SCS-C02 Infrastructure Security Practice Question
A company is designing a shared services VPC architecture with multiple VPCs connected via a transit gateway. The security engineer needs to ensure that all traffic between VPCs is inspected by a centralized firewall appliance deployed in the shared services VPC. What configuration is required?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse the role of a Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) with routing, assuming that deploying a GWLB alone will automatically route traffic through the firewall, when in fact the transit gateway route tables must be explicitly configured to direct traffic to the GWLB endpoint or the firewall ENI.
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
✓
Configure transit gateway route tables to route all inter-VPC traffic through the firewall appliance.
A transit gateway can use separate route tables to control traffic flow. By configuring the transit gateway route tables to point the default route (0.0.0.0/0) or specific inter-VPC CIDR ranges to a network interface of the centralized firewall appliance in the shared services VPC, all traffic between VPCs is forced through the firewall for inspection. This design ensures that the firewall acts as a central inspection point without requiring VPC peering or complex routing.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create VPC peering connections between each VPC and the shared services VPC.
Why it's wrong here
VPC peering connections create direct, non-transitive links between VPCs; they do not provide a hub that can inspect inter-VPC traffic. Even if every VPC is peered with the shared services VPC, the traffic between two spoke VPCs would need to traverse the shared services VPC without any routing mechanism to force it through a firewall, and VPC peering does not support transitive routing through an intermediate VPC.
- ✓
Configure transit gateway route tables to route all inter-VPC traffic through the firewall appliance.
Why this is correct
A transit gateway with carefully designed route tables is the standard way to enforce centralized inspection: attach all VPCs to the transit gateway, then configure a route in each spoke VPC's propagation that sends inter-VPC destination CIDRs to the firewall appliance's elastic network interface in the shared services VPC. The firewall inspects and forwards the traffic back to the transit gateway, which delivers it to the destination VPC. This enables deterministic, high-availability routing through the security appliance.
- ✗
Use security groups to route traffic through the firewall.
Why it's wrong here
Security groups are stateful, host-level firewalls that filter traffic at the elastic network interface based on allow rules; they cannot act as routers or be used as a route table target. Routing inter-VPC traffic through a firewall appliance requires a layer-3 forwarding device or a gateway such as a transit gateway route or a GWLB endpoint. Security groups can only permit or deny traffic to and from an instance, not forward packets between VPCs.
- ✗
Deploy a Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) in the shared services VPC and register the firewall as a target.
Why it's wrong here
A Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) is used to distribute traffic to a pool of firewall appliances, providing scale and high availability, but it does not automatically intercept all inter-VPC traffic. To enforce inspection, you must route traffic to the GWLB endpoint via route table entries—for example, in the transit gateway route tables or in the VPC route tables. Without those routes, traffic between VPCs uses the normal transit gateway path and bypasses the firewall entirely; GWLB by itself is just a target, not a routing mechanism.
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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.