Courseiva

SAA-C03 · domain

Design Secure Architectures

This domain covers how to design identity, network, and data protection controls on AWS. Questions present a scenario and ask you to pick the service or configuration that meets a stated security requirement, such as private S3 access, TLS termination, database isolation, or encryption of data in transit and at rest.

51 questions6 easy36 medium9 hard

Focused practice

Practice Design Secure Architectures questions

Scored sessions drawing only from this domain — pick a length below.

Start 20-question practice test →

What this domain covers

What to know about Design Secure Architectures

Be able to select the right AWS control for a stated security goal: VPC endpoints for private service access, ACM plus ALB listeners for TLS, security group references for database isolation, and IAM and KMS for least privilege and encryption. Get the source of trust right.

Choosing S3 gateway VPC endpoints to keep traffic off the public internet

Using AWS Certificate Manager certificates with an Application Load Balancer HTTPS listener

Configuring RDS security groups to allow only a specific EC2 instance or security group

Applying IAM roles, KMS keys, and bucket policies for least-privilege access

Watch out for

Common Design Secure Architectures exam traps

  • ▸Assuming an internet gateway or NAT gateway keeps S3 traffic private; a VPC endpoint is required for AWS-private connectivity.
  • ▸Terminating TLS at the ALB but forgetting that backend traffic to EC2 is separate and may need its own encryption.
  • ▸Opening a database security group to a CIDR range instead of referencing the application's security group as the source.

Question index

All Design Secure Architectures questions (51)

Click any question to see the full explanation, or start a practice session above.

1

A developer needs to access an Amazon RDS database from an EC2 instance within a private subnet. The database must only accept traffic from the instance. Which security configuration is most appropriate?

Medium
2

Refer to the exhibit. A security administrator is reviewing a CloudTrail log entry for an 'Access Denied' error. The user 'Alice' is trying to upload a file to an S3 bucket. Alice has an IAM policy that allows 's3:PutObject' on all resources. What is the most likely cause of this error?

Medium
3

A company is experiencing unauthorized network traffic in their VPC. They need to inspect traffic patterns between subnets to identify the source of the traffic. Which tool should they use?

Medium
4

A security team needs to identify and protect sensitive data, such as credit card numbers and passport IDs, that may be stored across hundreds of S3 buckets in multiple AWS accounts. Which service should they use to automate this discovery process?

Medium
5

A company is building a zero-trust architecture for its internal microservices running on Amazon EKS. Which THREE steps should the solutions architect take to ensure secure, least-privilege communication between services? (Select THREE)

Hard
6

An application running on an Amazon EC2 instance needs to securely access data in an Amazon DynamoDB table. What is the most secure way to provide the application with the necessary permissions?

Easy
7

A financial services firm must store transaction logs in Amazon S3 for seven years to meet regulatory requirements. The logs must be protected against any modification or deletion by any user, including the root user, during this period. Which S3 feature should be implemented?

Medium
8

Refer to the exhibit. A security audit identifies that data is being transmitted to an S3 bucket named 'corporate-data' without encryption in transit. Which behavior does this bucket policy enforce to address this concern?

Medium
9

An organization needs to issue and manage SSL/TLS certificates for its internal microservices, which are not accessible from the public internet. They want to avoid the overhead of managing their own PKI infrastructure. Which service should they use?

Medium
10

A company needs to store database credentials for an application running on Amazon ECS. The credentials must be encrypted and automatically rotated every 30 days without requiring an application restart. Which TWO AWS services should be used together to achieve this? (Select TWO)

Medium
11

A web application hosted on EC2 instances needs to access a DynamoDB table. What is the most secure way to provide the application with the necessary permissions?

Medium
12

A company is building a mobile application that needs to authenticate users and allow them to upload photos directly to an Amazon S3 bucket. Which TWO Amazon Cognito components should be used to provide a secure and scalable solution?

Medium
13

An enterprise requires all data stored in Amazon S3 to be encrypted at rest. The security team must maintain full control over the encryption keys, including the ability to rotate them annually and define access policies for the keys themselves. Which encryption method meets these requirements with the least operational overhead?

