SCS-C02 Identity and Access Management Practice Question
This SCS-C02 practice question tests your understanding of identity and access management. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company needs to grant cross-account access to an S3 bucket in Account A to users in Account B. What is the recommended approach?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Add a bucket policy in Account A that grants access to the IAM user ARNs from Account B.
Option B is correct because a bucket policy in Account A can explicitly grant cross-account access to IAM user ARNs from Account B. This is the recommended approach for granting access to an S3 bucket across AWS accounts, as it avoids managing additional IAM users or roles and leverages the resource-based policy directly on the bucket. The bucket policy must specify the `Principal` element with the AWS account ID of Account B and the `Action` and `Resource` for the S3 operations, allowing Account B's IAM users to access the bucket after they have appropriate permissions in their own account.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✗
Attach an IAM role to Account B's users.
Why it's wrong here
Roles are assumed, not attached to users in a different account.
✓
Add a bucket policy in Account A that grants access to the IAM user ARNs from Account B.
Why this is correct
Bucket policy can grant cross-account access to specific IAM principals.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Make the bucket public.
Why it's wrong here
Public bucket would allow anyone, not just Account B users.
✗
Create an IAM user in Account A and share the credentials with Account B users.
Why it's wrong here
Sharing credentials violates security best practices.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse resource-based policies (bucket policies) with identity-based policies (IAM policies) and incorrectly think that a bucket policy cannot grant access to users in another account, or they mistakenly believe that an IAM role must be created in the target account for cross-account access.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Under the hood, cross-account S3 access via bucket policy uses AWS Signature Version 4 signing and IAM policy evaluation. The bucket policy acts as a resource-based policy that, when combined with the IAM user's identity-based policy in Account B, allows the user to access the bucket. A subtle behavior is that the bucket policy must explicitly list the IAM user ARN (e.g., `arn:aws:iam::AccountB:user/username`) or use a wildcard for the entire account (e.g., `arn:aws:iam::AccountB:root`), but using the root ARN grants access to all IAM users in Account B, which may be too permissive. In real-world scenarios, this approach is preferred for simple cross-account access because it avoids the complexity of setting up cross-account roles and trust policies.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Identity and Access Management — This question tests Identity and Access Management — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Add a bucket policy in Account A that grants access to the IAM user ARNs from Account B. — Option B is correct because a bucket policy in Account A can explicitly grant cross-account access to IAM user ARNs from Account B. This is the recommended approach for granting access to an S3 bucket across AWS accounts, as it avoids managing additional IAM users or roles and leverages the resource-based policy directly on the bucket. The bucket policy must specify the `Principal` element with the AWS account ID of Account B and the `Action` and `Resource` for the S3 operations, allowing Account B's IAM users to access the bucket after they have appropriate permissions in their own account.
What should I do if I get this SCS-C02 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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