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SOA-C02 · domain

Security and Compliance

Practise AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate SOA-C02 Security and Compliance practice questions — original exam-style scenarios with answer choices, explanations, and analysis of common mistakes.

42 questions9 easy20 medium13 hard

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What this domain covers

What to know about Security and Compliance

Security and Compliance 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 and Compliance 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 and Compliance questions (42)

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1

A SysOps administrator needs to restrict access to an S3 bucket so that only users from the corporate network IP range (203.0.113.0/24) can read objects. Which TWO elements are required to implement this? (Choose two.)

Medium
2

A company stores sensitive data in an RDS database. Which AWS service should be used to encrypt the database at rest?

Easy
3

A company requires that all users in an AWS account must authenticate with multi-factor authentication (MFA) before they can perform any actions on Amazon EC2 instances. The SysOps administrator needs to implement this requirement using IAM policies. Which IAM policy condition key should be used to enforce MFA?

Medium
4

A company wants to ensure that their Amazon S3 bucket policy only allows access from a specific VPC endpoint. Which TWO condition keys can be used in the bucket policy? (Choose TWO.)

Easy
5

A company wants to securely store secrets such as database credentials and API keys used by applications running on Amazon EC2. Which AWS service should be used to manage and rotate these secrets automatically?

Easy
6

A company's security team requires that all API calls to AWS services are encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2 or higher. Which TWO actions should be taken to enforce this?

Hard
7

A company needs to restrict access to an S3 bucket so that only users from a specific VPC can read objects. Which THREE configurations are required?

Medium
8

A company is using AWS KMS to encrypt data. The security team wants to ensure that a specific IAM role can use a KMS key, but only when the request comes from a specific VPC. Which THREE conditions should be included in the KMS key policy? (Choose three.)

Hard
9

Drag and drop the steps to create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm that sends an email notification when CPU utilization exceeds 90% into the correct order.

Medium
10

A SysOps administrator notices that an EC2 instance running a web server is receiving unexpected traffic from an IP address that is known to be malicious. The administrator wants to block this IP address at the instance level. Which solution should be used?

Medium
11

Account A owns an S3 bucket containing shared artifacts. Account B needs to read objects from the bucket. The Account A team wants to grant access without creating IAM users, sharing access keys, or creating a role in Account A that Account B assumes. How should the bucket be configured to allow Account B's IAM roles to read objects?

Medium
12

A SysOps administrator needs to audit all changes to IAM resources in their AWS account. Which THREE AWS services can be used together to achieve this? (Choose THREE.)

Hard
13

A company uses AWS Organizations and wants to restrict access to S3 buckets based on project tags. The security policy requires that users in the 'DataScientists' group can only access S3 buckets that have the tag 'Project: DataEngineering'. Which IAM policy condition key should the SysOps administrator use in a customer managed policy to enforce this restriction?

Hard
14

A company uses AWS Key Management Service (KMS) to encrypt data in Amazon S3. They want to ensure that the KMS key can only be used from within a specific VPC. How can this be accomplished?

Medium
15

A company's security policy requires that all Amazon S3 buckets must be encrypted at rest using server-side encryption with Amazon S3 managed keys (SSE-S3). A SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect any bucket that does not have encryption enabled and automatically apply SSE-S3 encryption. The solution should leverage AWS managed services and minimize custom code. Which combination of AWS services should be used?

Medium
16

A company uses IAM roles to grant EC2 instances access to S3 buckets. After a recent security audit, the SysOps administrator must ensure that only instances with a specific tag (Environment=Production) can assume the role. How can this be achieved?

Hard
17

A company's security team requires that all Amazon EC2 instances in a specific AWS account must have the tag 'Environment' set to either 'Production' or 'Test'. Any instance that is launched without this tag or with an invalid value must be automatically terminated within five minutes. Which combination of AWS services can enforce this requirement with minimal manual intervention?

Medium
18

Developers are allowed to create IAM roles for their Lambda functions. However, the security team is concerned that developers could create roles with Administrator access, granting Lambda functions more permissions than the developers themselves have. What IAM feature prevents privilege escalation in this scenario?

Easy
19

A company uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to EC2 instances. The security team wants to ensure that all traffic between the ALB and the instances is encrypted. Which configuration step is required?

Easy
20

Drag and drop the steps to configure an Amazon Route 53 failover routing policy into the correct order.

Medium
21

A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log API activity. The security team needs to be alerted when an IAM user creates a new access key. Which combination of services should the SysOps administrator use to meet this requirement?

Hard
22

A company uses S3 to store sensitive data. To meet compliance requirements, all S3 buckets must be encrypted at rest. The security team notices that some objects in a bucket are not encrypted. What is the MOST efficient way to enforce encryption for all future objects?

