SCS-C02 Security Logging and Monitoring Practice Question
A security engineer needs to monitor for unauthorized changes to security group rules in an AWS account. Which AWS service can evaluate security group rules against a desired configuration and alert on changes?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse AWS CloudTrail (which logs API calls) with AWS Config (which evaluates the resulting configuration state), leading them to choose CloudTrail because they think logging API calls is sufficient for monitoring unauthorized changes, but CloudTrail does not evaluate the configuration against a desired state or provide alerting on noncompliant rules.
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 Config
AWS Config is correct because it provides a managed rule called 'restricted-ssh' or custom rules using AWS Config managed rules or Lambda functions to evaluate security group rules against a desired configuration. When a security group rule is added, removed, or modified, AWS Config detects the configuration change, evaluates it against the defined rules, and can trigger an Amazon SNS notification to alert the security engineer. This makes AWS Config the appropriate service for continuous monitoring and alerting on unauthorized changes to security group rules.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Security Hub
Why it's wrong here
AWS Security Hub is a centralized security posture management service that aggregates findings from multiple AWS services (like GuardDuty, Inspector, and Macie) into a single dashboard. While it can display security group-related findings, it does not itself record resource state changes or evaluate security group rules against a desired baseline; it relies on other services, such as AWS Config, to supply that configuration data.
- ✓
AWS Config
Why this is correct
AWS Config is the correct choice because it continuously records configuration changes to your security groups, including additions or deletions of ingress and egress rules. By using managed or custom Config rules, you can define a desired security group configuration (for example, disallowing SSH access from 0.0.0.0/0) and AWS Config will evaluate each change against that baseline, generating compliance alerts and invoking remediation via EventBridge or Lambda when a noncompliant change occurs.
- ✗
Amazon GuardDuty
Why it's wrong here
Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that analyzes VPC Flow Logs, DNS logs, and CloudTrail management events to identify malicious activity, such as port scanning, compromised instances, or unusual API calls. It does not maintain a record of resource configurations nor evaluate security group rules against an expected state; its focus is on detecting active threats, not on auditing or alerting on unauthorized configuration drift.
- ✗
AWS CloudTrail
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail records API calls for auditing but cannot evaluate security group rules against a desired configuration or trigger alerts based on rule content; it only logs who made changes, not whether those changes violate a baseline. It is tempting because it does monitor security group modifications via `AuthorizeSecurityGroupIngress` events, and in a scenario requiring forensic investigation of past changes, CloudTrail would be the correct choice.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
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.