easyMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
AIF-C01 Practice Question: Uses Amazon Macie to discover sensitive data in S3
An organization uses Amazon Macie to discover sensitive data in S3. The compliance team needs to receive notifications when Macie finds PII. Which AWS service should they use to send notifications?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse the service that generates the event (Macie) with the service that delivers the notification, or they assume Lambda is required for all event-driven workflows, when in fact SNS can directly receive events from EventBridge without any compute layer.
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
✓
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Amazon Macie publishes findings to Amazon EventBridge, which can trigger a target such as an SNS topic. SNS then pushes notifications (e.g., email, SMS, HTTP) to subscribers. This decoupled architecture allows the compliance team to receive real-time alerts when PII is detected, without needing to poll or manage compute resources.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Lambda
Why it's wrong here
Lambda is a compute service, not a notification service.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch is for monitoring and alarms, not direct notifications.
- ✓
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Why this is correct
SNS is used for notifications triggered by Macie findings.
- ✗
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)
Why it's wrong here
SES is for email, but SNS is more typical for event-driven notifications.
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 |
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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.