SOA-C02 · domain
Security and Compliance
This domain covers IAM policies, SCPs, KMS encryption, and detective/preventive controls across AWS accounts. Questions present a compliance requirement and ask you to choose the control that enforces it org-wide, then verify or auto-remediate drift using Config, CloudTrail, and Lambda.
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What to know about Security and Compliance
Be able to select the right guardrail: SCPs for preventive org-wide denies, bucket policies and KMS key policies for encryption enforcement, and Config rules with SSM Automation for auto-remediation. The key is knowing which control prevents versus detects versus remediates.
Using AWS Organizations SCPs to deny actions like s3:PutBucketPublicAccessBlock across member accounts
Enforcing SSE-KMS on S3 buckets via bucket policies and aws s3api put-bucket-encryption
Configuring AWS Config rules with automatic remediation through SSM Automation documents
Auditing API activity and resource changes with CloudTrail trails and CloudWatch Logs
Watch out for
Common Security and Compliance exam traps
- ▸Assuming an SCP grants permissions; SCPs only filter what IAM already allows and never grant access on their own.
- ▸Thinking S3 Block Public Access set at the bucket level cannot be overridden; account and organization-level settings take precedence.
- ▸Confusing AWS Config remediation with prevention; Config detects and remediates after the fact, while SCPs and bucket policies prevent.
Question index
All Security and Compliance questions (198)
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A company has the following S3 bucket policy attached to a bucket named 'example-bucket'. A user is unable to download an object from the bucket using an HTTP URL (not HTTPS). What is the cause?
Medium2A company wants to audit all API calls made in their AWS account for security analysis. They need to record both management events and data events. Which THREE steps should be taken to set up comprehensive logging? (Choose THREE.)
Easy3A company's security team requires that all Amazon S3 buckets are encrypted at rest using server-side encryption with Amazon S3 managed keys (SSE-S3). A SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect any S3 bucket that does not have encryption enabled and automatically apply SSE-S3 encryption. The solution should leverage AWS managed services and minimize custom code. Which combination of AWS services should be used?
Medium4A company has a fleet of EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer. The security team requires that all traffic to the instances be encrypted in transit. Currently, the ALB terminates HTTPS and forwards HTTP to the instances. The security team wants to ensure that the traffic between the ALB and the instances is also encrypted. What should the SysOps administrator do to meet this requirement with minimal changes?
Easy5A company stores sensitive data in an RDS database. Which AWS service should be used to encrypt the database at rest?
Easy6A company requires that all users in an AWS account must authenticate with multi-factor authentication (MFA) before they can perform any actions on Amazon EC2 instances. The SysOps administrator needs to implement this requirement using IAM policies. Which IAM policy condition key should be used to enforce MFA?
Medium7A company uses Amazon S3 to store sensitive customer data. A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that any S3 bucket that is incorrectly configured to allow public read access is automatically remediated within five minutes. The administrator wants to use native AWS services with minimal custom code. Which solution should be used?
Medium8An organization needs to encrypt data in transit between an Amazon EC2 instance and an Application Load Balancer (ALB). Which THREE actions should be taken?
Medium9A company requires all S3 uploads to use server-side encryption with a specific customer managed KMS key. What is the most direct enforcement mechanism?
Medium10A company wants to allow an external auditor to assume an IAM role in their AWS account to review resources. What is the minimum information the auditor needs from the company to do this?
Easy11An organization requires that all Amazon S3 buckets be encrypted at rest by default. A SysOps administrator needs to enforce this using AWS Config. Which AWS Config managed rule should be used?
Medium12A company's security policy requires that all Amazon EC2 instances must have a specific tag 'Environment' with a value of either 'Production' or 'Development'. The SysOps administrator needs to detect any instance that is missing this tag or has an invalid value, and automatically email the operations team. Which AWS service should be used to achieve this with the least operational overhead?
Medium13A company's security policy requires that IAM users rotate their access keys every 90 days. The SysOps administrator must automatically identify users whose access keys are older than 90 days and notify the security team. Which combination of AWS services should be used to meet this requirement with the least operational overhead?
Medium14A company wants to securely store secrets such as database credentials and API keys used by applications running on Amazon EC2. Which AWS service should be used to manage and rotate these secrets automatically?
Easy15Refer to the exhibit. An IAM policy allows a user to run instances only of type t2.micro. What happens when the user tries to run a t2.small instance?
Easy16A SysOps administrator needs to audit all changes to IAM policies in an AWS account. Which AWS service should be used to record these changes?
Easy17A SysOps administrator is tasked with encrypting data at rest for an Amazon S3 bucket that stores sensitive customer information. The company requires that the encryption keys be managed by AWS and rotated automatically. Which encryption solution meets these requirements?
Medium18A company needs to restrict access to an S3 bucket so that only users from a specific VPC can read objects. Which THREE configurations are required?
Medium19A company uses AWS Key Management Service (KMS) to encrypt data in S3. The security team wants to ensure that only a specific IAM role can decrypt objects in a particular S3 bucket. Which of the following is the MOST effective way to achieve this?
