DVA-C02 Service Control Policy (SCP) Practice Question
A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to enforce that all S3 buckets across all accounts have server-side encryption enabled. They have created an SCP that denies the s3:PutBucketAcl action unless the request includes the x-amz-server-side-encryption header. However, some application teams report that they cannot create buckets even when they include the required header. What is the MOST likely cause of this issue?
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 SCP is incorrectly targeting s3:PutBucketAcl instead of s3:CreateBucket.
The SCP denies s3:PutBucketAcl, not s3:CreateBucket. The SCP should deny s3:CreateBucket unless the encryption header is present. Option B is wrong because even if the SCP is not applied to the root OU, but only to specific accounts, it would still apply to those accounts; the issue is the action being denied, not the scope. Option C is wrong because if the condition key were misspelled, the condition would simply not be evaluated, and the deny would still block bucket creation despite the header being present. Option D is wrong because SCPs are evaluated before resource-based policies; if the SCP denies the action, the request fails regardless of any resource-based policy that might allow it.
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 SCP is incorrectly targeting s3:PutBucketAcl instead of s3:CreateBucket.
Why this is correct
The SCP should deny s3:CreateBucket unless encryption header is present.
- ✗
The SCP is not applied to the root OU, only to specific accounts.
Why it's wrong here
Even if the SCP were not applied to the root OU, the issue of being unable to create buckets despite including the header would only affect accounts where the SCP is applied. The question states the problem affects all accounts, suggesting the SCP is applied broadly. The core problem remains the incorrect action, not the scope.
- ✗
The condition key in the SCP is misspelled.
Why it's wrong here
While a misspelled condition key could cause the condition not to be evaluated, the primary issue is that the SCP denies s3:PutBucketAcl, which is not the action used to create a bucket. Even if the condition were correctly spelled, denying PutBucketAcl would not prevent bucket creation.
- ✗
The SCP is being overridden by a resource-based policy on the S3 bucket.
Why it's wrong here
SCPs cannot be overridden by resource-based policies; SCPs set an upper boundary on permissions. Resource-based policies can grant additional permissions but cannot override a deny from an SCP. Therefore, this is not the 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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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DVA-C02 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 DVA-C02 exam.