SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new serverless application using AWS Lambda. The application needs to access an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database. The database credentials must be rotated automatically every 30 days. Which THREE steps should the company take to securely manage the credentials? (Choose three.)
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse IAM roles for database access (which is only supported for Amazon RDS with IAM database authentication, not for standard PostgreSQL credentials) with the need to retrieve secrets via IAM permissions, leading them to select Option C instead of Option E.
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
✓
Store the database credentials in AWS Secrets Manager.
AWS Secrets Manager is designed to securely store, manage, and automatically rotate database credentials, including for Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. By storing credentials in Secrets Manager, the company avoids hardcoding secrets in code or configuration files, ensuring a centralized and auditable secrets management solution.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Store the database credentials in AWS Secrets Manager.
Why this is correct
Secrets Manager is designed for storing secrets.
- ✓
Configure automatic rotation for the secret in AWS Secrets Manager.
Why this is correct
Automates credential rotation.
- ✗
Grant the Lambda function's IAM role permission to access the RDS database directly.
Why it's wrong here
Not needed for credential management.
- ✗
Write custom rotation logic in the Lambda function to change the database password.
Why it's wrong here
Rotation is handled by Secrets Manager, not by Lambda.
- ✓
Grant the Lambda function's IAM role permission to retrieve the secret from Secrets Manager.
Why this is correct
Necessary for Lambda to access the credentials.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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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.