SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company has a multi-account AWS environment with over 500 accounts. The security team uses AWS Config to evaluate resource compliance across all accounts. They have set up an AWS Config aggregator in the security account to collect configuration snapshots from all member accounts. Recently, the team noticed that some member accounts are not showing up in the aggregator. The accounts are active and have AWS Config enabled. What should the security team do to troubleshoot this issue?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often assume enabling AWS Config in member accounts is sufficient, overlooking the critical cross-account authorization step required by the aggregator to pull data from those accounts.
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
✓
Verify that the AWS Config aggregator in the security account has the correct authorization to assume a role in each member account.
AWS Config aggregators require cross-account authorization to collect configuration data from member accounts. Even if AWS Config is enabled in member accounts, the aggregator in the security account must have the correct IAM role permissions (via an IAM role in each member account) to assume and retrieve configuration snapshots. Without this authorization, the aggregator cannot access the member accounts' data, causing them to not appear.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Ensure that the member accounts have enabled AWS Config in the same region as the aggregator.
Why it's wrong here
An aggregator collects data from the regions where member account recorders run, so region mismatch is not the cause when accounts are absent entirely. It is tempting because AWS Config is regional, but the actual requirement is that each member account authorises the aggregator account, which this option ignores.
- ✗
Check if the member accounts have exceeded the AWS Config resource limits.
Why it's wrong here
Config aggregators surface accounts regardless of per-account resource limits; exceeding limits affects recording of individual resource types, not whether an account appears. Checking limits is tempting because throttling and quota exhaustion genuinely cause missing configuration data, but the symptom here is account-level absence, pointing to authorisation or aggregator source configuration instead.
- ✗
Check if the AWS Config recorder in the member accounts is configured to record all resource types.
Why it's wrong here
Recording all resource types affects which resources appear, not whether an account appears at all. It is tempting because incomplete recording is a common Config issue, but missing accounts point to the aggregator lacking authorisation from those member accounts, which this option does not address.
- ✓
Verify that the AWS Config aggregator in the security account has the correct authorization to assume a role in each member account.
Why this is correct
The aggregator needs a cross-account IAM role it can assume in every member account to read configuration data. If that role or its trust policy is missing or misconfigured, accounts silently fail to appear, so verify the authorisation first.
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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.