SCS-C02 Management and Security Governance Practice Question
A security engineer needs to ensure that all IAM policies in an AWS account are evaluated for overly permissive access, such as wildcard actions or resources, before they are attached to IAM roles. The engineer wants to automate this check and receive alerts when noncompliant policies are detected. Which AWS service should the engineer use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse IAM Access Analyzer with AWS Security Hub, which aggregates findings but does not perform the policy analysis itself.
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
✓
AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer
IAM Access Analyzer is designed to analyze IAM policies and resource policies to identify overly permissive access, including wildcard actions and resources. It provides findings and can be integrated with other services for alerts, making it the correct choice for automating policy evaluation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon GuardDuty
Why it's wrong here
GuardDuty is a threat detection service that monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior. It does not analyze IAM policies for overly permissive access or provide findings on policy compliance. Using GuardDuty would not meet the requirement to evaluate policies for wildcards.
- ✓
AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer
Why this is correct
IAM Access Analyzer analyzes resource policies and IAM policies to identify overly permissive access, including wildcard actions and resources. It can generate findings and provide alerts, helping automate the detection of noncompliant policies. This directly addresses the requirement to evaluate policies before attachment.
- ✗
AWS Security Hub
Why it's wrong here
Security Hub aggregates and prioritizes security findings from various AWS services, but it does not itself analyze IAM policies for overly permissive access. It can display findings from IAM Access Analyzer if integrated, but it is not the primary service to perform the analysis.
- ✗
AWS Trusted Advisor
Why it's wrong here
Trusted Advisor provides best-practice checks, including some IAM-related checks, but it does not evaluate individual IAM policies for overly permissive access such as wildcard actions. It offers general recommendations rather than detailed policy analysis, so it cannot automate the specific check required.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This SCS-C02 question is part of Courseiva's 1,205-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 and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
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.