SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A company stores sensitive data in an S3 bucket encrypted with SSE-KMS. They need to audit all access requests to the bucket. Which AWS service should they use?
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
✓
AWS CloudTrail
AWS CloudTrail logs all API calls made to S3, including requests to decrypt KMS keys. This enables auditing of all access requests to the bucket. AWS Config (C) records resource configuration changes, not access requests. VPC Flow Logs (A) capture network traffic, not API calls. CloudWatch Logs (B) can store and monitor logs but does not generate logs from S3 access by itself.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
VPC Flow Logs
Why it's wrong here
VPC Flow Logs capture metadata about IP traffic reaching elastic network interfaces, not the data-plane API calls made to S3 objects. They cannot log which IAM principal performed a GetObject request or whether the request was decrypted with a KMS key, so they fail to meet the audit requirement for object-level access. This option is tempting because Flow Logs are a standard tool for network-traffic auditing, and they would be the correct choice if the company needed to monitor allowed or denied connections to an EC2 instance’s network interface rather than S3 API operations.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch Logs
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch Logs stores application and resource logs, not S3 data-event audit trails; S3 server access logging or CloudTrail data events record bucket access requests. It is tempting because CloudWatch is the general observability service, and would be correct for monitoring metrics, alarms or application log output rather than object-level access auditing.
- ✗
AWS Config
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config records resource configuration changes and evaluates compliance, not API access requests, so it cannot audit who accessed the bucket. It is tempting because Config does track S3 bucket policy and encryption settings, and would be correct for detecting configuration drift or non-compliant bucket settings.
- ✓
AWS CloudTrail
Why this is correct
CloudTrail records S3 data events, capturing every object-level access request including the caller identity, time, and API action. Enabling data event logging on the bucket provides the complete audit trail of access requests that SSE-KMS encryption alone cannot supply.
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.