Medium
14

A company is hosting a sensitive web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The compliance team requires that all data at rest must be encrypted using keys that are rotated annually, and all access to these keys must be logged for auditing purposes. Which solution meets these requirements with the least administrative effort?

Medium
15

A security auditor requires that all EC2 instances must be running with specific software versions and that any instance not compliant with these versions must be automatically terminated. Which THREE services should be used to achieve this? (Select THREE.)

Hard
16

A large enterprise uses AWS Organizations to manage multiple accounts. The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) wants to ensure that no account within the organization can create any resources in regions other than 'us-east-1' and 'us-west-2'. What is the most efficient way to enforce this across the entire organization?

Hard
17

Refer to the exhibit. This bucket policy grants access to a specific account. A user in that account still cannot access the object. What is the most likely reason?

Medium
18

Refer to the exhibit. An administrator has applied the provided bucket policy to 'my-secure-bucket'. What is the effect of this policy on access to the bucket?

Medium
19

A company is migrating a web application to AWS and needs to ensure that all data stored in Amazon S3 is encrypted at rest using keys managed by the company. The company must be able to rotate these keys annually and maintain full control over key access policies. Which solution meets these requirements?

Medium
20

An enterprise organization is planning a centralized logging architecture across hundreds of AWS accounts using AWS CloudTrail and Amazon S3. Security mandates state that all log files delivered to the centralized S3 bucket must be cryptographically verified to ensure they have not been modified or tampered with after delivery. Which TWO actions must a Solutions Architect implement to achieve this mandate? (Choose two.)

Hard
21

A company wants to implement a service that continuously monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior across its AWS accounts, such as cryptocurrency mining or unusual API calls. Which AWS service should they use?

Easy
22

A solutions architect is designing a storage solution for a financial firm. The firm requires that data stored in Amazon S3 must be protected against accidental deletion and all changes to the data must be versioned. Which TWO features should the architect implement to meet these requirements? (Select TWO)

Medium
23

A company is designing a multi-tier application. The web tier is public, and the database tier is private. Which TWO actions should the architect take to ensure the database tier is secure? (Select TWO.)

Hard
24

An architect is designing a secure storage solution for highly sensitive financial data in S3. Which THREE security controls should be implemented? (Select THREE.)

Medium
25

A company is using AWS Secrets Manager to manage database credentials. The company needs to automatically rotate these credentials every 30 days. How can this be accomplished?

Medium
26

An organization wants to protect their web application from common web exploits like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS). Which AWS service should they use?

Medium
27

A company must share an S3 bucket with a third-party vendor. The vendor has their own AWS account. What is the most secure method to grant the vendor access to the S3 bucket?

Medium
28

Refer to the exhibit. An IAM policy is applied to an IAM user to grant access to an S3 bucket. However, the user is still receiving an 'Access Denied' error when attempting to list the objects in the bucket. What is the cause of this error?

Medium
29

A company is launching a high-profile marketing campaign and expects a significant increase in traffic. They are concerned about potential Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks targeting their Application Load Balancer. Which AWS service provides advanced protection and includes 24/7 access to the AWS Shield Response Team (SRT)?

Easy
30

A company wants to ensure that no developer can create an Amazon S3 bucket in any AWS region except for us-east-1 and us-west-2 across their entire AWS Organization. Which solution provides the most efficient and centralized way to enforce this across all member accounts?

Medium
31

A company is concerned about unauthorized access and potential data exfiltration within their AWS environment. They need a service that can continuously monitor VPC Flow Logs, AWS CloudTrail management events, and DNS logs to identify suspicious activities using machine learning. Which solution should the architect recommend for centralized threat detection?

Medium
32

An organization is using AWS Control Tower to manage multiple AWS accounts. They need to implement a set of guardrails to ensure that all accounts remain compliant with security best practices. Which THREE components or features are part of a standard AWS Control Tower landing zone implementation?

Hard
33

A security architect is designing a multi-tier application in a VPC. The requirement is to block all traffic from a specific range of malicious IP addresses (CIDR 192.0.2.0/24) while allowing standard web traffic (HTTPS) from all other sources to the web tier. Which TWO actions should the architect take to implement this? (Select TWO.)

