit between the client and the ALB is encrypted using TLS 1.2 or higher. The ALB currently uses a default certificate from AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) that was issued by Amazon. The compliance team has flagged that the certificate must be issued by a public Certificate Authority (CA) that is trusted by major browsers. The company wants to minimize operational overhead. What should the security team do?

Medium
86

A security engineer needs to audit all access to a KMS customer managed key. Which AWS service should be used?

Medium
87

A company wants to automate the detection of sensitive data in an S3 bucket. Which AWS service should be used?

Easy
88

A company is designing a disaster recovery plan for its Amazon RDS for MySQL database. The database must be encrypted at rest. Which approach ensures that the database is encrypted and can be restored in another AWS Region?

Easy
89

A security engineer is configuring a new Amazon RDS for MySQL database. The compliance team requires that all database connections be encrypted in transit. Which configuration ensures this requirement is met?

Medium
90

A company has an S3 bucket with versioning and MFA Delete enabled. A user attempts to delete an object version using the AWS CLI without MFA. What will happen?

Hard
91

A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt data at rest in Amazon S3. The security team requires that all encryption keys be automatically rotated every year. Which solution meets this requirement?

Medium
92

A company stores sensitive data in an Amazon S3 bucket. The security team requires that all data in transit between the company's on-premises data center and S3 be encrypted. Which solution meets this requirement?

Easy
93

A company is using AWS KMS to encrypt data in Amazon Redshift. They need to rotate the KMS key annually. Which approach meets the requirement with minimal operational impact?

Hard
94

A company wants to protect sensitive data stored in Amazon S3. Which TWO actions should the company take to meet this goal? (Choose TWO.)

Medium
95

A company wants to share an encrypted Amazon Machine Image (AMI) with another AWS account. The AMI uses an EBS snapshot encrypted with a customer managed key in KMS. What is the correct procedure to allow the other account to launch an EC2 instance from this AMI?

Hard
96

A company is designing a data protection solution for Amazon S3 that must prevent any user from accidentally deleting objects. Which combination of S3 features should be used?

Medium
97

A security engineer is designing a solution to protect data in transit for a web application that uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) and EC2 instances. The application must use TLS 1.2 or higher and must use a strong cipher suite. The engineer has configured the ALB with a security policy that includes TLS 1.2 and strong ciphers. However, the engineer notices that some clients are still able to connect using TLS 1.0. What is the most likely cause of this issue?

Medium
98

Match each AWS security-related acronym to its definition.

Medium
99

A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt data in Amazon S3. The security team wants to ensure that when an object is retrieved, it is automatically decrypted. They have configured the S3 bucket to use SSE-KMS with a customer managed key. However, when a user downloads an object using the AWS CLI, the object is still encrypted. The IAM policy for the user includes kms:Decrypt permission. What is the MOST likely reason for this issue?

Medium
100

A company is using Amazon S3 to store sensitive data. They want to ensure that all objects uploaded to a specific bucket are encrypted using server-side encryption with AWS KMS. Which bucket policy condition should be used to enforce this?

Easy
101

A company stores sensitive data in Amazon S3 and requires that objects are automatically encrypted using server-side encryption with AWS KMS. The bucket policy must deny any PUT request that does not include the x-amz-server-side-encryption header with value aws:kms. Which bucket policy condition key should be used?

Medium
102

A company is implementing a data loss prevention (DLP) solution for data stored in Amazon S3. The data includes personally identifiable information (PII). The company wants to automatically identify and classify PII objects, then apply encryption using AWS KMS with a customer-managed key. Which AWS service should be used to identify PII?

Hard
103

A security engineer runs the command shown in the exhibit. What is the primary purpose of this command?

Medium
104

A company has a requirement to automatically rotate encryption keys for S3 objects every 90 days. They are using SSE-KMS with a customer managed key. Which action will meet the requirement without breaking access to existing objects?

Hard
105

Which TWO of the following are valid options for encrypting data at rest in Amazon S3? (Choose 2.)

Easy
106

Drag and drop the steps to configure a VPC with private subnets and NAT gateway for outbound internet access in the correct order.

Medium
107

A company is designing a data encryption solution for its Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database. The database must be encrypted at rest. What is the simplest way to achieve this?

Medium
108

A company wants to use client-side encryption for data uploaded to Amazon S3. The encryption keys must be managed by the company and never sent to AWS. Which S3 encryption option supports this requirement?

Medium
109

A company uses AWS CloudHSM to generate and store encryption keys for a custom application. The security team is concerned about key durability and wants to ensure that keys are not lost if the HSM fails. Which action should be taken?

