SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company uses AWS Organizations and has deployed a multi-account strategy. The security team wants to enforce that all S3 buckets have versioning enabled. They create an SCP that denies the PutBucketVersioning action if versioning is not enabled. However, they find that the SCP is not preventing users in member accounts from disabling versioning on existing buckets. What is the most likely reason?
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
✓
SCPs cannot evaluate the current state of a resource; they can only deny actions based on request parameters.
The most likely reason is option C: SCPs cannot evaluate the current state of a resource; they can only deny actions based on request parameters. SCPs do not have visibility into the current configuration of resources like S3 bucket versioning. Therefore, an SCP that attempts to deny PutBucketVersioning if versioning is not enabled cannot work because it cannot check the bucket's current versioning status. This allows users to disable versioning. Option A is incorrect because SCPs are hierarchical and cannot be overridden by another SCP unless there is an explicit allow, but the core issue is the condition evaluation. Option B is incorrect because SCPs use explicit deny, not a default deny. Option D is incorrect because applying the SCP to the root OU would not resolve the fundamental limitation that SCPs cannot check resource state.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The SCP is overridden by a service control policy that allows the action.
Why it's wrong here
No SCP can allow an action another SCP denies; permissions are the intersection, and an allow statement never overrides a deny. The actual failure is that the condition cannot inspect existing bucket versioning state. Layered allow policies matter when granting permissions across accounts, not when enforcing a deny-based guardrail.
- ✗
The SCP does not have an explicit deny; it uses a default deny.
Why it's wrong here
SCPs always deny by default; only explicit Deny statements restrict actions, so the absence of an explicit deny is normal and not the fault. The real issue is that the deny condition cannot evaluate the bucket's current versioning state. Default deny is expected behaviour in every SCP, not a misconfiguration.
- ✓
SCPs cannot evaluate the current state of a resource; they can only deny actions based on request parameters.
Why this is correct
SCPs are evaluated statically against the request's action and parameters, so a condition cannot read whether versioning is currently enabled on the bucket. The deny therefore never matches, letting users disable versioning on existing buckets.
- ✗
The SCP is not applied to the root organizational unit.
Why it's wrong here
SCPs attached at the root OU already apply to every member account beneath it, so root attachment is not required and its absence is not the cause. The genuine problem is that the deny condition cannot read the bucket's current versioning configuration. Root-level attachment is used to enforce organisation-wide guardrails broadly.
Visual reference
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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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.