SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company has a centralized logging solution using Amazon S3 and AWS CloudTrail across multiple accounts. The logs are delivered to a central S3 bucket. The security team needs to ensure that logs are encrypted at rest and access is limited to only authorized security personnel. Which combination of actions should be taken?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse enabling default encryption (which only applies to new objects if no encryption header is provided) with enforcing encryption via policy, or they overlook that SCPs can enforce encryption requirements across all accounts in an organization, not just within a single account.
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
✓
Use an SCP to require SSE-KMS for all S3 put operations, and apply a bucket policy that only allows access from a specific IAM role.
Using an SCP to require SSE-KMS for all S3 put operations ensures that any log data written to the central bucket is encrypted at rest with AWS KMS, providing an additional layer of control and auditability. The bucket policy that restricts access to a specific IAM role ensures that only authorized security personnel can access the logs, meeting the security team's requirements for encryption and access limitation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable CloudTrail log file validation and use IAM policies to limit access.
Why it's wrong here
This does not encrypt logs at rest.
- ✓
Use an SCP to require SSE-KMS for all S3 put operations, and apply a bucket policy that only allows access from a specific IAM role.
Why this is correct
SCP enforces encryption, and bucket policy restricts access to the required role.
- ✗
Enable default encryption on the S3 bucket using SSE-S3 and apply a bucket policy to restrict access.
Why it's wrong here
SSE-S3 does not allow separate key management, and bucket policies can be changed by account admins.
- ✗
Use AWS KMS with a customer managed key and attach an SCP to prevent deletion of the key.
Why it's wrong here
This does not enforce encryption on the bucket.
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
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This SAP-C02 question is part of Courseiva's 1,660-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.