SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company uses AWS Organizations with a hierarchical OU structure. The security OU has an SCP that denies all actions except those explicitly allowed. The development OU has an SCP that allows all actions. A developer account in the development OU tries to launch an EC2 instance but receives an access denied error. The IAM user in the developer account has full administrator permissions. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume the development OU's 'allow all' SCP overrides the root-level SCP, but in AWS Organizations, an explicit deny at any level (especially the root) takes precedence over any allow, and SCPs are not additive—they are evaluated as a union of all applicable SCPs with explicit denies taking priority.
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
✓
An SCP at the root level denies EC2 actions.
The most likely cause is an SCP at the root level that denies EC2 actions. In AWS Organizations, SCPs are evaluated hierarchically: an explicit deny at the root level overrides any allow from a lower-level OU or account-level policy. Even though the development OU has an SCP that allows all actions, the root-level SCP (which denies all actions except those explicitly allowed) will block EC2 actions unless EC2 is explicitly allowed in that root SCP. The IAM user's full administrator permissions are irrelevant because SCPs act as a permission boundary that cannot be bypassed by account-level IAM policies.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
An SCP at the root level denies EC2 actions.
Why this is correct
A restrictive SCP at the root would override the permissive development OU SCP.
- ✗
The SCP at the development OU level denies EC2 actions.
Why it's wrong here
The development OU SCP allows all actions.
- ✗
The IAM user does not have MFA enabled, and an SCP requires MFA.
Why it's wrong here
There is no indication of an MFA requirement.
- ✗
An SCP at the root level requires encryption on EC2 instances, which is not satisfied.
Why it's wrong here
SCPs do not enforce encryption; they only control permissions.
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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.