DEA-C01 Data Operations and Support Practice Question
A company runs a data lake on Amazon S3 with AWS Lake Formation for access control. The data lake contains sensitive customer information. A data scientist needs to query the data using Amazon Athena. The data scientist has been granted SELECT permission on the database and tables via Lake Formation. However, when the data scientist runs a query in Athena, they receive an error: 'Access denied. Please check your permissions.' The IAM role used by Athena has the following permissions: s3:GetObject, s3:ListBucket, and lakeformation:GetDataAccess. The Lake Formation admin has verified that the data scientist is a member of a Lake Formation data lake location and has been granted 'Describe' and 'Select' permissions on the table. What is the most likely reason for the access denied error?
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 S3 bucket policy does not grant the Athena IAM role access to the S3 location.
The access denied error occurs because the IAM role used by Athena lacks the necessary S3 permissions, even though Lake Formation has granted SELECT and DESCRIBE permissions. Lake Formation handles permissions at the metadata level, but the actual data access still requires S3 bucket policy or IAM policy to allow s3:GetObject and s3:ListBucket for the specific S3 location. If the bucket policy does not grant the Athena IAM role access to the S3 location, the request will be denied. Option B correctly identifies this issue. Option A is incorrect because Lake Formation tag-based access control is not required for this scenario; the data scientist already has direct table permissions. Option C is incorrect because lakeformation:GetEffectivePermissions is not needed; the role already has lakeformation:GetDataAccess. Option D is incorrect because Athena uses the IAM role assigned to the workgroup, not the data scientist's individual IAM user.
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 data scientist is not assigned to the correct Lake Formation tag.
Why it's wrong here
The error is about table permissions, not tags; also the admin granted table permissions directly.
- ✓
The S3 bucket policy does not grant the Athena IAM role access to the S3 location.
Why this is correct
Lake Formation permissions are separate from S3 bucket policies; the bucket policy must allow the IAM role to read the data.
- ✗
The Athena IAM role is missing lakeformation:GetEffectivePermissions permission.
Why it's wrong here
GetEffectivePermissions is for listing permissions, not for data access.
- ✗
The data scientist's IAM user lacks the necessary S3 permissions.
Why it's wrong here
Athena uses the IAM role, not the user's IAM permissions, for S3 access.
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 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.