Medium
23

A company operates a web application behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The SysOps administrator needs to block incoming requests from specific geographic locations (countries X and Y) and also enforce a rate limit of 100 requests per IP address per 5-minute window to mitigate DDoS attacks. The solution must be centrally configured and apply to all requests handled by the ALB. Which AWS service should be used to implement these requirements?

Hard
24

A company requires that all Amazon S3 buckets in its AWS account must be encrypted using AWS KMS (SSE-KMS). The SysOps administrator needs to detect any bucket that does not have KMS encryption enabled and automatically remediate it by enabling encryption. Which AWS service should be used to implement this automated compliance enforcement?

Medium
25

A company's security policy requires that all IAM user passwords must be at least 12 characters long. The SysOps administrator needs to enforce this requirement across the AWS account. Which action should the administrator take?

Easy
26

A company wants to provide temporary credentials to an application running on an on-premises server so it can access AWS resources. The credentials must be rotated automatically. Which IAM feature should be used?

Easy
27

A company has an AWS account that contains multiple Amazon S3 buckets with sensitive data. A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that all S3 buckets in the account have versioning enabled to protect against accidental deletions. The administrator wants to automatically remediate any bucket that is created without versioning enabled. Which solution should be used?

Medium
28

Refer to the exhibit. An IAM user has this policy attached. What is the effect when the user attempts to get an object from my-bucket from an IP address in the range 198.51.100.0/24?

Medium
29

The CISO asks for a centralized dashboard showing security findings from GuardDuty, Macie, Inspector, and Firewall Manager across 30 AWS accounts. Findings must be normalized into a single format so they can be prioritized by severity without switching between services. Which AWS service provides this capability?

Medium
30

Refer to the exhibit. An IAM policy is attached to a user. Which statement about the user's access is correct?

Hard
31

A company's security policy requires that all Amazon S3 buckets must have server-side encryption with AWS Key Management Service (SSE-KMS) enabled. The SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect any existing or new S3 bucket that does not have SSE-KMS enabled and automatically apply the encryption configuration. The solution must use managed AWS services with minimal custom code. Which combination of AWS services should be used?

Medium
32

A company is using AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to ensure that all S3 buckets across all accounts have encryption enabled. What is the most efficient way to enforce this policy?

Medium
33

A company has an S3 bucket that stores sensitive customer data. The security team requires that all objects uploaded to the bucket must be encrypted at rest using AWS KMS with a specific customer managed key. Which bucket policy condition should be used to enforce this?

Hard
34

A company's security policy requires that all Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instances be encrypted at rest using AWS Key Management Service (KMS) customer managed keys and have automated backups enabled with a retention period of at least 30 days. A SysOps administrator needs to use AWS Config to automatically detect any RDS instance that is non-compliant with either requirement and automatically remediate it. Which combination of AWS Config managed rules and remediation actions should be used?

Medium
35

A SysOps administrator is troubleshooting an issue where an IAM user can launch EC2 instances but cannot terminate them. The user's permissions are based on an IAM group policy. Which action should the administrator take to resolve this?

Medium
36

A company needs to comply with PCI DSS requirements for its AWS environment. Which TWO services should the SysOps administrator use to automate compliance checks and generate reports? (Choose TWO.)

Easy
37

A company uses AWS Organizations and has multiple accounts. The security team requires that all Amazon S3 buckets across all accounts must be encrypted at rest with AWS KMS (SSE-KMS). The SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect non-compliant buckets and remediate them by enabling SSE-KMS. The solution must work across all existing and future accounts. Which AWS service should be used?

Hard
38

A company stores sensitive data in an S3 bucket. The security team requires that all objects uploaded to the bucket be encrypted at rest using an AWS KMS customer-managed key. Which S3 bucket policy statement should be added to enforce this requirement?

Medium
39

A company uses AWS Organizations to manage multiple AWS accounts. The security team wants to restrict access to a specific AWS service (Amazon EC2) in all accounts except for the 'production' account. The SysOps administrator needs to implement this restriction centrally. Which approach should the administrator use?

Hard
40

An application stores its RDS PostgreSQL credentials in AWS Secrets Manager. The security policy requires credentials to be rotated every 30 days automatically. During rotation, the application must continue to serve traffic with zero downtime. The application retrieves credentials by calling GetSecretValue at the start of each database connection. What must be configured to satisfy all requirements?

Hard
41

A company's security team notices that an IAM user has been making unauthorized API calls from an IP address outside the company's VPN. The team wants to immediately block all API calls from that specific IP address for all users. Which action should be taken?

Hard
42

An organization wants to ensure that no Amazon S3 bucket in the entire AWS Organization can be made public. The security team requires a preventive control that cannot be overridden by individual account administrators. Which AWS service or feature should be used?

Easy

Frequently asked questions

What does the Security and Compliance domain cover on the SOA-C02 exam?
Security and Compliance 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 42 Security and Compliance questions in the SOA-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 and Compliance questions?
Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.
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