Practice Exam Version:
Part 1: https://awslagi.com/aws-certified-security-specialty-scs-c02-exam-question-part-1
Part 2: https://awslagi.com/aws-certified-security-specialty-scs-c02-exam-question-part-2
Part 3: https://awslagi.com/aws-certified-security-specialty-scs-c02-exam-question-part-3
Part 4: https://awslagi.com/aws-certified-security-specialty-scs-c02-exam-question-part-4
Part 5: https://awslagi.com/aws-certified-security-specialty-scs-c02-exam-question-part-5
Part 6: https://awslagi.com/aws-certified-security-specialty-scs-c02-exam-question-part-6
Actual Exam Version:
201. A company manages multiple AWS accounts using AWS Organizations. The company’s security team notices that some member accounts are not sending AWS CloudTrail logs to a centralized Amazon S3 logging bucket. The security team wants to ensure there is at least one trail configured for all existing accounts and for any account that is created in the future. Which set of actions should the security team implement to accomplish this?
A. Create a new trail and configure it to send CloudTrail logs to Amazon S3. Use Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events) to send notification if a trail is deleted or stopped.
B. Deploy an AWS Lambda function in every account to check if there is an existing trail and create a new trail, if needed.
C. Edit the existing trail in the Organizations master account and apply it to the organization.
D. Create an SCP to deny the cloudtrail:Delete* and cloudtrail:Stop* actions. Apply the SCP to all accounts.
202. A security engineer is setting up a new AWS account. The engineer has been asked to continuously monitor the company’s AWS account using automated compliance checks based on AWS best practices and Center for Internet Security (CIS) AWS Foundations Benchmarks. How can the security engineer accomplish this using AWS services?
A. Enable AWS Config and set it to record all resources in all Regions and global resources. Then enable AWS Security Hub and confirm that the CIS AWS Foundations compliance standard is enabled.
B. Enable Amazon Inspector and configure it to scan all Regions for the CIS AWS Foundations Benchmarks. Then enable AWS Security Hub and configure it to ingest the Amazon Inspector findings.
C. Enable Amazon Inspector and configure it to scan all Regions for the CIS AWS Foundations Benchmarks. Then enable AWS Shield in all Regions to protect the account from DDoS attacks.
D. Enable AWS Config and set it to record all resources in all Regions and global resources. Then enable Amazon Inspector and configure it to enforce CIS AWS Foundations Benchmarks using AWS Config rules.
203. A company has a VPC with several Amazon EC2 instances behind a NAT gateway. The company’s security policy states that all network traffic must be logged and must include the original source and destination IP addresses. The existing VPC Flow Logs do not include this information. A security engineer needs to recommend a solution. Which combination of steps should the security engineer recommend? (Choose two.)
A. Edit the existing VPC Flow Logs. Change the log format of the VPC Flow Logs from the Amazon default format to a custom format.
B. Delete and recreate the existing VPC Flow Logs. Change the log format of the VPC Flow Logs from the Amazon default format to a custom format.
C. Change the destination to Amazon CloudWatch Logs.
D. Include the pkt-srcaddr and pkt-dstaddr fields in the log format.
E. Include the subnet-id and instance-id fields in the log format.
204. A company has a VPC with an IPv6 address range and a public subnet with an IPv6 address block. The VPC currently hosts some public Amazon EC2 instances, but a security engineer needs to migrate a second application into the VPC that also requires IPv6 connectivity. This new application will occasionally make API requests to an external, internet-accessible endpoint to receive updates. However, the security team does not want the application’s EC2 instance exposed directly to the internet. The security engineer intends to create a private subnet with a custom route table and to associate the route table with the private subnet. What else does the security engineer need to do to ensure the application will not be exposed directly to the internet, but can still communicate as required?
A. Launch a NAT instance in the public subnet. Update the custom route table with a new route to the NAT instance.
B. Remove the internet gateway, and add AWS PrivateLink to the VPC. Then update the custom route table with a new route to AWS PrivateLink.
C. Add a managed NAT gateway to the VPC. Update the custom route table with a new route to the gateway.
D. Add an egress-only internet gateway to the VPC. Update the custom route table with a new route to the gateway.
205. An ecommerce website was down for 1 hour following a DDoS attack. Users were unable to connect to the website during the attack period. The ecommerce company’s security team is worried about future potential attacks and wants to prepare for such events. The company needs to minimize downtime in its response to similar attacks in the future. Which steps would help achieve this? (Choose two.)
A. Enable Amazon GuardDuty to automatically monitor for malicious activity and block unauthorized access.
B. Subscribe to AWS Shield Advanced and reach out to AWS Support in the event of an attack.
C. Use VPC Flow Logs to monitor network traffic and an AWS Lambda function to automatically block an attacker’s IP using security groups.
D. Set up an Amazon CloudWatch Events rule to monitor the AWS CloudTrail events in real time, use AWS Config rules to audit the configuration, and use AWS Systems Manager for remediation.
