SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A company uses AWS Organizations with several OUs for different environments (dev, test, prod). They want to restrict the use of specific EC2 instance types in the prod OU only. Which approach should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse SCPs with IAM policies, thinking IAM policies can centrally restrict all accounts in an OU, when in fact SCPs are the only AWS Organizations feature that applies a guardrail across all accounts without requiring per-account configuration.
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
✓
Attach a service control policy (SCP) to the prod OU that denies ec2:RunInstances for non-approved instance types.
Service control policies (SCPs) are the correct mechanism to centrally restrict permissions across all accounts within an AWS Organizations organizational unit (OU). By attaching an SCP to the prod OU that denies ec2:RunInstances for non-approved instance types, you enforce a guardrail that applies to every principal (including root users) in all accounts under that OU, regardless of IAM policies. This ensures that even if a user or role has an IAM policy allowing all EC2 instances, the SCP will block the non-approved 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 a separate AWS account for prod and use an IAM policy on the account.
Why it's wrong here
A separate account does not restrict instance types by itself, and an IAM policy on the account is identity-based rather than an organisation-level guardrail, so it cannot enforce the restriction across the prod OU. It is tempting because account isolation is a common governance pattern, but SCPs attached to the OU are what limit EC2 instance families organisation-wide.
- ✓
Attach a service control policy (SCP) to the prod OU that denies ec2:RunInstances for non-approved instance types.
Why this is correct
An SCP attached to the prod OU sets the maximum permissions for every account beneath it, denying ec2:RunInstances unless the instance type is approved. This satisfies the OU-scoped constraint, restricting instance types in production only while leaving dev and test unaffected.
- ✗
Attach an IAM policy to all users in the prod accounts that denies non-approved instance types.
Why it's wrong here
IAM policies attached to users are identity-based and can be removed or bypassed by users with permission to change their own policies; they also cannot enforce instance-type restrictions at the account boundary. It is tempting because IAM policies are the usual access-control tool, but SCPs applied to the prod OU are the mechanism that restricts actions across all accounts in that OU.
- ✗
Use AWS Config to detect non-approved instance types and terminate them.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config evaluates resources after they exist, so it detects and can remediate non-approved instances only post-launch, not prevent them. It is tempting because Config rules with auto-remediation genuinely enforce compliance, but the requirement is prevention, which an SCP on the prod OU delivers.
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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.