SOA-C02 Security and Compliance Practice Question
A company's security policy requires that all Amazon S3 buckets must have server-side encryption (SSE-S3 or SSE-KMS) enabled. The SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect any bucket that does not have encryption enabled and remediate it by enabling SSE-S3. Which AWS service should be used to implement this automated compliance enforcement?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse AWS Config's compliance evaluation and remediation capabilities with Trusted Advisor's advisory checks, leading them to choose Trusted Advisor despite its lack of automated enforcement.
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 the correct service because it provides managed rules (e.g., s3-bucket-server-side-encryption-enabled) that can continuously evaluate S3 bucket configurations against the security policy. When a non-compliant bucket is detected, AWS Config can trigger an automatic remediation action via Systems Manager Automation to enable SSE-S3, enforcing compliance without manual intervention.
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 this is correct
AWS Config is the correct choice because it continuously evaluates S3 bucket configurations against managed rules such as s3-bucket-default-encryption or s3-bucket-server-side-encryption-enabled. When a bucket is non-compliant, AWS Config can trigger automatic remediation by invoking an AWS Systems Manager Automation document or a custom Lambda function. This gives you both detection and enforcement, which matches the security policy's requirement for automatic remediation of unencrypted buckets.
- ✗
Amazon Inspector
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Inspector is a vulnerability management service designed to scan EC2 instances and container images for software vulnerabilities and network exposure. It does not have any visibility into S3 bucket encryption settings, bucket policies, or other object-level configuration attributes. Since it neither detects nor remediates unencrypted S3 buckets, Inspector cannot satisfy the security policy's enforcement requirement.
- ✗
AWS Trusted Advisor
Why it's wrong here
AWS Trusted Advisor can surface S3 bucket encryption issues through its security checks, but it only provides recommendations in the console or through the AWS Support API. It lacks any automatic remediation capability—there is no mechanism for Trusted Advisor to directly change S3 bucket encryption settings or trigger a fix when a violation is found. Therefore, although it may alert you to a problem, it fails to meet the policy's demand for automatic enforcement.
- ✗
Amazon Macie
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Macie uses machine learning and pattern matching to discover sensitive data such as PII in S3 buckets, and it can alert on suspicious access patterns or policy changes. However, its purpose is data classification and security posture visibility, not configuration compliance. Macie findings are informational and do not include any automatic remediation actions to modify bucket encryption settings, so it cannot enforce the encryption requirement.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SOA-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 SOA-C02 exam.