Easy20A company is using AWS Organizations with SCPs to restrict access to services. The security team wants to ensure that no IAM user can create access keys, but the SCP is not working as expected. What is the most likely cause?
Medium21Refer to the exhibit. A company has a CloudTrail trail in us-east-1 that logs events for that region only. The company operates in multiple regions and wants to ensure all API calls from all regions are logged. What is the most efficient way to achieve this?
Medium22An application running on Amazon EC2 needs to access an S3 bucket. The SysOps administrator wants to ensure that only that specific EC2 instance can access the bucket, without storing any long-term credentials on the instance. What is the most secure way to achieve this?
Hard23A company is using AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to prevent any IAM user from creating access keys for themselves across all accounts. What is the most effective way to enforce this policy?
Hard24An administrator needs to grant an IAM user the ability to stop and start EC2 instances, but only for instances tagged with 'Environment:Production'. Which IAM policy element should be used to enforce this condition?
Easy25A company's compliance team requires that all changes to IAM policies be logged and immediately alerted. Which AWS solution should be used?
Medium26A company has an S3 bucket that contains sensitive customer data. The security team requires that all data in transit to and from the bucket must be encrypted. Which bucket policy condition should be used?
Easy27A company wants to ensure that an EC2 instance can access an S3 bucket without storing AWS credentials on the instance. What should the SysOps administrator do?
Medium28A SysOps administrator is managing a multi-account AWS environment using AWS Organizations. The security team has mandated that all Amazon S3 buckets across all accounts must be encrypted with SSE-KMS using a centrally managed KMS key. The administrator has created a KMS key in the master account and enabled key rotation. The key policy allows the root user of each member account to use the key. However, users in member accounts report that they cannot upload objects to their S3 buckets with SSE-KMS using the central key, even though they have s3:PutObject permissions. The administrator verifies that the KMS key policy includes the necessary permissions for the member accounts. What should the administrator do to resolve the issue?
Hard29A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt data stored in S3. The security team wants to rotate the KMS key automatically every year. The SysOps administrator enabled automatic key rotation for the KMS key. However, after a year, the security team finds that the key has not been rotated. What is the most likely cause?
Medium30An IAM user has the policy shown in the exhibit. The user is trying to download an object from example-bucket from an IP address of 192.0.2.50. However, the request is denied. What is the most likely reason?
Hard31A SysOps administrator needs to detect when an IAM user attempts to modify an Amazon S3 bucket policy in the production AWS account. The administrator wants to receive an email notification within 5 minutes of such an event. The solution must use AWS managed services with no custom code. Which combination of services should the administrator use?
Hard32A company's security policy requires that all new Amazon S3 buckets must have server-side encryption with AWS Key Management Service (SSE-KMS) enabled by default. A SysOps administrator wants to enforce this requirement for all current and future S3 buckets in the account. Which AWS service or feature should be used to automatically apply this configuration?
Medium33A SysOps administrator needs to grant cross-account access to an S3 bucket in Account A for an IAM user in Account B. The bucket policy in Account A allows the IAM user's account root principal. What additional configuration is required?
Medium34A company's security policy requires that all IAM users must authenticate with multi-factor authentication (MFA) before they can perform any actions on Amazon EC2 instances. The SysOps administrator needs to enforce this requirement using IAM policies. Which IAM policy condition key should the administrator use in the policy?
Medium35A company's security policy requires that the AWS account root user must have multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled. A SysOps administrator needs to continuously verify compliance and automatically notify the security team if the root user is not configured with MFA. Which AWS service can be used to create a compliance rule for this requirement?
Easy36Drag and drop the steps to create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm that sends an email notification when CPU utilization exceeds 90% into the correct order.
Medium37A SysOps administrator discovers that an EC2 instance was compromised because the SSH key pair was leaked. The administrator wants to ensure that future access to EC2 instances is secured using a method that does not rely on static keys. Which solution should the administrator implement?
Hard38A company wants to enforce that all IAM users in an AWS account must use multi-factor authentication (MFA) to access the AWS Management Console. Which IAM policy effect should be used to deny access if MFA is not present?
Easy39Which TWO actions should a SysOps administrator take to secure an S3 bucket that stores sensitive data? (Choose two.)
Hard40A company hosts a critical web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The security team enabled AWS WAF on the ALB to block SQL injection and XSS attacks. They also use AWS Shield Advanced for DDoS protection. Recently, the application experienced intermittent performance degradation during normal traffic patterns. The security team reviewed the WAF logs and found that legitimate user requests with query strings containing the word "select" (e.g., ?category=select+option) were being blocked. The team wants to ensure that only actual SQL injection attempts are blocked, not legitimate requests with similar patterns. What course of action should the SysOps administrator take to resolve this issue while maintaining security?
Hard41Which THREE are valid methods to control access to an S3 bucket? (Choose three.)
Hard42A company has a production AWS account with multiple IAM users. The security team wants to implement a policy that prevents users from launching EC2 instances without an IAM role that grants access to an S3 bucket containing sensitive data. The policy should also allow users to launch instances with other roles. A SysOps administrator creates an IAM policy that denies ec2:RunInstances if the instance does not have a specific IAM instance profile. However, users are still able to launch instances without any role. What is the most likely reason, and what should be done to fix it?
