SCS-C03 Security Foundations and Governance Practice Question
A security engineer must ensure that no developer in a specific AWS Organizations member account can delete Amazon S3 buckets, even if they have AdministratorAccess. Which governance mechanism provides the most efficient and centralized way to enforce this restriction across the organizational unit?
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 Organizational Unit with a Deny statement for s3:DeleteBucket.
Service Control Policies (SCPs) function as a central guardrail within AWS Organizations, defining the maximum available permissions for accounts. They do not grant permissions but rather filter what can be granted by IAM policies. Mastering SCPs is critical for governance because they ensure that even administrative users cannot bypass organizational security mandates, providing a secondary layer of defense against unauthorized resource deletion across the entire environment.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Apply a resource-based policy to every S3 bucket that denies the s3:DeleteBucket action.
Why it's wrong here
Resource-based policies are managed at the individual resource level, making them difficult to scale and govern centrally across an entire account or organization. While effective for a single bucket, this approach creates significant administrative overhead and increases the risk of human error or omission during new resource creation.
- ✓
Attach a Service Control Policy (SCP) to the Organizational Unit with a Deny statement for s3:DeleteBucket.
Why this is correct
SCPs allow administrators to set the maximum permissions for all accounts within an Organizational Unit. By applying a Deny statement for the delete action at the OU level, the restriction is inherited by all member accounts. This ensures that no identity, including the root user, can delete buckets regardless of their IAM permissions.
- ✗
Create an IAM Permission Boundary and apply it to every IAM user and role within the member account.
Why it's wrong here
Permission boundaries set the maximum permissions for an IAM entity but must be applied individually to each user or role. This does not prevent the creation of new users without boundaries by an administrator. Furthermore, boundaries cannot restrict the root user, making them less effective than SCPs for organizational governance.
- ✗
Configure AWS Config rules to automatically remediate and recreate any deleted S3 buckets.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config is a detective and corrective tool rather than a preventive governance control. While it can detect a deletion and trigger a Lambda function to remediate the change, it does not prevent the deletion from occurring in the first place. This approach leads to potential data loss and temporary security gaps.
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.