DEA-C01 Data Security and Governance Practice Question
A company needs to monitor and record all changes to IAM policies in their AWS account. Which AWS service should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
DEA-C01 often tests the overlap between CloudTrail, CloudWatch, and GuardDuty—candidates pick GuardDuty because it 'detects' IAM issues, but the question asks for the service that records all changes, which is CloudTrail.
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
✓
AWS CloudTrail
AWS CloudTrail records API activity in an AWS account, including all IAM policy changes (CreatePolicy, AttachRolePolicy, PutRolePolicy, etc.), capturing who made the change, when, from which IP, and with what parameters. It is the authoritative audit service for governance, compliance, and security analysis of control-plane actions. CloudWatch Logs, GuardDuty, and IAM Access Analyzer serve monitoring, threat detection, and permission analysis—not comprehensive API change recording.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch Logs
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch Logs stores log streams but does not itself capture IAM policy change API calls; that requires CloudTrail delivering events. It is tempting because it aggregates and queries logs, and would be correct for analysing application or flow logs already ingested, but it cannot record who altered a policy.
- ✗
Amazon GuardDuty
Why it's wrong here
GuardDuty is a threat-detection service that analyses CloudTrail, VPC flow and DNS logs for malicious activity; it does not provide an auditable record of IAM policy changes. It is tempting because it consumes CloudTrail data, and would be correct for identifying compromised credentials or reconnaissance behaviour.
- ✓
AWS CloudTrail
Why this is correct
AWS CloudTrail captures API activity, including IAM policy creation, modification and deletion, recording each event with the caller identity, timestamp and request parameters. This satisfies the requirement to monitor and record all IAM policy changes, since CloudTrail logs management events by default and delivers them to S3 or CloudWatch for auditing.
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AWS IAM Access Analyzer
Why it's wrong here
Access Analyzer identifies resource policies granting external access; it does not log IAM policy change events. It is tempting because it surfaces policy-related findings, but it would be the right choice for detecting unintended public or cross-account access, not for recording modifications. CloudTrail captures the API calls that change IAM policies.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
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.