Medium43A SysOps administrator notices that an EC2 instance running a web server is receiving unexpected traffic from an IP address that is known to be malicious. The administrator wants to block this IP address at the instance level. Which solution should be used?
Medium44A company needs to audit all changes to AWS resources. Which THREE AWS services should be used together to achieve this? (Choose three.)
Medium45A SysOps administrator needs to grant an IAM user the ability to rotate their own access keys. What is the minimum set of permissions required?
Medium46Which TWO actions should a SysOps administrator take to secure an AWS account root user? (Choose two.)
Medium47A SysOps administrator needs to restrict access to an Amazon S3 bucket so that only requests from a specific VPC endpoint are allowed. Which policy statement should be added to the bucket policy?
Hard48A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt EBS volumes attached to EC2 instances. The security team wants to ensure that only specific IAM roles can decrypt the volumes. Which configuration meets this requirement?
Hard49A 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?
Medium50A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that an Amazon EC2 instance can access an Amazon S3 bucket without storing long-term credentials on the instance. Which approach should be used?
Easy51A SysOps administrator needs to share an encrypted AMI with a different AWS account. The AMI uses an AWS KMS key (customer managed key) for EBS encryption. What must be done to allow the target account to launch EC2 instances from the AMI?
Easy52A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log API calls. The SysOps team needs to ensure that any attempt to disable CloudTrail logging is immediately detected and triggers an automated response. Which combination of services should be used? (Choose two.)
Hard53Which THREE security best practices should be followed when managing IAM users? (Choose three.)
Easy54A company's security policy requires that all IAM users must have multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled. A SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect IAM users without MFA and generate a compliance report. Which AWS service should be used to meet this requirement with minimal operational overhead?
Medium55A company's security policy requires that all IAM users must authenticate using multi-factor authentication (MFA) before accessing the Amazon S3 bucket containing confidential finance data. The SysOps administrator needs to create an IAM policy that denies access to the S3 bucket if the user has not authenticated using MFA. Which IAM condition key should the administrator include in the policy?
Hard56A company's security policy requires that all Amazon S3 buckets must have server-side encryption enabled. The SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect any bucket that does not have encryption enabled and notify the security team. Which AWS service should be used to detect non-compliant buckets?
Easy57Refer to the exhibit. An IAM policy is attached to a user. The user's IP address is 10.0.1.5. What is the result when the user tries to download an object from the folder 'confidential' in 'example-bucket'?
Hard58An administrator notices that an EC2 instance has been compromised. The instance is part of an Auto Scaling group. What should the administrator do FIRST to contain the incident?
Medium59Account A owns an S3 bucket containing shared artifacts. Account B needs to read objects from the bucket. The Account A team wants to grant access without creating IAM users, sharing access keys, or creating a role in Account A that Account B assumes. How should the bucket be configured to allow Account B's IAM roles to read objects?
Medium60A SysOps administrator needs to audit all changes to IAM resources in their AWS account. Which THREE AWS services can be used together to achieve this? (Choose THREE.)
Hard61A company uses AWS Organizations and wants to restrict access to S3 buckets based on project tags. The security policy requires that users in the 'DataScientists' group can only access S3 buckets that have the tag 'Project: DataEngineering'. Which IAM policy condition key should the SysOps administrator use in a customer managed policy to enforce this restriction?
Hard62A company wants to audit all API calls made in their AWS account for compliance. Which THREE AWS services can be used together to capture and store these logs? (Choose three.)
Medium63A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that an EC2 instance can access an S3 bucket without storing AWS credentials on the instance. What should the administrator do?
Easy64Refer to the exhibit. An IAM role has the trust policy shown. Which entity can assume this role?
Easy65A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that an Amazon RDS instance is encrypted at rest. The instance is already provisioned unencrypted. What is the correct approach to enable encryption?
Easy66A company is using AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to ensure that all new S3 buckets created in any account have encryption enabled. Which approach should be used to enforce this policy?
Hard67A company stores database credentials in AWS Secrets Manager. The security policy requires that the credentials be rotated automatically every 30 days. Which action should the SysOps administrator take to enforce this requirement?
Medium68Refer to the exhibit. A SysOps administrator runs the commands shown. Which key(s) have automatic key rotation enabled?
Medium69A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that all Amazon S3 buckets in an AWS account are encrypted at rest. The administrator wants to automatically remediate any bucket that is created without default encryption. Which AWS service should be used to achieve this with the least operational overhead?
Easy70A company wants to ensure that its AWS resources are compliant with the CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark. Which TWO AWS services can be used to automate compliance checks and remediation?
Medium71A company's security policy requires that all Amazon S3 buckets must be encrypted at rest using server-side encryption with Amazon S3 managed keys (SSE-S3). A SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect any bucket that does not have encryption enabled and automatically apply SSE-S3 encryption. The solution should leverage AWS managed services and minimize custom code. Which combination of AWS services should be used?
