SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
This SAP-C02 practice question tests your understanding of design solutions for organizational complexity. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. 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 centrally enforce that all S3 buckets across all accounts have server-side encryption enabled. Which solution should be used?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Attach a service control policy (SCP) to the root organizational unit that denies s3:PutBucket without encryption
Option C is correct because a service control policy (SCP) attached to the root organizational unit can centrally deny the s3:PutBucket action unless the request includes a condition that requires server-side encryption (e.g., s3:x-amz-server-side-encryption). SCPs apply to all accounts in the organization, ensuring that even administrators in member accounts cannot create unencrypted buckets, and they cannot be overridden by IAM policies within those accounts.
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.
✗
Use AWS CloudTrail to monitor and alert on bucket creation without encryption
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail logs but does not enforce.
✗
Use AWS Config rules with auto-remediation in each account
Why it's wrong here
Config rules detect but do not enforce; remediation is reactive.
✓
Attach a service control policy (SCP) to the root organizational unit that denies s3:PutBucket without encryption
Why this is correct
SCPs centrally deny actions across all accounts.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Define an IAM policy in each account to deny S3:PutBucket without encryption
Why it's wrong here
IAM policies must be applied per account, not centrally.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often choose AWS Config with auto-remediation (Option B) because it can fix noncompliant buckets, but they overlook that SCPs provide a preventive, centrally managed control that cannot be overridden by account-level administrators, which is the key requirement for central enforcement across multiple accounts.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
SCPs are evaluated before IAM policies and can use condition keys like s3:x-amz-server-side-encryption to enforce encryption at the time of the PutBucket call. Under the hood, SCPs act as a boundary policy—they do not grant permissions but restrict what actions are allowed, making them ideal for security guardrails. In a real-world scenario, an SCP can also be combined with a condition that requires the presence of the x-amz-server-side-encryption header with a value of AES256 or aws:kms to enforce specific encryption types.
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: Attach a service control policy (SCP) to the root organizational unit that denies s3:PutBucket without encryption — Option C is correct because a service control policy (SCP) attached to the root organizational unit can centrally deny the s3:PutBucket action unless the request includes a condition that requires server-side encryption (e.g., s3:x-amz-server-side-encryption). SCPs apply to all accounts in the organization, ensuring that even administrators in member accounts cannot create unencrypted buckets, and they cannot be overridden by IAM policies within those accounts.
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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