SCS-C02 Management and Security Governance Practice Question
A company wants to implement least privilege access for a data analytics team that uses Amazon Athena to query data in S3. Which THREE steps should be taken?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates assume Athena requires broad S3 permissions or confuse it with Redshift Spectrum, leading them to select full S3 access or irrelevant Redshift permissions instead of focusing on the specific read and write buckets needed for least privilege.
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
✓
Grant write access to an S3 bucket for query results
Athena requires a dedicated S3 bucket to store query results, and granting write access to that specific bucket ensures the service can write output without exposing other data. This aligns with least privilege by limiting write permissions to only the necessary location.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Grant full S3 access to all buckets
Why it's wrong here
Granting full S3 access to all buckets is far too broad for Athena usage. It gives the principal the ability to read, write, and delete objects in every bucket, including unrelated data stores and the query results bucket, which violates the least privilege principle. Athena only needs permission to read from a few specific source locations and write to a single results bucket, so full S3 access is never justified.
- ✓
Grant write access to an S3 bucket for query results
Why this is correct
When Athena executes a query, it writes the query results, metadata, and any converted data to a designated S3 location, typically the workgroup's result bucket. Granting write access (for example s3:PutObject and s3:GetObject) to that bucket is a required part of the permission set. Without this, Athena fails with an access denied error after the query runs even if the data was read successfully.
- ✗
Grant access to Amazon Redshift
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Redshift is a fully managed data warehouse service with its own compute and storage, whereas Athena is a serverless query engine that runs Presto-style SQL directly against data in S3. Athena never connects to Redshift, so granting access to Redshift clusters or Redshift serverless endpoints adds unnecessary privileges without enabling any Athena functionality. Removing such permissions narrows the attack surface while preserving all legitimate Athena operations.
- ✓
Grant permissions to use Athena workgroups and queries
Why this is correct
To run a query, the principal must be allowed to call Athena APIs such as StartQueryExecution, GetQueryResults, and StopQueryExecution, and workgroups are the resource type used for these permissions. Granting permissions to use Athena workgroups and queries lets the principal submit and monitor queries within the scoped workgroup, while the workgroup's settings control queueing and the output location. This aligns with least privilege because it limits Athena usage to user-specified workgroups rather than all of Athena.
- ✓
Grant read access to the specific S3 buckets containing the data
Why this is correct
Athena reads the raw data from the specific Amazon S3 buckets or prefixes defined in the table's location. The principal needs s3:GetObject (and usually s3:ListBucket) on just those buckets to scan the objects, and granting this level of access is the minimal read permission required. This scoped read access lets Athena query only the intended dataset and prevents it from touching unrelated S3 data.
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
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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.