SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A financial services company uses AWS Organizations with all features enabled. A security account runs AWS CloudFormation StackSets with service-managed permissions to deploy guardrail resources into every account. Compliance requires that no member account administrator can disable AWS CloudTrail or delete the organization trail, even in accounts where they hold full administrative rights, and that new accounts automatically receive the guardrail. Which combination should the solutions architect recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming an IAM policy or log file validation can restrain an account administrator, when only a service control policy plus a management-account-owned organization trail removes the ability to disable logging.
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
✓
Deploy an organization trail from the management account and attach a service control policy that denies cloudtrail:StopLogging and cloudtrail:DeleteTrail to all member accounts except the management account.
An organization trail owned by the management account extends logging to all accounts and cannot be modified or deleted by member accounts. Pairing it with a service control policy that denies the stop and delete actions on CloudTrail removes those capabilities from member-account administrators, because SCPs bound the permissions available to every principal in the account. Accounts created later automatically fall under the same trail and policy.
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 trail in each member account with AWS CloudFormation StackSets and enable log file validation so tampering with delivered logs is detectable.
Why it's wrong here
Log file validation produces digest files that prove delivered log objects were not altered after delivery, but it does nothing to stop an administrator from stopping the trail or deleting it. Per-account trails also lack the management-account ownership that makes an organization trail resistant to member-account modification, and they require the StackSet to reach each account.
- ✓
Deploy an organization trail from the management account and attach a service control policy that denies cloudtrail:StopLogging and cloudtrail:DeleteTrail to all member accounts except the management account.
Why this is correct
An organization trail created in the management account applies to every account in the organization, and member accounts cannot alter or delete it. A service control policy that denies the stop and delete actions removes those permissions from every principal in member accounts, including administrators, because SCPs define the maximum available permissions. New accounts inherit both automatically, satisfying the guardrail requirement.
- ✗
Enable AWS CloudTrail Lake in the security account and configure an event data store that ingests management events from all accounts through AWS Organizations.
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail Lake is an analytics store for events; it does not create or protect a trail, and it cannot prevent an account administrator from stopping logging in that account. Events already delivered remain queryable, but the gap in capture defeats the compliance requirement. CloudTrail Lake also does not automatically configure coverage for accounts added later without additional setup.
- ✗
Deploy a CloudFormation StackSet that creates a trail and an IAM policy denying cloudtrail:StopLogging, and attach the policy to every IAM role in each account.
Why it's wrong here
IAM policies attached to roles grant or deny only for those principals and can be edited by any account administrator who holds IAM permissions. An administrator could detach the policy or create a new role without it, then stop logging. This approach also does not create an organization trail, so the management account lacks centralized control and new accounts are not automatically covered.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
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.