SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company has a central IT team that manages AWS resources for multiple business units using AWS Organizations. Each business unit has its own OU. The central team needs to allow each OU's administrators to manage their own IAM roles and policies, but prevent them from modifying the OU structure or creating new accounts. Which IAM policy should be attached to the administrators in the management account?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse IAM policies with Service Control Policies (SCPs) or forget to deny all relevant OU-modifying actions (CreateOrganizationalUnit, UpdateOrganizationalUnit, DeleteOrganizationalUnit) in addition to CreateAccount, leading them to choose an incomplete policy like Option B.
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
✓
A policy that allows iam:* and denies organizations:CreateAccount, organizations:CreateOrganizationalUnit, organizations:UpdateOrganizationalUnit, and organizations:DeleteOrganizationalUnit.
It grants the OU administrators full IAM permissions (iam:*) to manage roles and policies within their own OUs, while explicitly denying the specific Organizations API actions that could alter the OU structure (CreateOrganizationalUnit, UpdateOrganizationalUnit, DeleteOrganizationalUnit) or create new accounts (CreateAccount). This policy ensures administrators can perform their required tasks without being able to modify the organizational hierarchy or provision new accounts, aligning with the principle of least privilege.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
A policy that denies all IAM and organization actions except for viewing.
Why it's wrong here
This prevents administrators from managing IAM roles and policies.
- ✗
A policy that allows all IAM actions and denies organizations:CreateAccount and organizations:UpdateOrganizationalUnit.
Why it's wrong here
This still allows full IAM access, which includes the ability to modify OU structure indirectly? Actually, IAM actions don't affect OU structure, but it allows too much.
- ✗
A policy that allows organizations:* and IAM:* except for DeleteOrganization and RemoveAccountFromOrganization.
Why it's wrong here
This allows creating accounts and modifying OU structure.
- ✓
A policy that allows iam:* and denies organizations:CreateAccount, organizations:CreateOrganizationalUnit, organizations:UpdateOrganizationalUnit, and organizations:DeleteOrganizationalUnit.
Why this is correct
This allows IAM management while denying organization structure changes.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SAP-C02 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 SAP-C02 exam.