SCS-C02 Management and Security Governance Practice Question
A company uses AWS Organizations to manage 50 accounts. The security team has enabled AWS CloudTrail in the management account with an organization trail that delivers logs to a central S3 bucket. The bucket policy grants necessary permissions to CloudTrail. Recently, the security team noticed that logs from two member accounts stopped appearing in the bucket. Other accounts continue to deliver logs correctly. The CloudTrail status in the management account shows that the trail is logging and deliveries are succeeding. The security team checked the CloudTrail configuration in the affected member accounts and found that they do not have any trails configured. The IAM roles used for CloudTrail in the management account have sufficient permissions. What is the most likely cause of the missing logs?
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
✓
The S3 bucket policy does not grant write access to the CloudTrail service for the affected member accounts.
The most likely cause is that the S3 bucket policy does not grant write access to the CloudTrail service for the affected member accounts. When an organization trail is created, CloudTrail uses the management account's permissions to deliver logs to the S3 bucket. However, the bucket policy must explicitly allow the CloudTrail service principal from each member account to write logs. If the policy only allows the management account, member accounts' logs will be rejected. Option A is incorrect because the issue is not about KMS key permissions; if SSE-KMS is used, the key policy must also grant decrypt permissions to CloudTrail, but the question does not mention KMS. Option C is incorrect because CloudTrail does not use a service-linked role for organization trails; it uses the CloudTrail service role in the management account. Option D is incorrect because an SCP denying cloudtrail:PutLogEvents would affect all CloudTrail actions, but the logs from other accounts are still arriving, so it is unlikely.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The KMS key used for encryption does not include permissions for the member accounts.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: If encryption is used, but the question doesn't mention KMS.
- ✓
The S3 bucket policy does not grant write access to the CloudTrail service for the affected member accounts.
Why this is correct
Correct: Bucket policy must allow CloudTrail from all accounts.
- ✗
The CloudTrail service-linked role in the member accounts is missing.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: Organization trails do not require service-linked roles in member accounts.
- ✗
An SCP attached to the affected member accounts denies cloudtrail:PutLogEvents.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: CloudTrail uses the management account's permissions; SCPs on member accounts don't affect the trail.
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 |
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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.