SCS-C02 Identity and Access Management Practice Question
An administrator wants to audit all IAM actions in the account. Which AWS service should be used?
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 records API activity, including all IAM actions. AWS Config tracks resource configuration changes, not API actions. Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service. Amazon CloudWatch monitors metrics and logs, but does not record API calls.
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 Config
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config records resource configuration changes and evaluates them against rules, but it does not capture a real-time, sequential audit trail of every IAM action performed. The requirement is for a complete log of all IAM API calls, which AWS CloudTrail delivers by recording each request as an event. Config is tempting because it can track IAM policy and role changes over time, making it the correct choice for compliance checks on resource configurations rather than action-level auditing.
- ✗
Amazon GuardDuty
Why it's wrong here
Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service, not a logging service.
- ✓
AWS CloudTrail
Why this is correct
AWS CloudTrail records API activity, which includes all IAM actions.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch
Why it's wrong here
Amazon CloudWatch monitors metrics and logs, but does not record API actions for auditing.
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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.