SCS-C02 Management and Security Governance Practice Question
A global e-commerce company operates in three AWS Regions: us-east-1, eu-west-1, and ap-southeast-1. The company uses AWS Organizations with 50 member accounts grouped by business unit. The security team recently discovered that several S3 buckets containing customer data were accidentally made public due to misconfigured bucket policies. The team wants to implement a preventive control that blocks any S3 bucket from becoming public across all accounts, while still allowing authorized cross-account access. The solution must be centrally managed and not require changes to existing IAM policies. Additionally, the team needs to be notified immediately when a public bucket is attempted. Which solution meets all requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse detective controls (like Macie or Config rules that remediate) with preventive controls (like SCPs that block the action), and they may overlook that SCPs can deny specific API actions with conditions to precisely target public bucket creation without affecting authorized cross-account access.
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
✓
Create an SCP that denies s3:PutBucketPolicy and s3:PutBucketAcl when the condition includes making the bucket public, and use CloudTrail and CloudWatch Events to send notifications on denied API calls.
It uses an SCP to centrally deny the s3:PutBucketPolicy and s3:PutBucketAcl actions when the request would make a bucket public, which is a preventive control that blocks the operation before it happens. The requirement for immediate notification is met by using CloudTrail to log the denied API calls and CloudWatch Events to trigger alerts, all without modifying existing IAM policies or requiring per-account changes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use Amazon Macie to discover public buckets and alert the security team.
Why it's wrong here
Macie is for sensitive data discovery, not preventive control.
- ✗
Create an SCP that denies s3:PutBucketPolicy only for policies that specify 'Principal': '*' or 'Principal': {'AWS': '*'}
Why it's wrong here
This does not cover ACL-based public access.
- ✓
Create an SCP that denies s3:PutBucketPolicy and s3:PutBucketAcl when the condition includes making the bucket public, and use CloudTrail and CloudWatch Events to send notifications on denied API calls.
Why this is correct
SCPs are preventive and centrally managed; CloudTrail logs denied events, and CloudWatch Events can trigger SNS for notifications.
- ✗
Deploy an AWS Config rule in each account that triggers a Lambda function to make non-compliant buckets private.
Why it's wrong here
This is reactive, not preventive, and requires per-account setup.
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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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.