Hard
110

A company uses Amazon RDS for MySQL with encryption at rest enabled using AWS KMS. They need to ensure that automated backups and snapshots are also encrypted. Which configuration is required?

Hard
111

A company needs to securely store database credentials that are used by an application running on Amazon EC2. The credentials must be automatically rotated every 90 days. Which AWS service should be used?

Easy
112

A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt data in Amazon S3. They need to audit all KMS key usage for an S3 bucket. Which AWS service should be used to capture KMS Decrypt API calls?

Hard
113

A company is designing a data protection strategy for its Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database. The database contains sensitive customer data. Compliance requirements mandate that all backups be encrypted at rest and that the encryption keys be rotated annually. Which solution meets these requirements?

Medium
114

A company uses AWS Secrets Manager to rotate secrets for its RDS database. The rotation fails periodically, and the security team needs to troubleshoot. Which CloudWatch metric should be monitored to detect rotation failures?

Hard
115

A security engineer is designing a solution to protect sensitive data in an Amazon RDS for MySQL database. The data must be encrypted at rest using a key stored in AWS KMS. Additionally, the database must support automated backups and cross-region disaster recovery. Which architecture meets these requirements?

Hard
116

A security engineer is configuring AWS KMS key policies for a customer managed key used to encrypt data in multiple AWS services. The engineer needs to allow the key to be used by principals in the same account and by a specific IAM role in another account for cross-account access. Which two statements should be included in the key policy to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Medium
117

A company is designing a data protection strategy for Amazon S3. Which TWO of the following are valid methods to protect data at rest in S3?

Easy
118

A company stores data in Amazon S3 and wants to ensure that objects are encrypted at rest. The security team decides to use server-side encryption with AWS KMS (SSE-KMS). Which additional benefit does SSE-KMS provide over SSE-S3?

Easy
119

A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log API activity. The security team wants to ensure that log files are encrypted at rest and that any tampering with logs is detectable. Which combination of services should be used?

Hard
120

A company needs to encrypt data at rest in Amazon EBS volumes. They want to use an AWS managed key that is automatically rotated. Which encryption option should they choose?

Easy
121

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer is reviewing the CloudWatch Logs configuration for a Lambda function. The log group is encrypted with a customer managed key. The engineer needs to ensure that only the Lambda service can write logs to this log group and that only a specific IAM role can read logs. Which additional configuration is required?

Hard
122

The above CLI output shows the encryption configuration for an S3 bucket. What type of encryption is enabled by default?

Easy
123

A company wants to protect data stored in Amazon S3 Glacier. The data must be encrypted at rest and the encryption keys must be rotated annually. Which TWO options meet these requirements?

Easy
124

A security engineer is designing a data protection strategy for an S3 bucket that contains sensitive documents. The bucket is accessed by multiple IAM users and roles. Which TWO actions will help protect the data at rest and in transit?

Medium
125

A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt secrets stored in AWS Secrets Manager. The security team wants to audit all KMS key usage, including attempts to use the key without proper authorization. Which AWS service should the team use to meet this requirement?

Hard
126

A security engineer is designing a solution to encrypt data at rest in an Amazon DynamoDB table. The data must be encrypted with a customer managed key in AWS KMS that the security team can rotate annually. The DynamoDB table is used by an AWS Lambda function. Which approach should the engineer take to meet these requirements?

Medium
127

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer runs the command shown and gets the output. What does this output indicate about the bucket's encryption configuration?

Easy
128

A security engineer needs to ensure that an Amazon RDS for MySQL database is encrypted at rest. Which action should be taken?

Easy
129

A company wants to protect data at rest for an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database. Which AWS service should be used to manage the encryption keys?

Easy
130

A company is using AWS KMS to encrypt data in Amazon S3. The security team wants to ensure that only a specific IAM role can decrypt the data. What is the MOST secure way to enforce this?

Medium
131

A company uses Amazon EBS volumes for EC2 instances. Security policy requires that all EBS volumes be encrypted at rest. The company already has a default KMS key for EBS encryption. However, some new volumes are created without encryption. What is the most efficient way to enforce encryption for all new EBS volumes?

Hard
132

A company wants to securely share an Amazon S3 object with an external partner. The partner needs to download the object using an HTTP GET request. The object must be accessible for only 24 hours. What is the most secure way to grant access?

Medium
133

A company uses AWS CloudHSM to store encryption keys. The security team wants to ensure that keys stored in CloudHSM are backed up and can be restored in another AWS Region. What is the BEST approach?