Medium72An organization has a policy requiring that all Amazon EC2 instances launched in the production account must have detailed monitoring enabled for Amazon CloudWatch. A SysOps administrator needs to enforce this rule automatically. Which solution will ensure that any EC2 instance launched without detailed monitoring is automatically remediated?
Medium73A SysOps administrator is designing a VPC for a web application that must be secure. Which THREE security measures should the administrator implement? (Choose THREE.)
Hard74A company's security policy requires that all Amazon S3 buckets must be encrypted at rest with AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) customer managed keys. A SysOps administrator discovers that some buckets are not encrypted. Which combination of AWS services should be used to automatically detect and remediate non-compliant buckets using infrastructure as code?
Hard75A SysOps administrator is troubleshooting an IAM policy that is not granting the expected permissions. The policy has a Deny effect on a specific action, but the user is still able to perform that action. What is the most likely reason?
Medium76A company's security team requires that all Amazon EC2 instances in a specific AWS account must have the tag 'Environment' set to either 'Production' or 'Test'. Any instance that is launched without this tag or with an invalid value must be automatically terminated within five minutes. Which combination of AWS services can enforce this requirement with minimal manual intervention?
Medium77A SysOps administrator is troubleshooting an issue where an EC2 instance cannot access an S3 bucket using an instance profile. The instance profile has an IAM role with a policy that allows s3:GetObject on the bucket. The S3 bucket policy has a Deny for all principals except a specific service role. What is the most likely reason for the access failure?
Hard78Refer to the exhibit. The security team wants to ensure that all objects uploaded to the S3 bucket 'my-secure-bucket' are encrypted at rest. Based on the CloudTrail log entry, what can be concluded about the object 'confidential.pdf'?
Hard79A company has an AWS account with multiple VPCs connected via a transit gateway. The security team wants to centrally manage VPC security group rules and ensure compliance. Which approach is most effective?
Hard80A company's security team notices that an IAM user has access keys that have not been rotated in over a year. Which action should the SysOps administrator take to enforce key rotation automatically?
Medium81A SysOps administrator is configuring a new AWS account and wants to set up a secure password policy for IAM users. The policy must require at least 12 characters, one uppercase letter, one number, and must prevent password reuse. Where should this policy be configured?
Medium82An application running on an Amazon EC2 instance needs to access an Amazon S3 bucket. The company security policy requires that credentials are not stored on the instance. What is the most secure way to grant access?
Medium83Which TWO measures help protect an AWS account root user? (Choose two.)
Easy84A SysOps administrator deploys the CloudFormation template shown in the exhibit. The stack creation fails with a security group error. What is the most likely cause?
Hard85Developers are allowed to create IAM roles for their Lambda functions. However, the security team is concerned that developers could create roles with Administrator access, granting Lambda functions more permissions than the developers themselves have. What IAM feature prevents privilege escalation in this scenario?
Easy86A company wants to centrally manage access to AWS accounts for its employees. Which AWS service should be used to create and manage users and groups across multiple accounts?
Easy87A company uses AWS Organizations to manage multiple accounts. The security team wants to ensure that no IAM users in any member account can create access keys for themselves. What is the MOST efficient way to enforce this policy across all accounts?
Medium88A SysOps administrator needs to audit all API calls made in the AWS account, including actions performed by the root user. Which service should be enabled?
Easy89A SysOps administrator is asked to ensure that all objects in an S3 bucket are encrypted at rest using a customer-managed KMS key. The bucket currently has default encryption set to SSE-S3. What must be done to meet the requirement?
Medium90A company uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to EC2 instances. The security team wants to ensure that all traffic between the ALB and the instances is encrypted. Which configuration step is required?
Easy91A SysOps administrator is investigating a security incident where an unauthorized key pair was created. The CloudTrail lookup command output is shown. The administrator wants to find the source IP address of the 'admin' user who created the key pair. Which field in the 'CloudTrailEvent' JSON should the administrator examine?
Hard92A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that data in an S3 bucket is encrypted at rest. The bucket already has server-side encryption with S3 managed keys (SSE-S3) enabled. Which additional step is required to enforce encryption for all objects?
Easy93A SysOps administrator is designing a solution to manage secrets (e.g., database credentials) for a multi-tier application running on EC2 instances. The solution must rotate secrets automatically and provide fine-grained access control. Which TWO services should be used together? (Choose TWO.)
Hard94A company uses AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to enforce that all IAM users in member accounts must use MFA. They create an SCP that denies all actions if the IAM user does not have MFA. However, the SCP does not apply to the root user. The SysOps administrator finds that some IAM users in member accounts are still able to access the console without MFA. What is the most likely reason?
Hard95Drag and drop the steps to configure an Amazon Route 53 failover routing policy into the correct order.
Medium96A company uses AWS Organizations and wants to restrict the use of specific AWS services across all member accounts. Which TWO methods can be used to enforce these restrictions? (Choose TWO.)
Hard97A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log API activity. The security team needs to be alerted when an IAM user creates a new access key. Which combination of services should the SysOps administrator use to meet this requirement?
