SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
This SAP-C02 practice question tests your understanding of design solutions for organizational complexity. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company has multiple AWS accounts managed via AWS Organizations. The security team wants to enforce that all S3 buckets across all accounts are encrypted with AWS KMS keys managed by the security team. What is the MOST scalable and maintainable solution?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Apply a service control policy (SCP) at the root OU that denies s3:PutBucketAcl or s3:PutBucketPolicy actions unless encryption is configured.
Option A is correct because an SCP applied at the root OU can deny any S3 PutBucketAcl or PutBucketPolicy action unless the request includes a condition that the bucket encryption uses a KMS key from the security team’s account. This approach is centralized, scales across all accounts automatically, and prevents non-compliant buckets from being created or modified, making it the most scalable and maintainable solution.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✓
Apply a service control policy (SCP) at the root OU that denies s3:PutBucketAcl or s3:PutBucketPolicy actions unless encryption is configured.
Why this is correct
SCPs are scalable and enforce prevention across all accounts.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Use AWS Trusted Advisor to check for unencrypted buckets and notify the security team.
Why it's wrong here
Trusted Advisor is advisory only and does not enforce compliance.
✗
Use AWS Config rules in each account to detect non-compliant buckets and trigger auto-remediation.
Why it's wrong here
Config rules are reactive and require per-account setup; they do not prevent creation.
✗
Create a CloudFormation StackSet that deploys an S3 bucket policy in every account.
Why it's wrong here
Bucket policies are not automatically applied to all buckets; they are per-bucket.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often assume AWS Config rules or Trusted Advisor are sufficient for enforcement, but they only detect or remediate after the fact, whereas SCPs provide preventive control at the organizational level, which is the key to scalability and maintainability.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
SCPs in AWS Organizations use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy language with conditions like `s3:x-amz-server-side-encryption-aws-kms-key-id` to require a specific KMS key ARN. The SCP is evaluated before any IAM or resource-based policies, so even account administrators cannot bypass it. This ensures that all S3 bucket creation or modification requests across the organization must include the required encryption header, effectively enforcing the security team’s KMS key usage at the organizational level.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity — This question tests Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Apply a service control policy (SCP) at the root OU that denies s3:PutBucketAcl or s3:PutBucketPolicy actions unless encryption is configured. — Option A is correct because an SCP applied at the root OU can deny any S3 PutBucketAcl or PutBucketPolicy action unless the request includes a condition that the bucket encryption uses a KMS key from the security team’s account. This approach is centralized, scales across all accounts automatically, and prevents non-compliant buckets from being created or modified, making it the most scalable and maintainable solution.
What should I do if I get this SAP-C02 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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