How to Forward Amazon GuardDuty Findings to S3 and EventBridge
A company is using Amazon GuardDuty to detect threats. The security team wants to receive alerts for specific findings. Which TWO AWS services can be used to forward GuardDuty findings to a custom application for analysis? (Choose two.)
Quick Answer
The answer is Amazon S3 and Amazon EventBridge. GuardDuty can forward findings to an S3 bucket for long-term storage and analysis, either directly via its publishing feature or through EventBridge, which also serves as the central routing hub for sending findings to other services like Lambda or SQS. On the AWS Certified Security Specialty SCS-C02 exam, this tests your understanding of GuardDuty’s native integration points versus indirect routing: many candidates mistakenly choose SQS or Kinesis as direct destinations, but GuardDuty only natively publishes to S3 and EventBridge—any other service requires EventBridge as an intermediary. A common trap is assuming Lambda is a destination, but it is only a target triggered by EventBridge rules. Remember the memory tip: “GuardDuty goes to two: S3 for storage, EventBridge for routing.”
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse the service that receives the finding (EventBridge) with the service that processes or stores it (Lambda, SQS, Kinesis), forgetting that EventBridge is the required intermediary for forwarding GuardDuty findings to any custom application.
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 GuardDuty can publish findings to Amazon CloudWatch Events (now part of Amazon EventBridge) as events. These events can then be routed to a custom application via targets like AWS Lambda, SQS, or Kinesis, enabling real-time analysis and alerting. This is the primary, native integration for forwarding GuardDuty findings to downstream systems.
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 CloudWatch Events (Amazon EventBridge)
Why this is correct
GuardDuty publishes findings to EventBridge, which can then route to various targets.
- ✗
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
Why it's wrong here
GuardDuty does not directly send to Kinesis; you need EventBridge.
- ✗
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Why it's wrong here
GuardDuty does not directly send to SQS; you must use EventBridge as an intermediary.
- ✗
AWS Lambda
Why it's wrong here
Lambda is a compute service, not a destination; it can be invoked by EventBridge.
- ✓
Amazon S3
Why this is correct
You can configure GuardDuty to export findings to S3 via EventBridge or through the console.
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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About these practice questions
One of 376 original SCS-C02 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on SCS-C02
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A security engineer is configuring Amazon GuardDuty for the first time. The engineer wants to receive alerts when GuardDuty generates a finding of severity HIGH or higher. What is the simplest way to achieve this?
easy- ✓ A.Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that matches GuardDuty findings and triggers an SNS topic.
- B.Configure CloudWatch Logs to monitor GuardDuty logs and create a metric filter for high-severity findings.
- C.Set up an S3 event notification on the GuardDuty findings bucket.
- D.Configure GuardDuty to send email notifications for all findings.
Why A: Amazon EventBridge can natively capture GuardDuty findings as events and route them to an SNS topic for alerting. This is the simplest approach because it requires no custom code, no log parsing, and no additional infrastructure—just a rule matching the `GuardDuty Finding` event type and a severity filter for HIGH or higher.
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.