SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new application that will process sensitive data. The application will run on Amazon ECS with Fargate. The security team requires that all data at rest be encrypted, and that encryption keys be managed by the company's own hardware security module (HSM) in an on-premises data center. Which TWO steps should the company take to meet these requirements? (Choose TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to assume 'customer managed key' in AWS KMS (Option A) satisfies the requirement for keys to be managed by the company's own HSM, but KMS customer managed keys are still stored in AWS KMS, not in a customer-controlled HSM, unless a custom key store backed by CloudHSM is used.
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 CloudHSM to generate and store encryption keys
AWS CloudHSM provides dedicated, single-tenant HSM instances that the company can use to generate and store encryption keys in its own HSM, meeting the requirement that keys be managed by the company's own HSM in an on-premises data center (though CloudHSM is in AWS, it is customer-controlled). Option D is correct because creating an AWS KMS custom key store backed by AWS CloudHSM allows the company to use KMS for encryption operations while the key material is stored in the CloudHSM cluster, satisfying the need for customer-managed HSM-backed keys.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Configure Amazon EBS encryption using AWS KMS with a customer managed key
Why it's wrong here
This uses KMS, but to integrate with on-premises HSMs, a custom key store is needed.
- ✗
Enable Amazon S3 default encryption with SSE-C
Why it's wrong here
SSE-C is for S3 only and does not apply to ECS storage.
- ✓
Use AWS CloudHSM to generate and store encryption keys
Why this is correct
CloudHSM provides dedicated HSM appliances in AWS that can be part of a company's HSM infrastructure.
- ✓
Create an AWS KMS custom key store backed by AWS CloudHSM
Why this is correct
A custom key store allows KMS to use keys from a CloudHSM cluster, which can be synchronized with on-premises HSMs.
- ✗
Store encryption keys in AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
Why it's wrong here
ACM manages certificates, not encryption keys for data at rest.
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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.