SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company uses AWS Organizations with a multi-account strategy. The central IT team needs to enforce that all Amazon S3 buckets across the organization are encrypted with AWS KMS using a specific customer managed key. The security policy must be applied without modifying individual bucket policies. Which approach meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to choose reactive solutions like AWS Config or default encryption, overlooking that SCPs can proactively deny API actions based on request parameters, which is the only way to enforce encryption without touching individual bucket policies.
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 s3:PutBucketPolicy and s3:PutObject actions unless the request includes the specified KMS key.
A service control policy (SCP) can centrally enforce encryption requirements across all accounts in an AWS Organization without modifying individual bucket policies. The SCP denies s3:PutBucketPolicy and s3:PutObject actions unless the request includes the specified KMS key, ensuring compliance at the organization level.
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 the S3 default encryption feature to automatically encrypt new objects with the specified KMS key.
Why it's wrong here
Default encryption does not enforce a specific KMS key across all buckets.
- ✓
Create a service control policy (SCP) that denies s3:PutBucketPolicy and s3:PutObject actions unless the request includes the specified KMS key.
Why this is correct
SCPs can centrally enforce encryption requirements across all accounts.
- ✗
Use AWS Config rules to detect unencrypted buckets and trigger a Lambda function to remediate.
Why it's wrong here
This is detective, not preventive.
- ✗
Create an S3 bucket policy in each account that denies PutObject if the object is not encrypted with the specified KMS key.
Why it's wrong here
This requires manual modification of each bucket policy.
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
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This SAP-C02 question is part of Courseiva's 1,660-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.