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SCS-C02 · domain

Security Logging and Monitoring

Practise AWS Certified Security Specialty SCS-C02 Security Logging and Monitoring practice questions — original exam-style scenarios with answer choices, explanations, and analysis of common mistakes.

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What to know about Security Logging and Monitoring

Security Logging and Monitoring questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.

How the topic appears in realistic exam-style scenarios.

Which detail in the question changes the correct answer.

How to eliminate plausible but wrong options.

How to connect the question back to the wider exam objective.

Watch out for

Common Security Logging and Monitoring exam traps

  • Answering from memory before reading the full scenario.
  • Missing a constraint such as cost, availability, security, scope or command context.
  • Choosing a broad answer when the question asks for the most specific fix.
  • Ignoring why the wrong options are tempting.

Question index

All Security Logging and Monitoring questions (92)

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1

A 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?

Hard
2

A 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.)

Hard
3

A 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?

Easy
4

A security engineer needs to identify which IAM users have been inactive for the past 90 days. Which AWS service should the engineer use?

Easy
5

A 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?

Hard
6

A 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.)

Medium
7

A 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?

Hard
8

A company runs a multi-account AWS environment using AWS Organizations. The security team needs to implement centralized logging for all AWS CloudTrail events across all accounts. They create a new trail in the management account with the following configuration: trail name 'central-trail', apply to all accounts in the organization, enable data events for all S3 buckets, and store logs in a centralized S3 bucket. After one week, they notice that some accounts are not delivering CloudTrail logs to the central bucket. The security engineer verifies that the trail is still configured to apply to all accounts and that the S3 bucket policy allows cross-account access. What is the MOST likely reason for the missing logs?

Hard
9

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer configured the above bucket policy for CloudTrail log delivery. However, logs are not being delivered. What is the most likely cause?

Hard
10

A 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.)

Hard
11

A company wants to ensure that all API calls in their AWS account are logged and immutable. Which TWO actions should be taken? (Choose TWO.)

Hard
12

A 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?

Medium
13

A 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?

Medium
14

Which TWO AWS services provide native integration with Amazon CloudWatch Logs for real-time monitoring of application logs? (Choose TWO.)

Easy
15

A 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.)

Hard
16

A 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?

Hard
17

A company is using Amazon GuardDuty to detect threats. The security team wants to receive alerts for specific findings. Which TWO AWS services can be used to forward GuardDuty findings to a custom application for analysis? (Choose two.)

Medium
18

A 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?

Medium
19

A 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?

Hard
20

A 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?

Medium
21

A 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?

Hard
22

A 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?

Hard
23

A security engineer is designing a monitoring solution for an AWS Lambda function that processes sensitive data. The function occasionally fails due to timeouts. The engineer needs to be alerted immediately when the function fails and also wants to analyze the error logs. Which combination of services should the engineer use?

Medium
24

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer finds this CloudTrail log entry. What is the most significant security concern indicated by this event?

Medium
25

A 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?

Medium
26

A 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?

Medium
27

A 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?

Medium
28

Match each AWS security tool to its purpose.

Medium
29

A 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?

Hard
30

A 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?

Hard
31

A security engineer is investigating a potential security incident. CloudTrail logs show that an IAM user 'admin' deleted an S3 bucket at 2023-01-15T10:30:00Z. The engineer needs to find the source IP address and user agent of the request. Which CloudTrail log field contains this information?

Medium
32

A company is implementing a security monitoring solution for its AWS environment. Which TWO services can be used to detect and alert on suspicious API activity? (Choose TWO.)

Medium
33

A 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?

Easy
34

A 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?

Medium
35

A 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?

Easy
36

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer created this S3 bucket policy to allow CloudTrail to deliver logs. However, log delivery is failing. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
37

A company is using AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team needs to centrally monitor all root user API activity across all accounts and receive alerts within minutes. What is the MOST efficient solution?

Medium
38

A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API activity and delivers logs to an S3 bucket with server-side encryption (SSE-S3). The security team needs to ensure that only authorized personnel can access the logs and that any unauthorized access attempts are logged and alerted. Additionally, the team wants to prevent the logs from being deleted for at least one year. Which combination of actions should be taken?

Hard
39

A security team needs to detect unauthorized attempts to access an S3 bucket that contains sensitive data. Which AWS service can automatically analyze S3 access logs and generate findings for suspicious activity?

Easy
40

A 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?

Hard
41

A security engineer needs to centralize logs from multiple AWS accounts into a single S3 bucket. Which solution is most secure?

Easy
42

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer is reviewing an IAM policy attached to a user. The policy is intended to allow the user to get and put objects in the S3 bucket 'example-bucket' only from the IP range 203.0.113.0/24. However, the user reports that they are unable to put objects from an IP within that range. What is the most likely cause of this issue?

Hard
43

A 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?

Medium
44

A company has a multi-account AWS environment using AWS Organizations. The security team wants to centralize all CloudTrail logs from all accounts into a single S3 bucket in the management account. The bucket policy allows cross-account access. However, logs from member accounts are not being delivered. What is the most likely cause?

