SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company uses AWS Organizations with a multi-account strategy. The security team wants to restrict the use of specific instance types across all accounts. What is the MOST effective way to enforce this policy?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse SCPs with IAM policies or detective controls; candidates often pick Option B (AWS Config) because it seems automated, but SCPs are the only preventive, centrally managed mechanism that blocks the action before it occurs.
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
✓
Create a Service Control Policy (SCP) that denies ec2:RunInstances if the instance type is not allowed, and attach it to the root organizational unit.
A Service Control Policy (SCP) attached to the root organizational unit (OU) can centrally deny the ec2:RunInstances action for non-approved instance types across all member accounts without requiring per-account configuration. SCPs act as a permission guardrail that applies to all IAM users, roles, and root users in the affected accounts, making them the most effective mechanism for enforcing organization-wide restrictions on instance types.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create an IAM policy in each account that denies launching non-approved instance types.
Why it's wrong here
IAM policies are not centralized.
- ✗
Use AWS Config rules to detect non-compliant instances and trigger an AWS Lambda function to terminate them.
Why it's wrong here
Config is detective, not preventive.
- ✗
Create a Service Control Policy (SCP) that denies ec2:RunInstances for all users and then attach it to the root OU.
Why it's wrong here
SCP applies to all principals in the account, not just users.
- ✓
Create a Service Control Policy (SCP) that denies ec2:RunInstances if the instance type is not allowed, and attach it to the root organizational unit.
Why this is correct
SCPs apply to all accounts in the OU.
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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.