SCS-C02 Security Logging and Monitoring Practice Question
A company uses Amazon GuardDuty for threat detection. The security team wants to automatically isolate an EC2 instance that is communicating with a known malicious IP address. Which combination of services should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse CloudWatch Alarms with EventBridge, not realizing that GuardDuty findings are event-driven and require a rule-based event bus (EventBridge) rather than a metric-based alarm (CloudWatch Alarm) to trigger remediation.
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
✓
GuardDuty -> EventBridge -> Lambda -> modify security group
Amazon GuardDuty generates findings that can be sent to Amazon EventBridge as events. EventBridge can then trigger an AWS Lambda function that modifies the security group associated with the EC2 instance to deny traffic to/from the malicious IP address. This architecture provides a serverless, event-driven response mechanism without polling or additional services.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
GuardDuty -> AWS Config -> Lambda -> modify security group
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config is not designed to react to GuardDuty findings.
- ✗
GuardDuty -> CloudWatch Alarm -> Lambda -> modify security group
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch Alarm cannot directly consume GuardDuty findings.
- ✓
GuardDuty -> EventBridge -> Lambda -> modify security group
Why this is correct
EventBridge can receive GuardDuty findings and trigger Lambda.
- ✗
GuardDuty -> AWS Shield -> modify security group
Why it's wrong here
Shield is for DDoS protection, not instance isolation.
- ✗
GuardDuty -> AWS Systems Manager -> modify security group
Why it's wrong here
Systems Manager is not event-driven for GuardDuty.
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
Courseiva writes every SCS-C02 question from scratch — 376 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.