SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity

A company uses AWS Control Tower to manage a multi-account environment. The security team needs to ensure that all accounts have AWS CloudTrail enabled and that logs are delivered to a central S3 bucket. What is the BEST way to achieve this?

⚠ Common exam trap

Test-takers frequently assume SCPs can enforce service enablement (like enabling CloudTrail), but SCPs only control permissions—they cannot enable services or resources; they can only prevent disabling of existing configurations.

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 the AWS CloudTrail setup provided by Control Tower, which automatically enables a trail for all accounts in the organization.

AWS Control Tower provides an integrated CloudTrail setup that automatically creates and manages a central trail for all accounts in the organization. This trail is deployed using AWS CloudFormation StackSets and delivers logs to a centralized S3 bucket, ensuring compliance without manual intervention or custom automation. This is the best approach because it is native, fully managed, and aligns with Control Tower's governance model.

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 an AWS Lambda function that runs periodically to enable CloudTrail in accounts where it is disabled.
Why it's wrong here
A periodic Lambda enables trails reactively and leaves gaps between runs, and it does not create the organisation trail delivering logs to the central S3 bucket. It is tempting because Lambda automation suits one-off remediation of drifted resources outside Control Tower's governed landing zone.
✗
Create an AWS Config rule in each account to enable CloudTrail if it is disabled.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config rules detect and report non-compliance; they do not enable CloudTrail or configure its delivery to a central S3 bucket. It is tempting because Config is the right service for continuously auditing resource configuration compliance across accounts, just not for remediating or provisioning trails.
✗
Use an SCP to require CloudTrail to be enabled in each account.
Why it's wrong here
An SCP only denies API actions; it cannot enable CloudTrail or create the organisation trail that delivers logs to a central S3 bucket. It is tempting because SCPs are the correct guardrail for preventing accounts from disabling CloudTrail once an organisation trail already exists.
✓
Use the AWS CloudTrail setup provided by Control Tower, which automatically enables a trail for all accounts in the organization.
Why this is correct
Control Tower's built-in CloudTrail configuration creates an organisation-wide trail delivering logs to the central S3 bucket it provisions, covering every account including future ones. This satisfies the requirement for CloudTrail across all accounts with centralised log delivery without custom automation.

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

SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity

Why each option matters

Option-by-option breakdown

AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison

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