DEA-C01 Data Operations and Support Practice Question
A company uses Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to deliver streaming data to an Amazon S3 bucket. The data is then processed by a scheduled AWS Glue ETL job that loads it into an Amazon Redshift table. Recently, the Glue job has been failing with the error: 'S3ServiceException: Access Denied'. The Firehose delivery stream is configured with a prefix and error logging to the same S3 bucket. The Glue job uses the same IAM role that has s3:GetObject and s3:ListBucket permissions on the bucket. 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 S3 bucket has default encryption enabled with AWS KMS (SSE-KMS), and the Glue job's IAM role lacks kms:Decrypt permission.
Firehose uses SSE-S3 by default unless configured otherwise. If the S3 bucket has default encryption enabled with SSE-KMS, Firehose will use that encryption, but the Glue job's IAM role may lack kms:Decrypt permission for the KMS key. The error 'Access Denied' when reading from S3 often indicates encryption permission issues. Option A is wrong because the Glue job can read from S3 with the current permissions if no encryption is involved. Option B is wrong because the error is about access, not schema. Option C is wrong because the Glue job can use the same role as Firehose, but the role may not have KMS permissions.
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 Glue job expects a different data format than what Firehose writes.
Why it's wrong here
Format mismatch would cause a parsing error, not access denied.
- ✗
The Glue job's IAM role does not have s3:GetObjectVersion permission.
Why it's wrong here
Versioning is not mentioned; the error is not about version-specific access.
- ✗
The Glue job is using the wrong IAM role that does not have permissions to the S3 bucket.
Why it's wrong here
The role has s3:GetObject and s3:ListBucket, so access should be allowed if no encryption is involved.
- ✓
The S3 bucket has default encryption enabled with AWS KMS (SSE-KMS), and the Glue job's IAM role lacks kms:Decrypt permission.
Why this is correct
SSE-KMS requires kms:Decrypt permission; missing it causes access denied when reading.
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.