SAA-C03 Design Secure Architectures Practice Question
A mobile banking backend stores audit logs in S3. The compliance team requires that logs cannot be overwritten or deleted for seven years. What should be configured? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to choose versioning (option C) thinking it prevents deletion, but versioning alone does not block overwrites or permanent deletion of the current version without additional safeguards like MFA delete or Object Lock.
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
✓
S3 Object Lock in compliance mode with an appropriate retention period
S3 Object Lock in compliance mode prevents any user, including the root user, from overwriting or deleting objects for the specified retention period. This meets the compliance requirement of immutable audit logs for seven years without custom scripts. Compliance mode enforces a legal hold that cannot be removed by any user, ensuring logs are write-once-read-many (WORM) protected.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
S3 server access logging
Why it's wrong here
Access logging records requests but does not enforce immutability.
- ✗
S3 lifecycle expiration after seven years
Why it's wrong here
Lifecycle expiration deletes data; it does not prevent deletion before that date.
- ✗
S3 versioning only
Why it's wrong here
Versioning preserves prior versions but does not prevent deletion or overwriting by authorized users.
- ✓
S3 Object Lock in compliance mode with an appropriate retention period
Why this is correct
Object Lock compliance mode enforces write-once-read-many retention that even privileged users cannot bypass during the retention period.
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 SAA-C03 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 SAA-C03 exam.