SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company is implementing a data lake on Amazon S3. The data lake must be accessible from multiple accounts within the same AWS Organization. Objects must be encrypted at rest, and the company wants to use a single AWS KMS key for simplicity. Which solution meets these requirements?
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 a customer managed AWS KMS key with a key policy that allows access from all accounts in the organization.
A multi-region key is not needed, and cross-account access requires key policy. Option A is wrong because SSE-S3 does not allow cross-account access control. Option B is wrong because SSE-C requires managing keys externally. Option D is wrong because S3 bucket policies cannot grant access to KMS 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.
- ✗
Use SSE-S3 encryption. Grant cross-account access via bucket policy.
Why it's wrong here
SSE-S3 does not support cross-account access to objects encrypted with it; the caller needs KMS permissions.
- ✗
Use SSE-C encryption. Provide the same customer key to all accounts.
Why it's wrong here
Requires key distribution and management overhead.
- ✓
Use a customer managed AWS KMS key with a key policy that allows access from all accounts in the organization.
Why this is correct
Allows centralized key management and cross-account access via key policy.
- ✗
Use SSE-KMS with a key per account and use S3 bucket policy to allow cross-account access.
Why it's wrong here
Multiple keys add complexity; bucket policy does not grant KMS decrypt permissions.
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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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.