SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company has a decentralized IT structure where each business unit manages its own AWS account. The central security team needs visibility into all IAM user activities across accounts. What is the MOST scalable solution to aggregate CloudTrail logs?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates may overcomplicate the solution by choosing Kinesis (Option C) because they assume streaming is required for scalability, but CloudTrail's native S3 delivery is the most scalable and cost-effective aggregation method for IAM user activity logs.
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
✓
Configure CloudTrail in each account to deliver logs to a single S3 bucket in the security account.
CloudTrail can be configured in each account to deliver log files to a centralized S3 bucket in the security account. This approach aggregates all IAM user activities into a single location without requiring additional streaming infrastructure, and it scales automatically as new accounts are added. The central security team can then use Amazon Athena or AWS Lake Formation to query the logs across all accounts efficiently.
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 Insights in each account and review separately.
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail Insights flags anomalous API call volumes per account; it does not centralise log delivery, so the security team still reviews each account separately, defeating the aggregation requirement. Insights is the right choice when you already have a trail and want anomaly detection within a single account.
- ✗
Use AWS Config aggregator to collect IAM user activity.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config aggregator consolidates configuration item and compliance data, not CloudTrail management events, so IAM user activity would not appear. It is tempting because it centralises cross-account visibility, and it would be correct for aggregating resource configuration and conformance packs, but CloudTrail log aggregation needs an organisation trail with a central S3 bucket.
- ✗
Set up Amazon Kinesis Data Streams in each account and stream to a central Kinesis Data Firehose.
Why it's wrong here
Kinesis Data Streams in each account would require the central security team to manage individual stream consumers and handle cross-account permissions for each stream, creating operational overhead that does not scale linearly with the number of accounts. This approach is tempting because Kinesis Data Streams is designed for real-time log ingestion and can feed a central Firehose for delivery to S3 or other destinations, which would be the correct choice if the requirement were low-latency streaming rather than scalable aggregation of historical CloudTrail logs.
- ✓
Configure CloudTrail in each account to deliver logs to a single S3 bucket in the security account.
Why this is correct
CloudTrail delivers logs to a central S3 bucket via a bucket policy granting each account's trail write access, satisfying the multi-account aggregation requirement without per-account tooling. This scales to any number of business units, unlike manual consolidation, and preserves a single queryable log repository for the central security team.
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 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.