MLS-C01 Data Engineering Practice Question
An ML engineer is using Amazon SageMaker to train a model on a dataset that contains personal identifiable information (PII). The data must be encrypted at rest and in transit. The company uses AWS KMS for key management. How should the engineer configure the SageMaker training job to meet these encryption requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often focus only on S3 encryption or VPC endpoints, overlooking that SageMaker training jobs have separate encryption requirements for local storage and inter-container communication, which are explicitly controlled by VolumeKmsKeyId and inter-container traffic encryption settings.
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
✓
Specify a KMS key for the training job's VolumeKmsKeyId and enable inter-container traffic encryption
It addresses both encryption at rest and in transit for the SageMaker training job. Specifying a KMS key via VolumeKmsKeyId encrypts the ML storage volume (EBS) used by the training instances at rest, while enabling inter-container traffic encryption ensures data exchanged between distributed training containers is encrypted in transit using TLS. This combination meets the PII encryption requirements using AWS KMS.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable S3 Server-Side Encryption (SSE-S3) on the input data bucket
Why it's wrong here
SSE-S3 encrypts data at rest in S3, but not during training.
- ✗
Use a custom Docker image with built-in encryption and disable inter-container traffic encryption for performance
Why it's wrong here
Disabling inter-container encryption violates the requirement for encryption in transit.
- ✗
Use a VPC with an S3 VPC Endpoint and enable SSL for the endpoint
Why it's wrong here
SSL provides encryption in transit but not at rest on the training instance.
- ✓
Specify a KMS key for the training job's VolumeKmsKeyId and enable inter-container traffic encryption
Why this is correct
This encrypts the ML storage volume and inter-container traffic.
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 MLS-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 MLS-C01 exam.