MLA-C01 Practice Question: ML Solution Monitoring, Maintenance, and Security
A machine learning engineer is deploying a model using a SageMaker endpoint and needs to ensure that the model artifacts are encrypted at rest using a customer-managed KMS key. Which configuration should they set?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse S3 bucket encryption (Option B) with model artifact encryption at rest on the endpoint, or they mistakenly think the endpoint configuration's `ProductionVariant` (Option A) can set a KMS key, when in fact the key is set at the model resource level.
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
✓
Set the KMS key when creating the model using the CreateModel API
The `CreateModel` API in SageMaker accepts a `ModelKmsKeyId` parameter that specifies a customer-managed KMS key for encrypting the model artifacts at rest. This key is used when SageMaker copies the artifacts from S3 to the inference instance's Amazon EBS volume, ensuring encryption at rest. The other options either apply to different resources or do not control the encryption of the model artifacts themselves.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Set the KMS key in the endpoint configuration's ProductionVariant
Why it's wrong here
Endpoint configuration does not have a KMS key parameter for model encryption.
- ✗
Enable default encryption on the S3 bucket containing the model artifacts
Why it's wrong here
Bucket encryption does not guarantee encryption during model deployment; SageMaker must use the key.
- ✗
Use SageMaker Studio's KMS integration
Why it's wrong here
Studio encryption is for notebooks, not model artifacts.
- ✓
Set the KMS key when creating the model using the CreateModel API
Why this is correct
The CreateModel API accepts a KMS key parameter to encrypt the model artifacts in S3 and at rest.
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 MLA-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 MLA-C01 exam.