The answer is AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO), the correct service for centralized SSO across multiple AWS accounts. This service is purpose-built to manage user access and permissions from a single place, allowing you to connect an existing identity source—such as Active Directory, Okta, or Azure AD—and define fine-grained permission sets that map users or groups to specific roles in each account, eliminating the need to create IAM users in every account. On the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional DOP-C02 exam, this question tests your understanding of federated identity management and the shift from legacy IAM users to a centralized model; a common trap is choosing IAM Roles Anywhere or AWS Organizations alone, which lack the built-in SSO and identity source integration. Remember the mnemonic “SSO = Single Source Orchestrator” to recall that IAM Identity Center is the single orchestration point for identities across accounts.
DOP-C02 Security and Compliance Practice Question
This DOP-C02 practice question tests your understanding of security and compliance. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company wants to centrally manage user access to multiple AWS accounts using federated identity. Which AWS service should be used to create a single sign-on (SSO) solution?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
AWS IAM Identity Center (AWS SSO)
AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO) is the correct service because it is purpose-built to centrally manage user access and permissions across multiple AWS accounts and applications from a single place. It allows you to create or connect your existing identity source (e.g., Active Directory, Okta, Azure AD) and then define fine-grained permission sets that map users or groups to specific roles in each account, enabling a true single sign-on (SSO) experience without needing to create IAM users in every account.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
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 IAM Identity Center (AWS SSO)
Why this is correct
IAM Identity Center provides SSO across multiple AWS accounts.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
AWS Organizations
Why it's wrong here
AWS Organizations manages accounts and policies, not user authentication.
✗
AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory
Why it's wrong here
Managed Microsoft AD can be used for federation but is not the SSO service itself.
✗
Amazon Cognito
Why it's wrong here
Cognito is for customer identity and access management, not enterprise SSO for AWS accounts.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse AWS Organizations (which manages accounts and policies) with IAM Identity Center (which manages user identities and SSO), or they think that Directory Service alone provides SSO across accounts, when in fact it only provides the directory backend and requires an additional federation service like IAM Identity Center to bridge authentication to multiple AWS accounts.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Under the hood, IAM Identity Center uses the AWS STS (Security Token Service) to issue temporary credentials based on permission sets, which are essentially IAM roles with a trust policy that allows the Identity Center service to assume them. A subtle behavior is that when you assign a user to an account, IAM Identity Center automatically creates the necessary IAM roles and trust policies in the target account, and the user authenticates via SAML 2.0 or OIDC to the Identity Center portal, which then redirects to the AWS console with the assumed role. In a real-world scenario, if you have 50 accounts and need to grant a developer read-only access to EC2 in all of them, you define one permission set and assign it to a group, and IAM Identity Center propagates the configuration across all accounts without manual role creation.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A company's IT admin needs to give a contractor read-only access to production logs without sharing account credentials. Using role-based access control (RBAC) and temporary scoped permissions — not a permanent shared password — is the correct pattern. Questions like this test whether you can apply least-privilege access across cloud identity services.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Security and Compliance — This question tests Security and Compliance — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: AWS IAM Identity Center (AWS SSO) — AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO) is the correct service because it is purpose-built to centrally manage user access and permissions across multiple AWS accounts and applications from a single place. It allows you to create or connect your existing identity source (e.g., Active Directory, Okta, Azure AD) and then define fine-grained permission sets that map users or groups to specific roles in each account, enabling a true single sign-on (SSO) experience without needing to create IAM users in every account.
What should I do if I get this DOP-C02 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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