SCS-C02 Threat Detection and Incident Response Practice Question
A company has enabled AWS CloudTrail and wants to receive real-time notifications when specific API calls, such as DeleteTrail, are made. Which service should be used to trigger an alert based on CloudTrail log events?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse S3 event notifications (which work on S3 objects) with CloudTrail log delivery to S3, mistakenly thinking S3 notifications can parse CloudTrail logs for specific API calls, but S3 notifications only react to bucket-level object events, not the content of log files.
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 CloudWatch Events / Amazon EventBridge
Amazon CloudWatch Events (now part of Amazon EventBridge) is the correct service to trigger real-time alerts based on CloudTrail log events. You can create a rule that matches specific API calls, such as DeleteTrail, and route the event to a target like an SNS topic or Lambda function for immediate notification. CloudTrail delivers log events to CloudWatch Logs, and EventBridge can directly consume those events for pattern matching and alerting.
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 CloudTrail console notifications
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail does not provide real-time notifications; it delivers logs to S3.
- ✓
Amazon CloudWatch Events / Amazon EventBridge
Why this is correct
EventBridge can match CloudTrail events and trigger actions like SNS notifications.
- ✗
Amazon VPC Flow Logs
Why it's wrong here
VPC Flow Logs capture IP traffic, not API calls.
- ✗
Amazon S3 event notifications
Why it's wrong here
S3 events can notify on object creation, but not on specific API calls.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SCS-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 SCS-C02 exam.