Medium
134

Which TWO AWS services provide key management for encryption at rest? (Choose 2.)

Easy
135

A company stores sensitive data in an S3 bucket with default encryption (SSE-S3) enabled. A security audit reveals that objects are being accessed by users from unexpected IP addresses. The company wants to enforce that only objects encrypted with a specific KMS key (managed by the security team) can be accessed. Which combination of actions should be taken?

Medium
136

A company is migrating sensitive customer data to Amazon RDS for MySQL. The security team requires that data be encrypted at rest and in transit. The database will be accessed by a web application running on Amazon EC2 instances in the same VPC. The RDS instance is launched with encryption enabled using an AWS managed KMS key. The security team also enables SSL/TLS for connections. Which additional step is necessary to ensure that the web application uses encrypted connections?

Easy
137

A financial company uses AWS KMS to encrypt sensitive data. The security team notices that a KMS key has been deleted, but the encrypted data is still needed for a short period. What is the fastest way to make the data decryptable again?

Hard
138

Which TWO of the following are valid methods to protect data in transit between an on-premises data center and AWS? (Choose two.)

Medium
139

A company uses Amazon S3 to store confidential documents. The security team wants to ensure that all objects are encrypted at rest using server-side encryption with AES-256. Which S3 encryption option should be used?

Easy
140

A company stores sensitive customer data in an S3 bucket. The security team wants to ensure that all data is encrypted at rest using server-side encryption with AWS KMS (SSE-KMS). Which bucket policy statement should be added to deny uploads that do not use SSE-KMS?

Easy
141

Which TWO of the following are best practices for protecting data in transit? (Choose TWO.)

Medium
142

A company needs to encrypt data in transit between an on-premises data center and Amazon S3. Which solution should they use?

Easy
143

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer configures the above KMS key policy. The DataAccess role is used by an application that runs on EC2 instances in the us-east-1 region. The application needs to read encrypted objects from an S3 bucket in the same region. Which of the following is true about this configuration?

Hard
144

A security engineer is tasked with ensuring that all data stored in an RDS DB instance is encrypted at rest. The database is already running and contains data. What should the engineer do?

Medium
145

A company needs to encrypt data at rest in Amazon Redshift. They want to use an AWS KMS customer managed key. What is the correct procedure to enable encryption for an existing Redshift cluster?

Medium
146

Refer to the exhibit. An administrator applies this bucket policy to an S3 bucket. Which of the following statements describes the effect of this policy?

Medium
147

A healthcare company runs a HIPAA-compliant application on AWS. The application uses Amazon S3 to store Protected Health Information (PHI). The company has implemented the following controls: (1) All S3 buckets are configured with default encryption using SSE-S3. (2) Bucket policies restrict access to only authorized IAM roles. (3) S3 access logs are enabled and sent to a centralized logging account. (4) MFA Delete is enabled on all buckets. (5) Object lock is not enabled. Recently, an internal auditor discovered that when an authorized user deletes an object, the object is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered. The company's data retention policy requires that deleted PHI be recoverable for at least 30 days after deletion. A review of the IAM policies shows that users have s3:DeleteObject permission. The auditor also notes that the bucket versioning is not enabled. The security team needs to implement a solution that allows authorized users to delete objects but ensures that deleted objects can be recovered within 30 days. Which of the following is the MOST effective course of action?

Hard
148

A company stores sensitive documents in an S3 bucket. The security team wants to ensure that any object uploaded to the bucket is automatically encrypted using server-side encryption with AWS KMS. Which S3 bucket feature should be configured?

Easy
149

A company uses AWS Organizations and wants to enforce that all S3 buckets created in any account within the organization have default encryption enabled. Which policy should be used?

Medium
150

A company is using AWS KMS to encrypt data at rest in Amazon S3. The security team requires that all encryption keys be automatically rotated every year. However, the current KMS key policy does not allow rotation. Which action should the security team take to meet the requirement?

Medium
151

A security engineer needs to ensure that all data in transit between an Application Load Balancer and EC2 instances is encrypted using TLS. Which configuration is required?

Easy
152

A security engineer needs to ensure that data at rest in an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance is encrypted. Which action should the engineer take?

Easy
153

A security engineer runs the command shown in the exhibit. What is the outcome?

Easy
154

A company uses S3 Server Access Logs to audit access to their S3 buckets. The security team wants to ensure that the log files themselves are encrypted at rest using SSE-KMS. Which configuration step is necessary?

