SCS-C02 Security Logging and Monitoring Practice Question
A company wants to monitor failed SSH login attempts to its EC2 instances. Which AWS service should be used to collect and analyze these logs?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse VPC Flow Logs (network-level) with OS-level logs, or assume CloudTrail captures all activity including guest OS events, when in fact CloudTrail only records AWS API calls, not in-OS authentication 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
✓
Amazon CloudWatch Logs with the unified CloudWatch agent
Amazon CloudWatch Logs with the unified CloudWatch agent is the correct choice because the agent can be configured to collect and forward system log files, such as /var/log/secure (Amazon Linux) or /var/log/auth.log (Ubuntu), which record SSH authentication attempts including failures. This allows centralized monitoring and analysis of failed SSH logins via CloudWatch Logs Insights or metric filters.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
VPC Flow Logs
Why it's wrong here
VPC Flow Logs capture network traffic metadata, not OS-level authentication logs.
- ✓
Amazon CloudWatch Logs with the unified CloudWatch agent
Why this is correct
The CloudWatch agent can collect OS logs and deliver them to CloudWatch Logs for analysis.
- ✗
AWS CloudTrail
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail records API calls, not OS-level commands.
- ✗
AWS Config
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config records resource configuration changes, not logs.
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This SCS-C02 question is part of Courseiva's 376-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam 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.