DEA-C01 Data Security and Governance Practice Question
A company has an AWS Glue ETL job that reads data from an S3 bucket encrypted with SSE-S3. The job runs successfully, but the output written to another S3 bucket with SSE-KMS fails. The IAM role for the Glue job has s3:PutObject and kms:GenerateDataKey permissions. What is the most likely cause?
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
✓
The IAM role is missing kms:Encrypt permission
For SSE-KMS, the IAM role needs both kms:GenerateDataKey and kms:Encrypt permissions to write objects. The role already has kms:GenerateDataKey, but missing kms:Encrypt causes the write to fail. Option A is correct. Option B is incorrect because if the bucket policy denied s3:PutObject, the job would fail on the PutObject action itself, not on encryption. Option C is incorrect because the role already has kms:GenerateDataKey; the missing permission is kms:Encrypt. Option D is incorrect because the source bucket's encryption (SSE-S3) is irrelevant to the write operation; the error occurs on the target bucket with SSE-KMS.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
The IAM role is missing kms:Encrypt permission
Why this is correct
Writing with SSE-KMS requires kms:Encrypt.
- ✗
The target S3 bucket policy denies s3:PutObject
Why it's wrong here
If the target bucket policy denied s3:PutObject, the job would fail on the PutObject action itself, not on encryption. The error is related to KMS permissions, not S3 bucket policy.
- ✗
The KMS key policy does not grant the Glue role kms:GenerateDataKey
Why it's wrong here
The IAM role already has kms:GenerateDataKey permission as stated in the scenario. The missing permission is kms:Encrypt, which is needed to encrypt objects with SSE-KMS.
- ✗
The source bucket's encryption type is incompatible with the target
Why it's wrong here
Encryption type mismatch does not cause failure.
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 DEA-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 DEA-C01 exam.