Hard98A SysOps administrator notices that an Amazon CloudWatch Logs log group is growing rapidly and suspects that an EC2 instance is sending sensitive data to the logs. What is the most effective way to detect and redact sensitive data in real-time?
Medium99A company uses AWS Organizations with SCPs to restrict member accounts. The security team wants to prevent all users in the 'Developers' OU from deleting S3 buckets, except for the root user of the management account. How should this be implemented?
Hard100A company wants to provide temporary security credentials to a mobile application so it can access an S3 bucket. Which AWS service should be used to issue these credentials?
Easy101A SysOps administrator needs to audit all IAM user activity in the AWS account for the last 90 days. Which AWS service should be used?
Medium102A company operates a web application behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The SysOps administrator needs to block incoming requests from specific geographic locations (countries X and Y) and also enforce a rate limit of 100 requests per IP address per 5-minute window to mitigate DDoS attacks. The solution must be centrally configured and apply to all requests handled by the ALB. Which AWS service should be used to implement these requirements?
Hard103A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that all Amazon S3 buckets in an AWS account are encrypted at rest using server-side encryption. Which combination of actions should be taken to enforce this policy?
Medium104A company needs to audit all changes to IAM policies in their AWS account. Which AWS service should be used to track these changes?
Easy105A company requires that all Amazon S3 buckets in its AWS account must be encrypted using AWS KMS (SSE-KMS). The SysOps administrator needs to detect any bucket that does not have KMS encryption enabled and automatically remediate it by enabling encryption. Which AWS service should be used to implement this automated compliance enforcement?
Medium106A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that all traffic to an Application Load Balancer (ALB) uses encryption. How can this be enforced?
Medium107Match each AWS cost management tool to its purpose.
Medium108Match each AWS compute service to its use case.
Medium109Refer to the exhibit. A SysOps administrator runs the command to list running EC2 instances. What is the purpose of the '--query' parameter?
Easy110A company uses AWS Organizations to manage multiple accounts. The security team wants to restrict all accounts from using specific AWS services unless explicitly allowed. Which feature should be used?
Medium111A company has an EC2 instance that needs to access an S3 bucket. The instance is launched in a private subnet with no internet gateway. What is the most secure way to provide access to S3 without traversing the internet?
Hard112Refer to the exhibit. A SysOps administrator creates this stack. Which of the following is true about the bucket?
Medium113A company requires that all S3 buckets be tagged with a 'CostCenter' tag. A SysOps administrator needs to enforce this and prevent creation of untagged buckets. Which approach should be used?
Medium114A company wants to ensure that all Amazon S3 buckets have versioning enabled to protect against accidental deletion of objects. A SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect any buckets that do not have versioning enabled and receive notifications. Which AWS service should the administrator use?
Easy115A SysOps administrator manages IAM roles for Amazon EC2 instances. The administrator needs to identify permissions that have never been used in the last 90 days to right-size the policies. Which AWS feature should be used to achieve this?
Medium116A company wants to allow a developer to deploy applications using AWS CloudFormation but restrict the developer from creating or modifying IAM resources. Which IAM policy should be used?
Easy117A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that an Amazon S3 bucket is not publicly accessible. Which THREE actions should be taken to prevent public access?
Easy118Which TWO IAM policy conditions can be used to enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) for API calls? (Choose two.)
Medium119Match each AWS service with its primary security compliance function. (Drag each service to its correct function.) (Choose 4.)
Medium120A company requires that all access to the AWS Management Console be protected by multi-factor authentication (MFA). The SysOps administrator has enabled an IAM policy that denies all actions if the user does not authenticate with MFA. However, some users report they cannot list their own MFA devices. What is the MOST likely cause?
Easy121A company has an S3 bucket that stores sensitive customer data. The security team requires that all objects in the bucket be encrypted at rest using AWS KMS. An administrator notices that some objects are not encrypted. What is the MOST efficient way to enforce encryption for future uploads?
Hard122A company's security policy requires that all IAM user passwords must be at least 12 characters long. The SysOps administrator needs to enforce this requirement across the AWS account. Which action should the administrator take?
Easy123A company uses AWS CloudTrail to log all API calls. The security team requires that all logs be encrypted at rest and stored in an S3 bucket that blocks public access. The SysOps administrator configures the bucket with default encryption (SSE-S3) and a bucket policy that denies all actions unless the request includes the x-amz-server-side-encryption header with value AES256. However, CloudTrail delivery fails. What is the MOST likely cause?
Hard124A company uses AWS Organizations to manage multiple AWS accounts. The security team requires that all Amazon S3 buckets in every account be encrypted at rest using AWS KMS customer managed keys. The SysOps administrator needs to enforce this requirement centrally without requiring changes in each account individually. Which approach should the administrator use?
Medium125A company wants to encrypt data at rest in an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. Which solution meets this requirement with minimal administrative overhead?
Medium126A SysOps administrator needs to generate a report of all IAM users and their last activity. Which AWS service can provide this information?
