SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new data lake on Amazon S3 using AWS Glue for ETL. The data is partitioned by date and sensitive columns must be masked for non-privileged users. The solution must minimize storage costs and allow different masking policies per user. Which approach should the architect recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse S3 bucket policies or Glue ETL jobs with the ability to perform dynamic, per-user column masking at query time, when in fact only Lake Formation provides this capability without data duplication or batch processing.
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 Lake Formation to define column-level permissions and masking policies.
AWS Lake Formation provides native column-level security and dynamic masking policies that can be applied per user or role without duplicating data. This approach minimizes storage costs because the data remains in a single location, and masking is applied at query time based on the requesting principal's permissions, satisfying the requirement for different masking policies per user.
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 Lake Formation to define column-level permissions and masking policies.
Why this is correct
Lake Formation provides fine-grained access control without data duplication.
- ✗
Create separate S3 buckets for each masking policy and copy data accordingly.
Why it's wrong here
Storage costs would multiply.
- ✗
Use AWS Glue ETL jobs to mask data based on user role at query time.
Why it's wrong here
ETL is batch, not real-time per user.
- ✗
Store masked data in separate prefixes in the same bucket and use S3 bucket policies.
Why it's wrong here
Bucket policies are not row/column-level.
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 |
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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.