SCS-C03 Identity and Access Management Practice Question
A company wants to identify any S3 buckets or IAM roles in their AWS account that are accessible by external AWS accounts or public users. Which AWS service provides this functionality by analyzing resource-based policies?
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
✓
AWS IAM Access Analyzer
AWS IAM Access Analyzer helps identify resources in your organization and accounts that are shared with an external entity. This includes S3 buckets, IAM roles, and KMS keys. By analyzing resource-based policies, it provides findings that allow security engineers to verify if the access is intended, helping to prevent accidental data exposure or unauthorized cross-account access.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Trusted Advisor
Why it's wrong here
Trusted Advisor provides various checks for security, cost, and performance, including some public S3 bucket checks. However, it is not a dedicated tool for analyzing the complex logic of resource-based policies across all supported resource types to identify external sharing in the same depth as Access Analyzer.
- ✗
Amazon GuardDuty
Why it's wrong here
Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior using log data like CloudTrail and VPC Flow Logs. It identifies active threats rather than analyzing the static configuration of resource policies to find potential access paths for external entities.
- ✗
AWS Config
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config tracks configuration changes and can alert you if a resource is not compliant with a specific rule. While it can be used to check for public buckets, it does not perform the automated reasoning and logic analysis required to identify all forms of external access across different policy types.
- ✓
AWS IAM Access Analyzer
Why this is correct
IAM Access Analyzer is designed to identify resources shared with external principals. It uses mathematical proof-based reasoning to analyze resource-based policies and provides findings for S3 buckets, IAM roles, KMS keys, Lambda functions, and SQS queues that are accessible from outside your account or organization.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
About these practice questions
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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 SCS-C03 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 SCS-C03 exam.