SCS-C02 Threat Detection and Incident Response Practice Question
A company's security policy requires that all S3 bucket access logs be delivered to a central S3 bucket in the security account. A security engineer notices that some buckets are not delivering logs. The engineer needs to identify which buckets are not logging and ensure compliance. Which service should the engineer use to continuously monitor and report on S3 bucket logging?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse AWS CloudTrail (which logs API calls) with AWS Config (which evaluates resource configurations), leading candidates to mistakenly choose CloudTrail for configuration compliance checks instead of Config.
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
✓
AWS Config
AWS Config is the correct service because it provides continuous monitoring and evaluation of AWS resource configurations against desired policies. By using an AWS Config managed rule like `s3-bucket-logging-enabled`, the security engineer can automatically detect S3 buckets that do not have logging enabled and receive compliance notifications, ensuring ongoing adherence to the security policy.
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 Macie
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Macie is a data security and privacy service that uses machine learning and pattern matching to discover, classify, and protect sensitive data such as PII, PHI, or financial information stored in S3 objects. It does not inspect the bucket's resource configuration, and while it can report some security findings like public access, it does not evaluate whether server access logging is enabled. Therefore, while Macie addresses data exfiltration risks, it cannot satisfy a policy that requires visibility into logging configuration.
- ✗
Amazon S3 Inventory
Why it's wrong here
Amazon S3 Inventory generates periodic (daily or weekly) formatted reports that list the metadata of objects in a bucket—such as object size, storage class, last modified date, and encryption state. These reports describe the objects themselves, not the bucket's settings, so they contain no attribute indicating whether server access logging has been enabled. Since the inventory source bucket could be logged even if no objects are present, inventory data is irrelevant to verifying logging compliance.
- ✓
AWS Config
Why this is correct
AWS Config is the correct answer because its managed rule "s3-bucket-logging-enabled" checks the configuration state of each S3 bucket and determines whether server access logging is pointed at a valid destination bucket. AWS Config records bucket resource configurations as configuration items, evaluates them against desired policies, and provides continuous compliance results, which matches the security requirement precisely. It can optionally trigger automatic remediation via Systems Manager Automation if a bucket is found noncompliant.
- ✗
AWS CloudTrail
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudTrail captures a record of API activity in the account, including S3 management events like PutBucketLogging and data events like GetObject, but it never stores a snapshot of resource configuration. CloudTrail logs are event-based, so using them to prove that logging is currently enabled would require searching through historical API calls and dereferencing the latest PutBucketLogging call—a brittle and indirect way to verify state. By contrast, the security policy asks about the configuration setting itself, not a trail of actions that altered it.
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 |
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every SCS-C02 question from scratch — 1,205 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.