ANS-C01 Network Security, Compliance and Governance Practice Question
A company is migrating a legacy application to AWS. The application requires that all traffic between the web and application tiers be encrypted, but the application does not support TLS. What should a network engineer do to meet this requirement without modifying the application?
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
✓
Establish a VPN connection between the web and application instances.
Establishing a VPN connection between the web and application instances encrypts all traffic at the network layer, making encryption transparent to the application. This meets the requirement without modifying the application. Option B is incorrect because a Network Load Balancer with TLS termination only encrypts traffic between clients and the NLB; traffic from the NLB to targets is sent in cleartext, so targets must support TLS for end-to-end encryption. Since the application does not support TLS, this does not satisfy the requirement. Option C is incorrect because an Application Load Balancer terminates TLS but forwards HTTP traffic to targets in cleartext. Option D is incorrect because a Classic Load Balancer with TCP listeners does not provide any encryption.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Establish a VPN connection between the web and application instances.
Why this is correct
Correct. A VPN connection between instances encrypts all traffic at the network layer, so the application does not need to support TLS. This meets the requirement without modifying the application.
- ✗
Use a Network Load Balancer (NLB) with TLS termination and target groups with TCP, then enable encryption on the NLB.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. An NLB with TLS termination encrypts traffic from clients to the NLB but forwards traffic to targets in cleartext. Since targets do not support TLS, traffic between NLB and targets is unencrypted.
- ✗
Use an Application Load Balancer (ALB) with TLS termination between the tiers.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. An ALB with TLS termination sends HTTP traffic to targets in cleartext, so traffic between ALB and application instances is unencrypted.
- ✗
Use a Classic Load Balancer with TCP listeners.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. A Classic Load Balancer with TCP listeners passes traffic as-is without any encryption.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This ANS-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 ANS-C01 exam.