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. The engineer wants to receive real-time notifications when a security group rule is added, modified, or removed. Which AWS service should the engineer use to capture these API calls?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse AWS Config's ability to detect configuration changes (like security group rule drift) with the real-time API call capture requirement, but AWS Config relies on CloudTrail for change notifications and has inherent latency, whereas CloudTrail directly captures the API call at the moment it occurs.
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 CloudTrail
AWS CloudTrail is the correct service because it records all API calls made to the AWS environment, including EC2 APIs such as AuthorizeSecurityGroupIngress, RevokeSecurityGroupIngress, AuthorizeSecurityGroupEgress, RevokeSecurityGroupEgress, CreateSecurityGroup, and DeleteSecurityGroup. By enabling CloudTrail trail with management events and optionally data events for EC2, the security engineer can capture these API calls in near real-time and stream them to Amazon CloudWatch Logs or Amazon EventBridge to trigger notifications for 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.
- ✗
Amazon GuardDuty
Why it's wrong here
GuardDuty is a threat-detection service that analyses CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs and DNS logs to surface findings such as compromised instances; it does not deliver real-time notifications of individual security group API calls. GuardDuty is genuinely used for identifying malicious activity and anomalous behaviour.
- ✓
AWS CloudTrail
Why this is correct
AWS CloudTrail records every API call, including AuthorizeSecurityGroupIngress, RevokeSecurityGroupIngress and ModifySecurityGroupRules, delivering events to CloudWatch Logs or EventBridge for real-time alerting. This satisfies the requirement to capture the specific management events that change security group rules, which CloudWatch metrics alone cannot identify.
- ✗
VPC Flow Logs
Why it's wrong here
VPC Flow Logs capture IP traffic metadata for network interfaces, subnets or VPCs, and record no control-plane API calls, so security group rule changes never appear. Flow Logs are genuinely used for traffic analysis and connectivity troubleshooting, not for auditing configuration changes.
- ✗
AWS Config
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config records resource configuration changes and can evaluate compliance, but it delivers configuration item changes rather than the raw API calls the engineer needs to capture. Config is genuinely used for configuration history, drift detection and compliance rules, not for real-time API call capture.
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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.