DEA-C01 Data Security and Governance Practice Question
A data engineer is troubleshooting an ETL job that reads from an S3 bucket encrypted with SSE-KMS. The job is failing with an error indicating that the IAM role does not have permission to decrypt the data. What is the most likely missing permission?
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
✓
kms:Decrypt
Kms:Decrypt. When an S3 object is encrypted with SSE-KMS, the IAM role must have the kms:Decrypt permission to decrypt the object before reading it. Option A (kms:GenerateDataKey) is used for encryption, not decryption, so it is incorrect. Option B (s3:ListBucket) only allows listing objects in the bucket, not reading or decrypting them. Option D (s3:GetObject) allows reading the object, but without kms:Decrypt, the encrypted object cannot be decrypted, so the read fails.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
kms:GenerateDataKey
Why it's wrong here
GenerateDataKey is used for encryption, not decryption.
- ✗
s3:ListBucket
Why it's wrong here
ListBucket is for listing objects, not reading encrypted data.
- ✓
kms:Decrypt
Why this is correct
To read SSE-KMS encrypted objects, the role must have kms:Decrypt permission on the KMS key.
- ✗
s3:GetObject
Why it's wrong here
GetObject alone is insufficient without decrypt permission on the KMS key.
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.