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Question 220 of 1,546
Security and Compliance →hardMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped

Prevent IAM Access Key Creation Across Accounts with SCP

This SOA-C02 practice question tests your understanding of security and compliance. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.

A 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?

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

✓

Apply a service control policy (SCP) that denies iam:CreateAccessKey to all accounts in the organization.

Service control policies (SCPs) are the most effective way to enforce a guardrail across all accounts in an AWS Organization because they allow you to centrally deny or restrict permissions at the root, OU, or account level, overriding any IAM policies attached to users or roles. By applying an SCP that denies iam:CreateAccessKey, the security team ensures that no IAM user in any account within the organization can create access keys, regardless of their individual IAM policies. This approach is scalable and cannot be bypassed by account administrators, making it the correct choice for organization-wide enforcement.

Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

  • ✗

    Attach an IAM policy to the root user that denies iam:CreateAccessKey.

    Why it's wrong here

    Root user is different from IAM users; this does not apply to IAM users.

  • ✗

    Configure an IAM password policy that requires strong passwords.

    Why it's wrong here

    Password policy does not prevent access key creation.

  • ✓

    Apply a service control policy (SCP) that denies iam:CreateAccessKey to all accounts in the organization.

    Why this is correct

    SCPs can enforce restrictions across accounts in AWS Organizations.

    Related concept

    Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.

  • ✗

    Use AWS CloudTrail to monitor and alert on CreateAccessKey events.

    Why it's wrong here

    Monitoring does not prevent the action.

Common exam traps

Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword

The trap here is that candidates often confuse IAM password policies or CloudTrail monitoring with preventive controls, but only SCPs provide a centralized, enforceable denial across all accounts in an AWS Organization.

Detailed technical explanation

How to think about this question

SCPs are evaluated before IAM policies and can explicitly deny actions even if an IAM policy grants them, using the same AWS IAM policy language but applied at the organization level. Under the hood, SCPs do not grant permissions; they only filter what actions are allowed, meaning an SCP denial is effective across all principals in the account, including the account root user (though root user actions are not affected by SCPs for certain critical operations). In a real-world scenario, an SCP denying iam:CreateAccessKey ensures that even if a compromised IAM user has full administrative privileges via an IAM policy, they cannot generate long-term credentials, reducing the risk of credential leakage.

KKey Concepts to Remember

  • Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
  • Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
  • Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.

TExam Day Tips

  • Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
  • Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.

Key takeaway

Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.

Real-world example

How this comes up in practice

A company's IT admin needs to give a contractor read-only access to production logs without sharing account credentials. Using role-based access control (RBAC) and temporary scoped permissions — not a permanent shared password — is the correct pattern. Questions like this test whether you can apply least-privilege access across cloud identity services.

What to study next

Got this wrong? Here's your next step.

Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.

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FAQ

Questions learners often ask

What does this SOA-C02 question test?

Security and Compliance — This question tests Security and Compliance — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..

What is the correct answer to this question?

The correct answer is: Apply a service control policy (SCP) that denies iam:CreateAccessKey to all accounts in the organization. — Service control policies (SCPs) are the most effective way to enforce a guardrail across all accounts in an AWS Organization because they allow you to centrally deny or restrict permissions at the root, OU, or account level, overriding any IAM policies attached to users or roles. By applying an SCP that denies iam:CreateAccessKey, the security team ensures that no IAM user in any account within the organization can create access keys, regardless of their individual IAM policies. This approach is scalable and cannot be bypassed by account administrators, making it the correct choice for organization-wide enforcement.

What should I do if I get this SOA-C02 question wrong?

Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.

What is the key concept behind this question?

Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.

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Last reviewed: Jul 4, 2026

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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.