DEA-C01 Data Security and Governance Practice Question
A data engineer is designing a system to handle sensitive customer data in Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The compliance team requires that the data be encrypted at rest and that encryption keys be rotated every 90 days. Which solution meets these requirements?
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
✓
Enable RDS encryption with a customer managed KMS key, enable automatic key rotation, and manually rotate the key every 90 days
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL encryption at rest uses AWS KMS with customer managed keys. Automatic key rotation in KMS rotates the key annually, but the requirement is every 90 days. Therefore, manual key rotation must be performed every 90 days in addition to enabling automatic key rotation. Option A is incorrect because AWS CloudHSM is not directly integrated with RDS for encryption at rest; RDS encryption uses KMS. Option C is incorrect because Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) is not supported for Amazon RDS PostgreSQL; RDS uses KMS for encryption. Option D is incorrect because KMS automatic key rotation alone rotates keys only once per year, not every 90 days as required.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use AWS CloudHSM to store the encryption key and create a custom key rotation Lambda function
Why it's wrong here
CloudHSM is not natively integrated with RDS.
- ✓
Enable RDS encryption with a customer managed KMS key, enable automatic key rotation, and manually rotate the key every 90 days
Why this is correct
Manual rotation every 90 days satisfies the requirement.
- ✗
Enable Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) on the RDS instance
Why it's wrong here
RDS does not support TDE.
- ✗
Enable RDS encryption with a customer managed KMS key and enable automatic key rotation
Why it's wrong here
Automatic rotation is yearly, not 90 days.
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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.