SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company has a multi-account strategy with a dedicated audit account. The audit account needs to have read-only access to all resources in all other accounts. The security team wants to use IAM roles. What is the MOST scalable way to set up this cross-account access?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often choose manual role creation (Option C) because it seems straightforward, but they overlook the scalability and automation benefits of StackSets, which is the most efficient solution for managing cross-account roles across many accounts in a multi-account strategy.
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 a stack containing an IAM role with the required trust and permissions.
AWS CloudFormation StackSets allows you to deploy a consistent IAM role with a read-only policy and a trust policy that grants the audit account access across all target accounts in a single, automated, and scalable operation. This approach eliminates manual effort, ensures consistency, and scales to hundreds of accounts without requiring per-account configuration.
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 AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) to grant the audit team access to each account.
Why it's wrong here
SSO grants access but does not set up the roles; you still need to create roles.
- ✗
Create an IAM user in the audit account and allow that user to assume a role in each account.
Why it's wrong here
The user still needs roles in each account; StackSets better automates role creation.
- ✗
Manually create an IAM role in each account and attach a read-only policy.
Why it's wrong here
Manual process is not scalable for many accounts.
- ✓
Use AWS CloudFormation StackSets to deploy a stack containing an IAM role with the required trust and permissions.
Why this is correct
StackSets can deploy to all accounts in an organization automatically.
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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.