SOA-C02 Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation Practice Question
An organization uses AWS CloudTrail to log API calls across multiple accounts in AWS Organizations. The logs are delivered to a central S3 bucket. The security team wants to receive near-real-time notifications whenever an IAM user creates a new access key. Which solution is the MOST operationally efficient?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to default to CloudWatch Logs metric filters or S3 Event Notifications because they are familiar, but they overlook that EventBridge provides the most direct, low-latency, and operationally efficient path for CloudTrail event-driven notifications.
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
✓
Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that matches the CreateAccessKey event from CloudTrail and publishes to an Amazon SNS topic.
Amazon EventBridge can directly consume CloudTrail events (including `CreateAccessKey`) in near-real-time without polling or custom code. By creating a rule that matches this specific event and targets an SNS topic, the security team gets immediate notifications with minimal operational overhead. This approach is serverless, event-driven, and requires no intermediate services or custom functions.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that matches the CreateAccessKey event from CloudTrail and publishes to an Amazon SNS topic.
Why this is correct
EventBridge is fully integrated with CloudTrail and receives management events as soon as they occur, typically within seconds. A rule with an event pattern such as `source: aws.iam` and `eventName: CreateAccessKey` will match the IAM API call and trigger an SNS topic as a push target, delivering a notification in near-real-time with no polling, log scanning, or waiting for CloudTrail's 5-minute S3 log delivery.
- ✗
Enable S3 Event Notifications on the CloudTrail bucket to trigger a Lambda function that scans new objects for access key creation.
Why it's wrong here
S3 event notifications on the CloudTrail bucket are triggered by object creation (PutObject), but CloudTrail writes log files to S3 only every ~5 minutes, immediately failing the 'near-real-time' requirement. Additionally, this approach requires a Lambda function to download, decompress, and parse every log file to determine whether a CreateAccessKey event exists, which is inefficient and error-prone compared to directly matching the API event. The notification only tells you that a log file was written, not what API call caused it.
- ✗
Configure CloudTrail to send logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs and set up a metric filter that triggers an alarm.
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch Logs metric filters and alarms are asynchronous: logs are first delivered from CloudTrail to CloudWatch Logs, then ingested, then the filter evaluates the log data, and only after that can an alarm state change occur. This pipeline introduces unavoidable latency that is not compatible with near-real-time response. Moreover, the metric filter requires crafting a complex pattern for the JSON structure of CloudTrail events, and an alarm's evaluation period adds even more delay.
- ✗
Use Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights to run a query every minute and send results via SNS.
Why it's wrong here
Running a CloudWatch Logs Insights query on a fixed schedule (e.g., every minute) is a polling mechanism, not an event-driven one, and it can only report results after the query completes, which itself depends on log ingestion and data scanned. It also requires a custom scheduler (such as a Lambda function invoked by an EventBridge rule) to send results via SNS, adding moving parts and cost. Since queries scan historical logs, the detection is at least as delayed as the query interval and does not provide the low-latency guarantee needed.
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.