DEA-C01 AWS Lake Formation Practice Question
A company uses AWS Lake Formation to manage access to data in a data lake. A new data engineer has been granted SELECT permission on a table but receives an 'AccessDeniedException' when querying via Amazon Athena. The table is registered in Lake Formation and the data is encrypted with SSE-KMS. Which of the following 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 used by Athena does not have kms:Decrypt permission on the KMS key.
The IAM role used by Athena does not have kms:Decrypt permission on the KMS key. When data is encrypted with SSE-KMS, Athena's IAM role requires kms:Decrypt to read the data from S3. Even if Lake Formation grants SELECT permission, the query fails without KMS access. Option A is incorrect because Lake Formation does not use resource-based policies on tables; it uses LF-Tags or resource links to grant permissions. Option B is incorrect because while an S3 bucket policy could block access, the most likely issue with encrypted data is missing KMS permissions. Option C is incorrect because the Glue Data Catalog does not enforce data access; Lake Formation is the service that manages fine-grained access.
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 table's resource-based policy does not include the engineer's IAM role.
Why it's wrong here
Lake Formation tables do not use resource-based policies for IAM principals; access is granted through Lake Formation permissions, not attached to the table resource. Resource-based policies are the mechanism for cross-account S3 bucket or KMS key access, not for governing catalog tables.
- ✗
The S3 bucket policy denies access to the engineer's IAM role.
Why it's wrong here
Lake Formation vends temporary credentials that bypass the S3 bucket policy for registered tables, so a bucket-policy denial would not surface here. Bucket policies govern direct S3 access and are the right control when data is queried outside Lake Formation governance, for example via unregistered paths.
- ✗
The AWS Glue Data Catalog has not been granted permission to the engineer's role.
Why it's wrong here
Lake Formation grants are enforced independently of the Glue Data Catalog; the engineer's role needs no separate catalog permission once SELECT is granted through Lake Formation. Catalog permissions matter when using IAM-only access control or when registering new tables and databases, not for reading an already-registered table.
- ✓
The IAM role used by Athena does not have kms:Decrypt permission on the KMS key.
Why this is correct
Lake Formation grants table-level SELECT, but Athena still requires underlying AWS Lake Formation and KMS permissions for encrypted data. Without kms:Decrypt on the SSE-KMS key, Athena cannot read the encrypted objects, producing AccessDeniedException. The stem specifies SSE-KMS encryption, so the missing KMS decrypt permission is the most likely cause.
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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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.