CLF-C02 Security and Compliance Practice Question
A compliance officer needs to download AWS's SOC 2 Type II report and ISO 27001 certification to provide to their company's auditors as evidence that the AWS infrastructure meets regulatory standards. Where should they access these documents?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse AWS Artifact with AWS Security Hub, mistakenly thinking Security Hub's compliance checks provide the actual certification documents, when in fact Security Hub only checks your own resources against compliance frameworks, not AWS's own certifications.
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
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AWS Artifact
AWS Artifact is the central resource for downloading AWS compliance reports, including SOC 2 Type II reports and ISO 27001 certifications. It provides on-demand access to these documents, which auditors require as evidence of AWS's adherence to regulatory standards. This service is specifically designed for compliance and audit use cases, making it the correct choice.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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AWS Trusted Advisor
Why it's wrong here
AWS Trusted Advisor inspects the customer's own account and provides real-time recommendations in five categories: cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits — for instance, flagging an access key that is over 90 days old. It is a personalized advisory engine, not a compliance document repository, so it cannot deliver the formal SOC 2 report or other third-party audit documents. The SOC 1/SOC 2 reports are AWS-level attestations that are identical for all customers and are available on demand via AWS Artifact.
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AWS Artifact
Why this is correct
AWS Artifact is the central repository for AWS compliance documentation. It provides access to AWS security and compliance reports (SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, PCI DSS, ISO 27001) and AWS agreements on demand, at no cost.
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AWS Security Hub
Why it's wrong here
AWS Security Hub aggregates and prioritizes security findings from AWS services like Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, and AWS IAM Access Analyzer, then applies security standards such as the CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark to the customer's own resources. It displays the customer's compliance score against those foundational best practices, but those are automatically generated controls, not the official SOC 2 certification. AWS's own SOC 2 report is an audited, organization-wide document that cannot be derived from Security Hub's finding aggregation and must be retrieved from AWS Artifact.
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AWS Config
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config records the configuration history of a customer's AWS resources and continuously evaluates them against custom or managed rules, such as whether an Amazon S3 bucket has server-side encryption enabled. That gives customers an auditable timeline of their own resource changes and a customer-side compliance status, but it does not store or publish AWS's own SOC 2 report. The SOC 2 attestation describes AWS's internal controls and is issued by third-party auditors, so it can only be distributed through AWS Artifact, not generated by Config's resource tracking.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CLF-C02 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 CLF-C02 exam.