SAP-C02 AWS KMS Practice Question
A company is designing a data lake on S3 with sensitive data that must be encrypted at rest and audited. Which TWO services should be used? (Choose TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often focus solely on either encryption or auditing, failing to recognize that both are required: encryption (KMS) to meet the 'encrypted at rest' requirement and auditing (CloudTrail) to meet the 'audited' 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 CloudTrail
To meet the requirements of encrypting data at rest and auditing access, two services are needed. AWS KMS (Key Management Service) provides centralized control over encryption keys and can be used with S3 Server-Side Encryption (SSE-KMS) to encrypt sensitive data at rest. AWS CloudTrail records all API calls made to S3, enabling auditing of who accessed or modified the data. Together, KMS and CloudTrail satisfy both the encryption and auditing requirements.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
S3 Server-Side Encryption (SSE-S3)
Why it's wrong here
SSE-S3 does not provide audit logs.
- ✗
Amazon Macie
Why it's wrong here
Macie discovers sensitive data, but does not encrypt.
- ✓
AWS CloudTrail
Why this is correct
CloudTrail logs API calls to S3 for auditing.
- ✓
AWS KMS
Why this is correct
KMS provides key management and audit trails.
- ✗
Amazon GuardDuty
Why it's wrong here
GuardDuty is for threat detection, not encryption or audit.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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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.