Easy127A company stores sensitive data in an Amazon S3 bucket. A security audit reveals that some objects were uploaded without server-side encryption. The SysOps administrator must ensure that all future PUT requests to the bucket are denied unless they include the x-amz-server-side-encryption header with the value AES256. Which action should the administrator take?
Medium128A company wants to securely store database credentials used by an application running on Amazon EC2. Which AWS service should be used to rotate and manage access to these secrets?
Easy129A company wants to provide temporary credentials to an application running on an on-premises server so it can access AWS resources. The credentials must be rotated automatically. Which IAM feature should be used?
Easy130A company is using AWS Organizations and wants to delegate administration of a specific member account to a user in the management account. Which TWO steps are required?
Hard131A company runs a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application stores sensitive user data in an S3 bucket. The security team requires that traffic between the ALB and the EC2 instances be encrypted, and that the EC2 instances only accept traffic from the ALB. Currently, the ALB terminates HTTPS and forwards HTTP to the instances. The SysOps administrator needs to implement the required security controls. Which solution should the administrator implement?
Medium132A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that an Amazon RDS for MySQL database is compliant with PCI DSS requirements. Which THREE configurations should be implemented?
Hard133A company manages multiple AWS accounts under AWS Organizations. The security team requires that all Amazon S3 buckets in the organization must be encrypted using AWS KMS (SSE-KMS). The SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect any bucket that is not compliant and remediate it by enabling SSE-KMS. Which AWS feature or service should be used to implement this automated compliance enforcement?
Hard134A company uses AWS KMS to encrypt EBS volumes. Which TWO statements about using KMS with EBS are correct? (Choose two.)
Hard135A company's security policy requires that all IAM users must change their passwords every 90 days. The SysOps administrator needs to enforce this requirement. Which IAM setting should the administrator configure?
Easy136A company has an AWS account that contains multiple Amazon S3 buckets with sensitive data. A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that all S3 buckets in the account have versioning enabled to protect against accidental deletions. The administrator wants to automatically remediate any bucket that is created without versioning enabled. Which solution should be used?
Medium137A company requires that all data stored in Amazon S3 be encrypted at rest. Which S3 feature should be enabled to meet this requirement without changing the application code?
Easy138The CISO asks for a centralized dashboard showing security findings from GuardDuty, Macie, Inspector, and Firewall Manager across 30 AWS accounts. Findings must be normalized into a single format so they can be prioritized by severity without switching between services. Which AWS service provides this capability?
Medium139Refer to the exhibit. A SysOps administrator runs the AWS CLI command to check the event selectors for a CloudTrail trail. What does the output indicate?
Medium140Which TWO services can be used to centrally manage cryptographic keys for AWS services? (Choose two.)
Easy141A company wants to monitor for unauthorized API calls in their AWS account. Which AWS service should they use?
Easy142A company uses AWS Config to track resource changes. The security team wants to receive notifications whenever an IAM policy is changed. Which AWS service should be used with AWS Config to send notifications?
Easy143Refer to the exhibit. An IAM policy is attached to a user. Which statement about the user's access is correct?
Hard144A company's security policy requires that all Amazon S3 buckets must have server-side encryption with AWS Key Management Service (SSE-KMS) enabled. The SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect any existing or new S3 bucket that does not have SSE-KMS enabled and automatically apply the encryption configuration. The solution must use managed AWS services with minimal custom code. Which combination of AWS services should be used?
Medium145A company's security policy requires that all Amazon S3 buckets must be non-publicly accessible. The SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect any bucket that becomes publicly accessible and automatically remediate it by applying a bucket policy that blocks public access. The solution should use AWS managed services with minimal custom code. Which combination of services should be used?
Hard146A SysOps administrator notices that an IAM user can access the AWS Management Console but cannot use the AWS CLI. The user has a password and an access key. What is the most likely cause?
Medium147A company is using AWS Organizations with multiple accounts. The security team wants to ensure that all S3 buckets across all accounts have encryption enabled. What is the most efficient way to enforce this policy?
Medium148A company has a single AWS account with multiple IAM users. The security team wants to ensure that no IAM user can create or modify VPC resources. The SysOps administrator creates a managed policy that denies ec2:CreateVpc, ec2:DeleteVpc, ec2:ModifyVpcAttribute, and similar actions. The policy is attached to all IAM users via a group. However, after a week, a user reports that they were able to create a VPC. The administrator checks CloudTrail and confirms that the user created the VPC. What is the most likely cause?
Medium149A company wants to enforce that all Amazon S3 buckets in their AWS account are encrypted at rest. They have enabled AWS CloudTrail and want to automatically remediate any non-compliant bucket created by users. Which AWS service should they use to achieve this?
Medium150A company uses an IAM policy that allows s3:GetObject for a specific bucket. However, an IAM user is getting an Access Denied error when trying to download an object. The bucket policy also allows s3:GetObject for the user's account. What is the most likely cause?
Hard151A company has a legacy application that requires access to an S3 bucket using an IAM user's access keys. The security team wants to rotate the access keys every 90 days automatically. What is the MOST efficient way to achieve this?
