Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A company uses Amazon CloudFront to serve content from a custom origin. A SysOps administrator needs to detect IP addresses that generate a high rate of HTTP 403 (Forbidden) errors, which may indicate malicious bots attempting to access restricted content. The administrator wants to automatically add these IP addresses to a AWS WAF IP set to block them. Which solution meets this requirement with the least operational overhead?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
A
Distractor review
Configure CloudFront access logs to be delivered to an Amazon S3 bucket, and use Amazon Athena to query logs for IPs with many 403 errors. Then manually add those IPs to a WAF IP set.
Athena is good for analysis but does not provide automatic remediation. This solution requires manual intervention, which is not acceptable for a security requirement that demands immediate blocking.
B
Distractor review
Enable AWS CloudTrail for CloudFront and create a CloudWatch metric filter for 'Forbidden' events. Use a CloudWatch alarm to notify the administrator via email, who then manually updates the WAF IP set.
CloudTrail logs API calls to CloudFront, not the actual HTTP requests to the distribution. It does not log 403 error responses for viewer requests. This approach will not detect the malicious traffic.
C
Distractor review
Use AWS Config to monitor CloudFront distributions and trigger an AWS Lambda function when a high number of 403 errors is detected by evaluating access logs stored in S3.
AWS Config is for resource configuration compliance, not for monitoring real-time request metrics. It cannot evaluate access logs stored in S3 for error rates.
D
Best answer
Enable CloudFront standard logs and stream them to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Create a metric filter for 403 status codes, grouped by source IP. Set a CloudWatch alarm on the metric that triggers an AWS Lambda function to update the WAF IP set.
This solution automates detection and remediation. CloudWatch Logs processes the logs in near real-time, the metric filter counts 403 error responses per IP, and the alarm invokes Lambda to block the IP via WAF. This is fully automated and requires minimal operational overhead.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
Related practice questions
Related SOA-C02 practice-question pages
Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.
More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A company uses Amazon CloudFront to deliver content to a global audience. The origin is an Application Load Balancer in us-east-1. The SysOps administrator wants to reduce costs by minimizing the number of requests that reach the origin server. Which action should the administrator take?
Question 2
A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 that runs for 2 hours every night. The workload can tolerate interruptions. Which EC2 purchasing option provides the lowest cost for this use case?
Question 3
A SysOps administrator needs to monitor the CPU utilization of an Amazon RDS DB instance and receive an alarm when CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should be used to create this alarm?
Question 4
A company runs a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application uses session stickiness (sticky sessions) to maintain user sessions. The SysOps administrator notices that when instances are replaced during a scale-in or failure event, users lose their session data. The administrator needs to preserve session data across instance failures without losing stickiness benefits. What should the administrator do?
Question 5
A company runs a production web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance. The application experiences a predictable and steady workload 24/7. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs for this instance while ensuring it remains available during the expected workload. Which EC2 purchasing option should the administrator use?
Question 6
A company has a VPC with public and private subnets. The private subnets host application servers that need to make outbound HTTPS connections to the internet. The SysOps administrator must implement a solution that provides outbound internet connectivity while preventing inbound connections from the internet. Additionally, the solution must allow the company to control which domains the application servers can access. Which solution should the administrator implement?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SOA-C02 question test?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Enable CloudFront standard logs and stream them to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Create a metric filter for 403 status codes, grouped by source IP. Set a CloudWatch alarm on the metric that triggers an AWS Lambda function to update the WAF IP set. — The most efficient approach is to enable CloudFront standard logs (or use real-time logs), deliver them to Amazon CloudWatch Logs, create a metric filter to count 403 responses per IP, set up a CloudWatch alarm that triggers when the count exceeds a threshold, and have the alarm invoke an AWS Lambda function that updates the WAF IP set via the WAF API. Option A does not populate WAF IP sets automatically; it only alerts. Option B uses CloudTrail, which does not log HTTP response codes for CloudFront. Option C uses AWS Config, which is not designed for real-time event monitoring of request patterns.
What should I do if I get this SOA-C02 question wrong?
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
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