This SCS-C02 practice question tests your understanding of security logging and monitoring. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A security engineer needs to capture all network traffic between EC2 instances in a VPC for forensic analysis. Which TWO services should be used together? (Choose TWO.)
Amazon VPC Flow Logs
Captures network traffic metadata.
AWS CloudTrail
Why wrong: Logs API calls, not network traffic.
AWS Config
Why wrong: Records configuration changes.
Amazon Athena
Can query VPC Flow Logs stored in S3.
Amazon GuardDuty
Why wrong: Detects threats, does not capture traffic.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Amazon VPC Flow Logs
Amazon VPC Flow Logs capture IP traffic information for network interfaces in a VPC, including metadata such as source/destination IPs, ports, protocols, and packet accept/reject decisions. To perform forensic analysis on this raw flow log data, you can use Amazon Athena to query the logs directly from S3 using standard SQL, enabling efficient filtering and pattern detection across large volumes of network traffic.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Amazon VPC Flow Logs
Why this is correct
Captures network traffic metadata.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
AWS CloudTrail
Why it's wrong here
Logs API calls, not network traffic.
AWS Config
Why it's wrong here
Records configuration changes.
Amazon Athena
Why this is correct
Can query VPC Flow Logs stored in S3.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Amazon GuardDuty
Why it's wrong here
Detects threats, does not capture traffic.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates often confuse VPC Flow Logs (network metadata) with AWS CloudTrail (API activity) or GuardDuty (threat detection), failing to recognize that forensic analysis of raw traffic requires both a capture mechanism and a query engine like Athena.
Detailed technical explanation
VPC Flow Logs capture metadata at the network interface level, including fields like srcaddr, dstaddr, pkt-srcaddr, pkt-dstaddr, protocol (using IANA protocol numbers), and tcp-flags (e.g., SYN, FIN, RST). Athena uses a SerDe (e.g., OpenCSVSerDe or RegexSerDe) to parse the flow log files stored in S3, allowing queries that filter by specific IP ranges, ports, or time windows—critical for incident response scenarios where you need to isolate a compromised instance's communication pattern.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
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FAQ
Security Logging and Monitoring — This question tests Security Logging and Monitoring — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Amazon VPC Flow Logs — Amazon VPC Flow Logs capture IP traffic information for network interfaces in a VPC, including metadata such as source/destination IPs, ports, protocols, and packet accept/reject decisions. To perform forensic analysis on this raw flow log data, you can use Amazon Athena to query the logs directly from S3 using standard SQL, enabling efficient filtering and pattern detection across large volumes of network traffic.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
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.
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