Hard152A company uses AWS Shield Advanced to protect against DDoS attacks. Which of the following are benefits of AWS Shield Advanced? (Choose TWO.)
Easy153Refer to the exhibit. A SysOps administrator reviews the account password policy. Which of the following is true based on this output?
Hard154A company has an S3 bucket that stores sensitive customer data. The security team requires that all objects uploaded to the bucket must be encrypted at rest using AWS KMS with a specific customer managed key. Which bucket policy condition should be used to enforce this?
Hard155A company wants to ensure that only specific IAM roles within the same AWS account can encrypt and decrypt data using an AWS KMS customer managed key. Which type of policy must be configured to achieve this restriction?
Medium156A SysOps administrator needs to grant an application running on an Amazon EC2 instance access to an Amazon S3 bucket without embedding long-term AWS credentials in the application code. The EC2 instance is in a private subnet and must not use an IAM user access key. Which solution should the administrator use?
Easy157A company requires that all AWS account activity be recorded and the logs be stored in a centralized S3 bucket for analysis. Which two AWS services should be used together to meet this requirement?
Easy158Which TWO actions can a SysOps administrator take to secure an Amazon S3 bucket that contains sensitive data? (Choose TWO.)
Medium159A company's security team notices that an IAM user has been generating multiple access keys and deleting them within a short period. The SysOps administrator needs to detect and alert on this behavior. Which solution is the MOST effective?
Hard160A company wants to ensure that all data in Amazon S3 is encrypted at rest using server-side encryption with AWS KMS managed keys (SSE-KMS). Which bucket policy statement should be used to deny any PUT request that does not include the 'x-amz-server-side-encryption' header with value 'aws:kms'?
Easy161A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that all Amazon S3 buckets in an AWS account are configured with server-side encryption using AWS KMS (SSE-KMS). The administrator wants to automatically detect any S3 buckets that are not compliant and remediate them by enabling SSE-KMS. Which AWS service should be used to implement this automated compliance enforcement?
Easy162Which TWO actions can be used to protect data in transit between an EC2 instance and an S3 bucket? (Choose two.)
Medium163A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that all API calls made to AWS are logged for auditing purposes. Which AWS service should be enabled to capture management events?
Medium164A SysOps administrator is configuring a new VPC and wants to ensure that only traffic from a specific IP address range can access an EC2 instance via SSH. Which TWO components should be configured? (Choose two.)
Easy165Refer to the exhibit. An IAM policy is attached to a user. What is the effective permission regarding the s3:DeleteObject action on the example-bucket?
Easy166An organization requires that all Amazon S3 buckets be encrypted with AES-256 server-side encryption. A SysOps administrator needs to enforce this policy across the entire AWS account. Which action should be taken?
Medium167A company is using AWS CloudTrail to log all API calls. The security team wants to ensure that logs are tamper-proof and stored securely. Which TWO actions should be taken? (Choose two.)
Hard168An organization requires that all Amazon S3 buckets block public access entirely. A SysOps administrator needs to ensure that no bucket can be made public, even accidentally. Which approach enforces this control at the organizational level?
Medium169A company's security policy requires that all Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instances be encrypted at rest using AWS Key Management Service (KMS) customer managed keys and have automated backups enabled with a retention period of at least 30 days. A SysOps administrator needs to use AWS Config to automatically detect any RDS instance that is non-compliant with either requirement and automatically remediate it. Which combination of AWS Config managed rules and remediation actions should be used?
Medium170A company requires that all API calls to AWS services be logged for compliance. The logs must be stored in a centralized S3 bucket with server-side encryption enabled. Which AWS service should be used to capture the API calls?
Medium171A company wants to enforce that all Amazon EC2 instances launched in the AWS account must have a specific termination protection setting enabled. The SysOps administrator needs to automatically remediate any instances that are launched without termination protection. Which AWS service should be used to achieve this?
Medium172A company requires that all Amazon EC2 instances launched in its AWS account must have termination protection enabled. The SysOps administrator needs to automatically remediate any instance launched without termination protection. The solution should use AWS managed services without custom scripts. Which AWS service should be used?
Easy173A SysOps administrator needs to provide temporary, limited-privilege credentials to an application running on an EC2 instance. The application needs to access an S3 bucket. What is the most secure way to grant these credentials?
Medium174A company has an AWS account with multiple VPCs connected via a transit gateway. The SysOps administrator needs to ensure that all traffic between VPCs is encrypted in transit. Which solution should the administrator implement?
Hard175A SysOps administrator is troubleshooting an issue where an IAM user can launch EC2 instances but cannot terminate them. The user's permissions are based on an IAM group policy. Which action should the administrator take to resolve this?
Medium176A company is using AWS CodePipeline to deploy a web application. The security team requires that all code changes be reviewed and approved before deployment to production. Which action should be taken to enforce this requirement?
Hard177A SysOps administrator needs to grant a developer access to view only the logs of a specific Amazon RDS instance. Which IAM action should be allowed?
