SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company has a multi-account AWS environment with hundreds of accounts. The security team needs to centrally manage IAM roles that grant cross-account access to a central security account. The solution must scale as new accounts are added. What should the team do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates think SCPs can enforce resource creation (Option A) or that IAM groups can be used for cross-account access (Option C), but SCPs only deny or allow actions and IAM groups are account-scoped, not cross-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 AWS CloudFormation StackSets to deploy the IAM role to all accounts, and enable AWS Organizations trusted access for the role.
AWS CloudFormation StackSets allows you to deploy the same IAM role across multiple accounts in an AWS Organization in a single, automated operation. By enabling trusted access with AWS Organizations, the role can be centrally managed and automatically deployed to new accounts as they are added, ensuring the solution scales without manual intervention.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use a service control policy (SCP) to enforce the creation of the role.
Why it's wrong here
SCPs cannot create roles.
- ✗
Manually create the same IAM role in each account with a trust policy pointing to the security account.
Why it's wrong here
Manual creation does not scale to hundreds of accounts.
- ✗
Use IAM groups in the security account and grant permissions to the groups.
Why it's wrong here
IAM groups are within a single account.
- ✓
Use AWS CloudFormation StackSets to deploy the IAM role to all accounts, and enable AWS Organizations trusted access for the role.
Why this is correct
StackSets automate deployment across accounts and trusted access simplifies cross-account roles.
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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.