Medium
34

A company wants to improve the security of its Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database. They want to eliminate the need for storing database passwords in application code and simplify the management of database access for their EC2-based applications. Which solution should they implement?

Medium
35

A company's security team identifies that its public-facing web application is being targeted by SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. The application is running on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). Which service should the solutions architect implement to protect the application from these specific web-based attacks?

Medium
36

A company wants to ensure that its internal applications can access Amazon S3 without the traffic ever leaving the AWS network or passing through the public internet. What should they implement to achieve this securely?

Easy
37

An organization needs to perform continuous security assessments of its Amazon EC2 instances to identify software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure. Which service should they use to automate these assessments and provide a centralized view of the findings?

Medium
38

A company is developing a mobile application that allows users to sign in using their social media accounts (e.g., Google or Facebook). After signing in, the application needs to obtain temporary AWS credentials to upload photos directly to an Amazon S3 bucket. Which service should the architect use?

Medium
39

A company is hosting a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The security team requires that all data in transit between the client and the ALB be encrypted using TLS. Which service should the architect use to manage the SSL/TLS certificates for the ALB?

Medium
40

Refer to the exhibit. A company has applied the following bucket policy to an S3 bucket named 'finance-reports'. A user is attempting to download a file from this bucket from the IP address 203.0.113.15 using an authenticated session without MFA. What will be the result of this request?

Hard
41

A company is hosting a multi-tier web application on AWS using Amazon EC2 instances in a private subnet behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The security team requires that all incoming web traffic is encrypted in transit from the client to the ALB and from the ALB to the backend EC2 instances. Which combination of configurations meets these requirements?

Medium
42

A security engineer needs to block a specific range of malicious IP addresses from accessing an entire subnet within a VPC. The solution must ensure that the traffic is rejected before it reaches any EC2 instances. Which AWS feature should be used to implement this restriction?

Easy
43

A company is concerned that its database credentials, currently stored as environment variables in AWS Lambda, are not being rotated regularly. Which AWS service should the company use to securely store and automatically rotate these credentials?

Easy
44

A large corporation uses AWS Organizations to manage hundreds of accounts. The security team wants to ensure that no account can provision resources in unauthorized regions and that only approved AWS services can be used. Which TWO features should be used to enforce these constraints across the entire organization? (Select TWO.)

Hard
45

A web application is deployed on Amazon EC2 instances within a private subnet. The application must receive traffic from an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in a public subnet and connect to an Amazon RDS MySQL database in a different private subnet. Which TWO steps are required to secure this architecture using security groups?

Medium
46

A developer needs to access an S3 bucket from an EC2 instance. For security best practices, the developer must avoid hardcoding long-term credentials on the instance. What is the most secure method to provide the necessary permissions?

Medium
47

Refer to the exhibit. A solutions architect reviews the following IAM policy applied to a user. What is the effect of this policy when the user attempts to access an object in the bucket from an IP address of 198.51.100.5?

Medium
48

A company's public-facing application is experiencing a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. The application is hosted on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). Which TWO AWS services or features can be used to mitigate this attack and protect the application?

Hard
49

An architect is designing a secure VPC architecture. Which TWO actions should be taken to ensure the infrastructure is compliant with security best practices regarding network isolation?

Medium
50

A healthcare company must store patient records in Amazon S3 for a minimum of 7 years to meet regulatory requirements. During this period, the records must not be deleted or modified by any user, including the root user. Which S3 feature should be used to enforce this?

Medium
51

A data analytics company stores massive amounts of data in Amazon S3. They need a way to automatically identify and flag sensitive data, such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or financial records, to ensure it is not being mishandled. Which AWS service is designed for this task?

Medium

Frequently asked questions

What does the Design Secure Architectures domain cover on the SAA-C03 exam?
Be able to select the right AWS control for a stated security goal: VPC endpoints for private service access, ACM plus ALB listeners for TLS, security group references for database isolation, and IAM and KMS for least privilege and encryption. Get the source of trust right.
How many questions are in this domain?
This page lists all 51 Design Secure Architectures questions in the SAA-C03 question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
What is the best way to practise this domain?
Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
Can I practise only Design Secure Architectures questions?
Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate SAA-C03 Design Secure Architectures Practice Questions