E. Use AWS WAF to create rules to respond to such attacks.
206. A company’s on-premises data center forwards DNS logs to a third-party security incident events management (SIEM) solution that alerts on suspicious behavior. The company wants to introduce a similar capability to its AWS accounts that includes automatic remediation. The company expects to double in size within the next few months. Which solution meets the company’s current and future logging requirements?
A. Enable Amazon GuardDuty and AWS Security Hub in all Regions and all accounts. Designate a master security account to receive all alerts from the child accounts. Set up specific rules within Amazon EventBridge to trigger an AWS Lambda function for remediation steps.
B. Ingest all AWS CloudTrail logs, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs into a single Amazon S3 bucket in a designated security account. Use the current on-premises SIEM to monitor the logs and send a notification to an Amazon SNS topic to alert the security team of remediation steps.
C. Ingest all AWS CloudTrail logs, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs into a single Amazon S3 bucket in a designated security account. Launch an Amazon EC2 instance and install the current SIEM to monitor the logs and send a notification to an Amazon SNS topic to alert the security team of remediation steps.
D. Enable Amazon GuardDuty and AWS Security Hub in all Regions and all accounts. Designate a master security account to receive all alerts from the child accounts. Create an AWS Organizations SCP that denies access to certain API calls that are on an ignore list.
207. A company has a serverless application for internal users deployed on AWS. The application uses AWS Lambda for the front end and for business logic. The Lambda function accesses an Amazon RDS database inside a VPC. The company uses AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store for storing database credentials. A recent security review highlighted the following issues:
The Lambda function has internet access.
The relational database is publicly accessible.
The database credentials are not stored in an encrypted state.
Which combination of steps should the company take to resolve these security issues? (Choose three.)
A. Disable public access to the RDS database inside the VPC.
B. Move all the Lambda functions inside the VPC.
C. Edit the IAM role used by Lambda to restrict internet access.
D. Create a VPC endpoint for Systems Manager. Store the credentials as a string parameter. Change the parameter type to an advanced parameter.
E. Edit the IAM role used by RDS to restrict internet access.
F. Create a VPC endpoint for Systems Manager. Store the credentials as a SecureString parameter.
208. A company wants to deploy an application in a private VPC that will not be connected to the internet. The company’s security team will not allow bastion hosts or methods using SSH to log in to Amazon EC2 instances. The application team plans to use AWS Systems Manager Session Manager to connect to and manage the EC2 instances. Which combination of steps should the security team take? (Choose three.)
A. Make sure the Systems Manager Agent is installed and running on all EC2 instances inside the VPC.
B. Ensure the IAM role attached to the EC2 instances in the VPC allows access to Systems Manager.
C. Create an SCP that prevents the creation of SSH key pairs.
D. Launch a NAT gateway in the VPC. Update the routing policies to forward traffic to this NAT gateway.
E. Ensure proper VPC endpoints are in place for Systems Manager and Amazon EC2.
F. Ensure the VPC has a transit gateway attachment. Update the routing policies to forward traffic to this transit gateway.
209. A company uses multiple AWS accounts managed with AWS Organizations. Security engineers have created a standard set of security groups for all these. accounts. The security policy requires that these security groups be used for all applications and delegates modification authority to the security team only. A recent security audit found that the security groups are inconsistently implemented across accounts and that unauthorized changes have been made to the security groups. A security engineer needs to recommend a solution to improve consistency and to prevent unauthorized changes in the individual accounts in the future. Which solution should the security engineer recommend?
A. Use AWS Resource Access Manager to create shared resources for each required security group and apply an IAM policy that permits read-only access to the security groups only.
B. Create an AWS CloudFormation template that creates the required security groups. Execute the template as part of configuring new accounts. Enable Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) notifications when changes occur.
C. Use AWS Firewall Manager to create a security group policy, enable the policy feature to identify and revert local changes, and enable automatic remediation.
D. Use AWS Control Tower to edit the account factory template to enable the share security groups option. Apply an SCP to the OU or individual accounts that prohibits security group modifications from local account users.
210. A developer reported that AWS CloudTrail was disabled on their account. A security engineer investigated the account and discovered the event was undetected by the current security solution. The security engineer must recommend a solution that will detect future changes to the CloudTrail configuration and send alerts when changes occur. What should the security engineer do to meet these requirements?
A. Use AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM) to monitor the AWS CloudTrail configuration. Send notifications using Amazon SNS.
B. Create an Amazon CloudWatch Events rule to monitor Amazon GuardDuty findings. Send email notifications using Amazon SNS.
C. Update security contact details in AWS account settings for AWS Support to send alerts when suspicious activity is detected.
