SSCP IAM Role Practice Question
An organization using cloud IAM wants to grant a compute instance permissions to access a cloud storage bucket without storing long-term credentials on the instance. Which IAM feature should be used?
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
✓
IAM role assigned to the compute instance
IAM roles for compute instances allow the instance to assume a role and obtain temporary credentials from a security token service, avoiding the need for long-term keys.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
IAM role assigned to the compute instance
Why this is correct
An IAM role attached to the compute instance issues short-lived, automatically rotated credentials through the instance metadata service, so no long-term secret is stored on disk. This satisfies the requirement of granting bucket access without embedding persistent credentials on the instance.
- ✗
Service-level access policies
Why it's wrong here
Service-level access policies define permissions for a cloud service as a whole, not per-instance identity, so they cannot issue the instance temporary credentials. They are tempting because they scope access at service granularity, which suits constraining what an entire managed service may do.
- ✗
Long-term user access keys
Why it's wrong here
Long-term user access keys are static credentials stored on the instance, directly contradicting the requirement to avoid persistent secrets. They are tempting because they are the simplest way to grant programmatic access, and would be acceptable only for legacy workloads where no role-based mechanism exists.
- ✗
Resource-based policies on the storage bucket
Why it's wrong here
Resource-based policies attach permissions to the bucket and identify principals, but they do not issue the instance short-lived credentials, so long-term secrets remain necessary. They are tempting because they grant cross-account access without identity-side roles, which suits granting external principals direct bucket access.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SSCP practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISC2 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 SSCP exam.