Question 615 of 1,660
SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is deploying a containerized microservices architecture on Amazon ECS with Fargate. They need to securely store and rotate database credentials. Which AWS service should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store (which can store secrets) with AWS Secrets Manager, but Parameter Store lacks native automatic rotation and is not designed for managing database credential lifecycles, making Secrets Manager the correct choice for this specific requirement.
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
✓
AWS Secrets Manager
AWS Secrets Manager is the correct choice because it is purpose-built for securely storing, automatically rotating, and managing the lifecycle of database credentials. It integrates natively with Amazon ECS and Fargate via task role permissions, allowing containers to retrieve secrets at runtime without hardcoding them. Secrets Manager also supports automatic rotation of credentials for Amazon RDS, Aurora, and other databases, which directly addresses the requirement for credential rotation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS CloudHSM
Why it's wrong here
CloudHSM provides hardware security modules for key generation, not for credential storage or rotation.
- ✗
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles
Why it's wrong here
IAM roles are for permissions, not for storing database credentials.
- ✗
AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store
Why it's wrong here
Parameter Store can store secrets, but automatic rotation is limited; Secrets Manager is the intended service for rotating credentials.
- ✓
AWS Secrets Manager
Why this is correct
Secrets Manager provides built-in automatic rotation for RDS, Redshift, and DocumentDB credentials.
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Last reviewed: Jun 24, 2026
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.
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