SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company has a multi-account environment with AWS Organizations. The security team wants to enforce that all EC2 instances must use a specific AMI ID that is approved by the security team. Which two actions should the team take to achieve this? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse SCPs with IAM policies, thinking IAM policies can enforce organization-wide restrictions, but SCPs are the only mechanism that can deny actions across all accounts in AWS Organizations, including to the root user.
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
✓
Create an SCP that denies ec2:RunInstances unless the ami id matches an approved list.
An SCP in AWS Organizations can deny the ec2:RunInstances action unless the request includes an approved AMI ID, using a condition key like ec2:ImageId. This enforces the policy across all accounts in the organization, preventing any non-approved AMI from being used even by administrators. Option C is correct because AWS Config rules can detect non-compliant instances (e.g., those launched with unapproved AMIs) and trigger an automatic remediation action, such as terminating the instance or sending notifications, providing a detective and corrective control.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Create an SCP that denies ec2:RunInstances unless the ami id matches an approved list.
Why this is correct
SCPs can deny actions based on conditions.
- ✗
Use AWS Resource Access Manager to share the approved AMI with all accounts.
Why it's wrong here
Sharing AMIs does not enforce their use.
- ✓
Use AWS Config rules to detect instances launched with non-approved AMIs and trigger remediation.
Why this is correct
Config can detect and auto-remediate (e.g., terminate).
- ✗
Use AWS CloudTrail to monitor instance launches and send alerts.
Why it's wrong here
Alerts do not prevent launches.
- ✗
Attach an IAM policy to each account's IAM roles that allows only approved AMIs.
Why it's wrong here
IAM policies are not account-wide and may be bypassed by root.
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.