SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple OUs. The security team wants to enforce that no resources can be created outside of approved AWS Regions. Which policy should be used, and how should it be attached?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse SCPs with IAM policies, thinking that attaching an IAM policy to all users is sufficient, but they overlook that SCPs are the only way to enforce restrictions across all accounts in an organization, including the management account's root user and any accounts that might have full administrative access.
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 actions in unapproved Regions. Attach it to the root or OUs.
Service control policies (SCPs) are the correct mechanism to centrally restrict AWS service actions across all accounts in an AWS Organization. By attaching an SCP that denies actions in unapproved Regions to the root or OUs, the security team ensures that no principal (including the root user) can create resources outside the allowed Regions, regardless of any IAM policies attached at the account 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.
- ✗
Create a resource-based policy on each resource type that denies creation in unapproved Regions.
Why it's wrong here
Resource-based policies are scoped to individual resources and are not practical for organization-wide enforcement.
- ✓
Create a service control policy (SCP) that denies actions in unapproved Regions. Attach it to the root or OUs.
Why this is correct
SCPs provide centralized control over maximum permissions for accounts in an organization.
- ✗
Create an IAM policy that denies actions in unapproved Regions. Attach it to all IAM users and roles.
Why it's wrong here
IAM policies cannot be attached to OUs; they apply to users/roles only and may be overridden.
- ✗
Enable AWS CloudTrail to log resource creation and set up a CloudWatch alarm to notify if resources are created in unapproved Regions.
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail logs events but does not prevent resource creation.
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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.