SCS-C02 Infrastructure Security Practice Question
A security engineer needs to enable VPC Flow Logs to capture traffic metadata. Which THREE components are required to create a VPC Flow Log?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often assume S3 is mandatory because it is a common storage service, but VPC Flow Logs require either CloudWatch Logs or S3 as a destination, and the question specifies the three required components, making S3 optional and thus incorrect.
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
✓
A CloudWatch Logs log group to publish the flow logs.
A CloudWatch Logs log group is required because VPC Flow Logs publish traffic metadata to CloudWatch Logs as the default destination. The flow logs are stored as log streams within the specified log group, enabling querying and monitoring via CloudWatch Logs Insights. Without a log group, there is no destination for the flow log records to be sent to.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
A CloudWatch Logs log group to publish the flow logs.
Why this is correct
When the delivery target for VPC Flow Logs is CloudWatch Logs, the log group is the container that receives and stores the published flow log records. It must exist in the same Region as the monitored VPC, and VPC Flow Logs automatically creates a log stream for each elastic network interface. Without this log group (or permission to create it), you cannot complete CloudWatch Logs delivery.
- ✓
A VPC, subnet, or network interface to monitor.
Why this is correct
A VPC Flow Log is always scoped to a specific resource: a VPC, a subnet, or an elastic network interface. Choosing VPC or subnet captures traffic for all ENIs in that scope, while an ENI-level flow log captures only that interface. This resource selection is mandatory because it defines which network traffic is collected; flow logs cannot be enabled globally without attaching to one of these resources.
- ✗
An S3 bucket to store the flow logs.
Why it's wrong here
Amazon S3 is a supported alternative destination for VPC Flow Logs, but it is not required when you publish flow logs to CloudWatch Logs. If you choose CloudWatch Logs as the destination, no S3 bucket is involved; S3 is only one of the two possible delivery options selected at flow-log creation. Thus, requiring an S3 bucket is incorrect unless the chosen destination is S3.
- ✗
An Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream.
Why it's wrong here
VPC Flow Logs does not natively support Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose as a destination. The service can deliver logs directly only to CloudWatch Logs or to an S3 bucket; to get flow log data into Firehose you would first need to publish to CloudWatch Logs and then build a subscription filter, which is an extra downstream step, not part of enabling the flow log itself.
- ✓
An IAM role that grants permissions to publish logs.
Why this is correct
Publishing VPC Flow Logs to CloudWatch Logs requires an IAM role with a trust policy that allows the vpc-flow-logs service to assume it. The role must include permissions for CreateLogGroup, CreateLogStream, and PutLogEvents so the service can write records to the chosen log group. Passing this role is mandatory when creating a flow log with a CloudWatch Logs destination, which is why it is a required component.
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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.