PAS-C01 Operations and Maintenance Practice Question
A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log API calls. The security team wants to detect unauthorized attempts to modify security group rules and send real-time alerts. Which TWO AWS services should be used together to achieve this?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often over-engineer by adding Lambda or GuardDuty, not realizing that CloudWatch Events (EventBridge) can directly trigger SNS for real-time alerting without additional compute or security services.
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
✓
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Amazon CloudWatch Events (or EventBridge) can capture CloudTrail API calls related to security group modifications (e.g., AuthorizeSecurityGroupIngress, RevokeSecurityGroupEgress) and route them to an SNS topic. SNS then sends real-time alerts (e.g., email, SMS) to the security team. This combination provides event-driven, near-instantaneous notification without polling or custom code.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
Why this is correct
Can send alerts via email, SMS, etc.
- ✓
Amazon CloudWatch Events (or EventBridge)
Why this is correct
Can filter CloudTrail events and trigger a target.
- ✗
AWS Lambda
Why it's wrong here
Could be used but is not required; EventBridge can directly invoke SNS.
- ✗
AWS Config
Why it's wrong here
Config evaluates resource configurations, not real-time API calls.
- ✗
Amazon GuardDuty
Why it's wrong here
GuardDuty is for threat detection, not custom API monitoring.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PAS-C01 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 PAS-C01 exam.