SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new data lake solution on AWS using Amazon S3 as the storage layer. The data lake will be used by multiple teams for analytics and machine learning. The company needs to enforce fine-grained access control at the object level, enable auditing of data access, and ensure that sensitive data is masked for unauthorized users. Which combination of AWS services should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers assume IAM policies or S3 bucket policies alone can achieve fine-grained access control, but they lack the column/row-level granularity and dynamic data masking that Lake Formation and S3 Object Lambda provide.
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 for fine-grained access control and auditing, and Amazon S3 Object Lambda to mask data on the fly.
AWS Lake Formation provides fine-grained access control at the column, row, and cell level for data in S3, and it integrates with AWS CloudTrail for auditing data access. Amazon S3 Object Lambda can transform data on the fly, such as masking sensitive fields, before returning it to the requester, meeting the requirement to mask data for unauthorized users.
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 S3 bucket policies and S3 access logs for auditing.
Why it's wrong here
Bucket policies are not fine-grained enough for object-level control and do not mask data.
- ✗
Use Amazon Macie to discover sensitive data and apply S3 bucket policies to restrict access.
Why it's wrong here
Macie discovers sensitive data but does not mask it; it's for classification.
- ✗
Use IAM policies with condition keys and enable AWS CloudTrail for auditing.
Why it's wrong here
IAM policies control access but do not provide data masking at the object level.
- ✓
Use AWS Lake Formation for fine-grained access control and auditing, and Amazon S3 Object Lambda to mask data on the fly.
Why this is correct
Lake Formation provides row/column-level security and auditing; S3 Object Lambda can transform data for masking.
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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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.