Easy178A company needs to comply with PCI DSS requirements for its AWS environment. Which TWO services should the SysOps administrator use to automate compliance checks and generate reports? (Choose TWO.)
Easy179An organization wants to centrally manage access to multiple AWS accounts in an AWS Organizations setup. Which AWS service should the SysOps administrator use to define and enforce fine-grained permissions across accounts?
Easy180A company has an S3 bucket that stores sensitive data. The security team requires that all access to the bucket be encrypted in transit. Which TWO actions should be taken to enforce this requirement? (Choose two.)
Medium181A company uses AWS Organizations and has multiple accounts. The security team requires that all Amazon S3 buckets across all accounts must be encrypted at rest with AWS KMS (SSE-KMS). The SysOps administrator needs to automatically detect non-compliant buckets and remediate them by enabling SSE-KMS. The solution must work across all existing and future accounts. Which AWS service should be used?
Hard182A company manages multiple AWS accounts using AWS Organizations. The security team wants to restrict the use of Amazon EC2 instance types to only those that are approved for production workloads (e.g., m5.large, m5.xlarge). The policy should be applied to all member accounts in the organization, and it should prevent any non-approved instance type from being launched. The SysOps administrator should implement this with minimal operational overhead. Which solution should be used?
Hard183A company uses AWS Organizations to manage multiple AWS accounts. The security team wants to restrict access to a specific AWS service (Amazon EC2) in all accounts except for the 'production' account. The SysOps administrator needs to implement this restriction centrally. Which approach should the administrator use?
Hard184A company's security policy requires that only traffic from the corporate office IP range (203.0.113.0/24) can access an Amazon S3 bucket that stores internal reports. The SysOps administrator must enforce this restriction. Which policy type should be modified to implement this requirement?
Easy185A company is using AWS KMS to encrypt data at rest. Which TWO actions can be taken to audit the usage of a customer managed key?
Medium186A company wants to use AWS WAF to protect a web application behind an Application Load Balancer. Which of the following can AWS WAF inspect? (Choose all that apply.)
Hard187An application stores its RDS PostgreSQL credentials in AWS Secrets Manager. The security policy requires credentials to be rotated every 30 days automatically. During rotation, the application must continue to serve traffic with zero downtime. The application retrieves credentials by calling GetSecretValue at the start of each database connection. What must be configured to satisfy all requirements?
Hard188A SysOps administrator is configuring CloudTrail to log all management events and data events for S3 buckets. Which of the following are true about CloudTrail logging? (Choose THREE.)
Medium189A SysOps administrator is troubleshooting an issue where an IAM user cannot launch an EC2 instance. The user has a policy that allows ec2:RunInstances. What is the most likely cause of the failure?
Easy190An S3 bucket policy is shown in the exhibit. The AdminRole attempts to upload an object to my-bucket without specifying any server-side encryption header. What will happen?
Hard191A company wants to audit all AWS account activity for compliance. Which THREE AWS services should be used together to achieve this? (Choose three.)
Hard192Refer to the exhibit. An IAM user has this policy attached. The user tries to start an EC2 instance that has no tags. What will happen?
Medium193A company is using Amazon RDS for MySQL and needs to encrypt data at rest. Which action should be taken to enable encryption?
Easy194A company runs a web application on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application stores sensitive data in an S3 bucket. The security team has mandated that all data in transit to the S3 bucket must be encrypted using TLS. The SysOps administrator configured the application to use HTTPS endpoints for S3. However, a security audit reveals that some requests to S3 are still being sent over HTTP. The administrator checks the VPC Flow Logs and sees that the EC2 instances are communicating with the S3 bucket via a VPC endpoint. The company also uses an S3 bucket policy that allows access only from the VPC endpoint. What is the most likely reason that some requests are sent over HTTP?
Hard195A company's security team requires that all IAM users must use multi-factor authentication (MFA) to access the AWS Management Console. The SysOps administrator needs to create an IAM policy that denies all console actions if the user has not authenticated with MFA. Which IAM condition key should the administrator use?
Easy196A company has a VPC with public and private subnets. The private subnets contain RDS databases that should not be accessible from the internet. Which configuration ensures that the databases are only accessible from the application servers in the public subnets?
Hard197An organization wants to ensure that no Amazon S3 bucket in the entire AWS Organization can be made public. The security team requires a preventive control that cannot be overridden by individual account administrators. Which AWS service or feature should be used?
Easy198A company has an S3 bucket that stores sensitive data. The security team requires that all data be encrypted at rest and that all access be logged. Which TWO actions should the SysOps administrator take to meet these requirements? (Choose TWO.)
MediumOther domains
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Frequently asked questions
- What does the Security and Compliance domain cover on the SOA-C02 exam?
- Be able to select the right guardrail: SCPs for preventive org-wide denies, bucket policies and KMS key policies for encryption enforcement, and Config rules with SSM Automation for auto-remediation. The key is knowing which control prevents versus detects versus remediates.
- How many questions are in this domain?
- This page lists all 198 Security and Compliance questions in the SOA-C02 question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
- What is the best way to practise this domain?
- Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
- Can I practise only Security and Compliance questions?
- Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.