Hard
45

A 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?

Hard
46

A 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?

Easy
47

A 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?

Easy
48

Refer 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?

Medium
49

A 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?

Easy
50

Which TWO actions should a security engineer take to ensure that Amazon GuardDuty can effectively monitor for suspicious activity in a VPC? (Choose two.)

Medium
51

A 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?

Hard
52

A company wants to monitor failed SSH login attempts to its EC2 instances. Which AWS service should be used to collect and analyze these logs?

Easy
53

Refer to the exhibit. A CloudWatch Logs metric filter is configured. Which log event will trigger the filter to create a metric?

Medium
54

A company wants to centrally collect CloudTrail logs from multiple AWS accounts and enable real-time analysis. Which combination of services should be used?

Easy
55

A 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?

Easy
56

A 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?

Medium
57

A 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?

Easy
58

A security engineer is designing a centralized logging solution for 10 AWS accounts. Which THREE AWS services should be used to aggregate, store, and analyze logs?

Hard
59

An organization wants to detect and alert on any IAM user that creates a new access key without using multi-factor authentication (MFA). What is the MOST efficient way to achieve this?

Medium
60

A 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?

Easy
61

A 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?

Easy
62

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?

Easy
63

A company runs a critical application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The security team needs to monitor for unauthorized changes to security groups. They have enabled AWS Config with the security-group-change detection rule. However, they notice that changes are being detected but not all changes trigger a notification. The team wants to ensure that every security group modification (create, delete, or rule change) sends an alert to the security operations center via Amazon SNS. The current setup: AWS Config rules evaluate resources periodically, and SNS notifications are sent only when the rule compliance status changes. What should the team do to achieve real-time alerts for all security group changes?

Hard
64

A company needs to monitor for unauthorized changes to its Amazon S3 bucket policies. Which TWO services can be used together to achieve this? (Choose two.)

Easy
65

A 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?

Medium
66

A 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?

Easy
67

A 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?

Hard
68

A company has a CloudTrail trail that logs management events for all regions in the management account. They want to also log data events for all S3 buckets in the organization. Which configuration change will meet this requirement with the LEAST operational overhead?

Hard
69

A company uses Amazon GuardDuty in a single AWS account to detect threats. The security team receives an alert that a specific EC2 instance is communicating with a known command and control (C2) server. The security engineer needs to immediately isolate the instance while preserving the root cause evidence. The engineer has access to the AWS Management Console. Which action should the engineer take FIRST?

Medium
70

A 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.)

Medium
71

A 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.)

Easy
72

Refer to the exhibit. An AWS Config rule 's3-bucket-ssl-requests-only' evaluates whether S3 buckets deny HTTP requests. The exhibit shows the evaluation result and the bucket policy. Why is the bucket marked as NON_COMPLIANT despite having a Deny policy for HTTP requests?

Medium
73

A 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?

Hard
74

A 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?

Easy
75

A 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?

Hard
76

A 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?

Hard
77

A 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?

Medium
78

A company is required to retain CloudTrail logs for 7 years for compliance. Which solution meets this requirement with the LEAST operational overhead?

Easy
79

A security analyst needs to review all failed SSH login attempts to an EC2 instance. Which combination will provide this information?

Medium
80

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?

Easy
81

A security engineer is responsible for monitoring AWS account activity. The engineer needs to receive real-time notifications when specific API calls are made, such as 'DeleteTrail' or 'UpdateTrail'. The engineer wants to use AWS services to achieve this with minimal latency. Which combination of services should the engineer use?

Easy
82

A 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?

Medium
83

A security engineer needs to ensure that all API calls in an AWS account are logged for auditing purposes. Which TWO services should the engineer enable? (Select TWO.)

Easy
84

A 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?

Hard
85

Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor network traffic for malicious activity? (Select TWO.)

Easy
86

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer wants to monitor a Lambda function for errors and create a CloudWatch alarm when errors exceed a threshold. The engineer notices the log group exists but has no metric filters. What should the engineer do to set up the alarm?

Hard
87

A 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?

Hard
88

A 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.)

Hard
89

A company is designing a centralized logging solution for multiple AWS accounts. The logs must be encrypted at rest and in transit, and access must be audited. Which TWO actions should be taken? (Choose TWO.)

Hard
90

A 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?

Medium
91

A company needs to ensure that all API calls made to AWS are logged and that the logs are immutable. Which TWO steps should be taken? (Choose TWO.)

Medium
92

Refer to the exhibit. A security engineer ran this AWS CLI command to find when a specific CreateKeyPair API call was made. The command returns no results, even though the engineer knows the call was made. What is the MOST likely reason?

Medium

Frequently asked questions

What does the Security Logging and Monitoring domain cover on the SCS-C02 exam?
Security Logging and Monitoring questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
How many questions are in this domain?
This page lists all 92 Security Logging and Monitoring 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 Security Logging and Monitoring 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 security logging Practice Questions