DEA-C01 Data Security and Governance Practice Question
A data engineer needs to ensure that an Amazon S3 bucket containing sensitive customer data is encrypted at rest. Which AWS service can be used to manage the encryption keys?
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
✓
AWS Key Management Service (KMS)
AWS KMS is the service for managing encryption keys. S3 SSE-S3 uses S3-managed keys, while SSE-C uses customer-provided keys. CloudHSM is a hardware security module but not directly used for S3 encryption key management.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Certificate Manager
Why it's wrong here
ACM manages SSL/TLS certificates, not encryption keys for data at rest.
- ✗
AWS Secrets Manager
Why it's wrong here
Secrets Manager is for managing secrets like database credentials, not encryption keys for S3.
- ✗
AWS CloudHSM
Why it's wrong here
CloudHSM provides hardware security modules but is not the primary service for managing S3 encryption keys; KMS integrates directly with S3.
- ✓
AWS Key Management Service (KMS)
Why this is correct
KMS is the managed service for creating and controlling encryption keys used by S3 SSE-KMS.
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.