Easy
155

A company is using AWS DMS to migrate data from an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The data must be encrypted in transit. What should the company do?

Hard
156

A company is using Amazon S3 to store sensitive data. The security team wants to ensure that all data is encrypted in transit between the company's on-premises data center and AWS. Which solution should be used?

Easy
157

A company is using AWS KMS to encrypt data in Amazon S3. The security team discovers that an S3 bucket has a bucket policy that allows s3:PutObject without requiring encryption. What is the risk?

Hard
158

A company is using AWS KMS to encrypt data at rest in Amazon S3. The security team wants to ensure that only a specific IAM role can decrypt objects in a particular S3 bucket. Which policy should be attached to the KMS key to enforce this restriction?

Medium
159

A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt EBS volumes. They want to ensure that the key used for EBS encryption is not shared across different AWS accounts. Which feature should they use?

Hard
160

A company needs to enforce encryption in transit for all traffic between an Amazon EC2 instance and an Amazon RDS database. Which TWO steps should be taken?

Medium
161

A company needs to protect data at rest in Amazon S3. Which THREE server-side encryption mechanisms can be used to encrypt objects stored in S3?

Easy
162

A company wants to encrypt data in transit between an Application Load Balancer (ALB) and its targets. Which configuration should be used?

Easy
163

A company is designing a data protection strategy for sensitive data stored in Amazon S3. Compliance requirements mandate that all data be encrypted at rest using customer-provided keys (SSE-C). Which solution meets the requirements with minimal operational overhead?

Hard
164

A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt data in Amazon RDS. The security team needs to ensure that the KMS key cannot be deleted accidentally. Which action should be taken?

Medium
165

A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log API calls. They want to ensure that log files are encrypted at rest and that integrity is verified. Which TWO services can be used together to achieve this?

Hard
166

A company needs to ensure that data in transit between an on-premises data center and Amazon S3 is encrypted. The data will be transferred using HTTPS. What additional step should be taken to ensure the encryption is enforced?

Easy
167

A company needs to protect data at rest on Amazon EBS volumes attached to EC2 instances. Which solution provides the most control over the encryption keys?

Easy
168

A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt data in Amazon RDS. The security team wants to ensure that the KMS key can be used only by specific IAM roles and that all usage of the key is logged. Which TWO actions should the team take?

Medium
169

A company stores sensitive data in an Amazon S3 bucket. They want to ensure that data is encrypted in transit when accessed from the internet. Which policy should they attach to the bucket?

Medium
170

A security engineer needs to ensure that all data stored in a new Amazon DynamoDB table is encrypted at rest using a key that the company can manage, audit, and rotate. The company also wants to receive alerts if the key is used in an unauthorized way. Which solution meets these requirements with the LEAST operational effort?

Easy
171

A company is using Amazon S3 to store confidential documents. They want to ensure that all data is encrypted in transit between the S3 bucket and their on-premises application. Which of the following should be enforced?

Easy
172

A company is designing a data protection strategy for an Amazon RDS for MySQL database. The database is 2 TB in size and stores financial data. The compliance team requires that database snapshots be encrypted at rest and that encryption keys be rotated every year. Which solution meets these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

Hard
173

A security engineer is configuring AWS KMS for a multi-Region application that uses Amazon S3 and Amazon RDS in us-east-1 and eu-west-1. The company requires that encryption keys be available in both Regions and that data encrypted in one Region can be decrypted in the other without re-encrypting. The company also wants to minimize latency for cryptographic operations. Which solution meets these requirements?

Hard
174

A company has a requirement to automatically rotate encryption keys for Amazon EBS volumes every 90 days. The EBS volumes are encrypted using AWS KMS. What is the simplest way to meet this requirement?

Medium
175

Which THREE of the following are valid key management features of AWS KMS? (Choose THREE.)

Hard
176

A company wants to ensure that all data transferred between its on-premises data center and AWS is encrypted in transit. Which AWS service should be used to meet this requirement?

Easy

Frequently asked questions

What does the Data Protection domain cover on the SCS-C02 exam?
Choose and troubleshoot SSE-KMS vs SSE-S3, KMS key policies and grants, ACM certificates, S3 Object Lock, and Secrets Manager rotation. Most critical: get KMS key policies and IAM permissions right, since AccessDenied errors usually stem from key policy gaps.
How many questions are in this domain?
This page lists all 176 Data Protection questions in the SCS-C02 question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
What is the best way to practise this domain?
Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
Can I practise only Data Protection questions?
Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.
aws-security-specialty AWS-SECURITY-SPECIALTY data protection Practice Questions