SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A multinational corporation uses AWS Organizations to manage multiple accounts across different geographic regions. The company needs to ensure that all data residing in AWS accounts for a specific country remains within that country's boundaries. Which combination of AWS services and features should the company use to enforce this data residency requirement?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse network-level controls (like PrivateLink or VPC endpoints) with governance-level controls (like SCPs), mistakenly believing that restricting network traffic is sufficient to enforce data residency, when in fact only SCPs can prevent resource creation in disallowed regions at the API level.
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
✓
Use service control policies (SCPs) to deny actions in non-approved regions and AWS Config rules to audit compliance.
Service control policies (SCPs) in AWS Organizations allow you to centrally control the maximum available permissions for all accounts in the organization. By creating an SCP that explicitly denies all actions in non-approved regions, you can enforce that no resources can be created or modified outside the allowed region. AWS Config rules then provide ongoing compliance auditing by detecting and reporting any resources that violate the data residency policy, ensuring continuous enforcement and visibility.
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 AWS PrivateLink and VPC endpoints to keep traffic within the country's region.
Why it's wrong here
PrivateLink keeps traffic on the AWS network between endpoints, but it does not prevent resources or data being created in other regions. It is tempting because it sounds like a boundary control, and it would be correct for privately accessing a service without internet exposure, but residency needs service control policies restricting regions, not private connectivity.
- ✓
Use service control policies (SCPs) to deny actions in non-approved regions and AWS Config rules to audit compliance.
Why this is correct
SCPs deny API actions in non-approved regions, preventing data from being created or stored outside the country's boundary. AWS Config rules continuously audit resource placement for compliance. This combination enforces residency preventively and detectively, satisfying the geographic restriction requirement.
- ✗
Use resource-based policies on all AWS resources to deny access from other regions.
Why it's wrong here
Resource-based policies control who may access a resource, not where the resource or its data physically resides. They are tempting because deny statements feel like strong guardrails, and they would be correct for restricting cross-account access, but residency requires region-level restrictions via SCPs and Region-locked resource creation.
- ✗
Use AWS WAF and AWS Shield to protect data and enforce geographic restrictions.
Why it's wrong here
AWS WAF and Shield filter HTTP traffic and mitigate DDoS attacks; neither constrains where data is stored or processed. They are tempting because both are security services that can apply geographic conditions, and WAF geo-matching would be correct for blocking requests by country, but data residency requires SCPs and region-locked services, not traffic filtering.
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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.