Quick Answer
The answer is Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS). This is correct because Amazon Macie publishes its sensitive data findings to Amazon EventBridge, and EventBridge can then route those events directly to an SNS topic as a target. SNS subsequently pushes the notifications—via email, SMS, or HTTP endpoints—to the compliance team, enabling real-time alerts when PII is discovered without requiring any polling or compute management. On the AWS Certified AI Practitioner AIF-C01 exam, this scenario tests your understanding of how AWS services integrate for event-driven notification workflows; a common trap is confusing SNS with Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), but remember that SNS is for push-based fan-out notifications, while SQS is for pull-based message queuing. A helpful memory tip: think “SNS sends, SQS stores”—when you need to alert a team immediately about PII, you want SNS to send the message.
This AIF-C01 practice question tests your understanding of security, compliance and governance for ai solutions. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
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?
AWS Lambda
Why wrong: Lambda is a compute service, not a notification service.
Amazon CloudWatch
Why wrong: CloudWatch is for monitoring and alarms, not direct notifications.
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
SNS is used for notifications triggered by Macie findings.
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)
Why wrong: SES is for email, but SNS is more typical for event-driven notifications.
Answer choices
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.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
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.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)
Why it's wrong here
SES is for email, but SNS is more typical for event-driven notifications.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates often 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.
Detailed technical explanation
Macie integrates with Amazon EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) to emit findings as events. A rule in EventBridge can route these events to an SNS topic, which then fans out messages to subscribed endpoints (e.g., email, SMS, Lambda, HTTP). SNS supports message filtering and delivery retries with exponential backoff, ensuring reliable notification even during transient failures. The default SNS topic for Macie is created automatically when Macie is enabled, but custom topics can be configured for granular control.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
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FAQ
Security, Compliance and Governance for AI Solutions — This question tests Security, Compliance and Governance for AI Solutions — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: 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.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 25, 2026
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.
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