AIF-C01 Practice Question: Security, Compliance, and Governance for AI Solutions
A data scientist needs to train a model in Amazon SageMaker using a dataset that contains personally identifiable information (PII). The company policy requires all data at rest to be encrypted with a customer-managed key. Which configuration meets this requirement?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Specify a KMS customer-managed key when creating the SageMaker training job and enable data encryption for the S3 bucket with the same key
Using a KMS customer-managed key (CMK) for SageMaker's EBS volumes and S3 buckets ensures encryption at rest with a key the customer controls. The other options either use AWS-managed keys, skip encryption, or are not applicable to SageMaker training jobs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable default encryption for the S3 bucket using AWS-managed S3 keys (SSE-S3)
Why it's wrong here
SSE-S3 uses AWS-managed keys, not customer-managed.
- ✓
Specify a KMS customer-managed key when creating the SageMaker training job and enable data encryption for the S3 bucket with the same key
Why this is correct
This encrypts both the training data and the model artifacts with a customer-managed key.
- ✗
Encrypt the data before uploading to S3 using a client-side library
Why it's wrong here
While this encrypts data in S3, it does not encrypt model artifacts or intermediate data within SageMaker.
- ✗
Use SageMaker's local mode and store data on the instance's ephemeral storage
Why it's wrong here
Ephemeral storage is not persistent and is not encrypted by default with a customer-managed key.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AIF-C01 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the AIF-C01 exam.