D. Use Amazon Inspector to automatically detect security issues. Send alerts using Amazon SNS.
211. A security engineer noticed an anomaly within a company EC2 instance as shown in the image. The engineer must now investigate what is causing the anomaly. What are the MOST effective steps to take to ensure that the instance is not further manipulated, while allowing the engineer to understand what happened?
A. Remove the instance from the Auto Scaling group. Place the instance within an isolation security group, detach the EBS volume, launch an EC2 instance with a forensic toolkit, and attach the EBS volume to investigate.
B. Remove the instance from the Auto Scaling group and the Elastic Load Balancer. Place the instance within an isolation security group, launch an EC2 instance with a forensic toolkit, and allow the forensic toolkit image to connect to the suspicious instance to perform the investigation.
C. Remove the instance from the Auto Scaling group. Place the instance within an isolation security group, launch an EC2 instance with a forensic toolkit, and use the forensic toolkit image to deploy an ENI as a network span port to inspect all traffic coming from the suspicious instance.
D. Remove the instance from the Auto Scaling group and the Elastic Load Balancer. Place the instance within an isolation security group, make a copy of the EBS volume from a new snapshot, launch an EC2 instance with a forensic toolkit, and attach the copy of the EBS volume to investigate.
212. An external auditor finds that a company’s user passwords have no minimum length. The company is currently using two identity providers:
AWS IAM federated with on-premises Active Directory
Amazon Cognito user pools to access an AWS Cloud application developed by the company
Which combination of actions should the security engineer take to solve this issue? (Choose two.)
A. Update the password length policy in the on-premises Active Directory configuration.
B. Update the password length policy in the IAM configuration.
C. Enforce an IAM policy in Amazon Cognito and AWS IAM with a minimum password length condition.
D. Update the password length policy in the Amazon Cognito configuration.
E. Create an SCP with AWS Organizations that enforces a minimum password length for AWS IAM and Amazon Cognito.
213. A company’s data lake uses Amazon S3 and Amazon Athena. The company’s security engineer has been asked to design an encryption solution that meets the company’s data protection requirements. The encryption solution must work with Amazon S3 and keys managed by the company. The encryption solution must be protected in a hardware security module that is validated to Federal information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-2 Level 3. Which solution meets these requirements?
A. Use client-side encryption with an AWS KMS customer-managed key implemented with the AWS Encryption SDK.
B. Use AWS CloudHSM to store the keys and perform cryptographic operations. Save the encrypted text in Amazon S3.
C. Use an AWS KMS customer-managed key that is backed by a custom key store using AWS CloudHSM.
D. Use an AWS KMS customer-managed key with the bring your own key (BYOK) feature to import a key stored in AWS CloudHSM.
214. A company’s security engineer has been asked to monitor and report all AWS account root user activities. Which of the following would enable the security engineer to monitor and report all root user activities? (Choose two.)
A. Configuring AWS Organizations to monitor root user API calls on the paying account
B. Creating an Amazon CloudWatch Events rule that will trigger when any API call from the root user is reported
C. Configuring Amazon Inspector to scan the AWS account for any root user activity
D. Configuring AWS Trusted Advisor to send an email to the security team when the root user logs in to the console
E. Using Amazon SNS to notify the target group
215. A security engineer needs to ensure their company’s use of AWS meets AWS security best practices. As part of this, the AWS account root user must not be used for daily work. The root user must be monitored for use, and the security team must be alerted as quickly as possible if the root user is used. Which solution meets these requirements?
A. Set up an Amazon CloudWatch Events rule that triggers an Amazon SNS notification.
B. Create root user access keys. Use an AWS Lambda function to parse AWS CloudTrail logs from Amazon S3 and generate notifications using Amazon SNS.
C. Set up a rule in AWS Config to trigger root user events. Trigger an AWS Lambda function and generate notifications using Amazon SNS.
D. Use Amazon Inspector to monitor the usage of the root user and generate notifications using Amazon SNS.
216. A security engineer is designing an incident response plan to address the risk of a compromised Amazon EC2 instance. The plan must recommend a solution to meet the following requirements:
A trusted forensic environment must be provisioned.
Automated response processes must be orchestrated.
Which AWS services should be included in the plan? (Choose two.)
A. AWS CloudFormation
B. Amazon GuardDuty
C. Amazon Inspector
D. Amazon Macie
E. AWS Step Functions
217. A company’s security information events management (SIEM) tool receives new AWS CloudTrail logs from an Amazon S3 bucket that is configured to send all object created event notifications to an Amazon SNS topic. An Amazon SQS queue is subscribed to this SNS topic. The company’s SIEM tool then polls this SQS queue for new messages using an IAM role and fetches new log events from the S3 bucket based on the SQS messages. After a recent security review that resulted in restricted permissions, the SIEM tool has stopped receiving new CloudTrail logs. Which of the following are possible causes of this issue? (Choose three.)
A. The SQS queue does not allow the SQS:SendMessage action from the SNS topic.
B. The SNS topic does not allow the SNS:Publish action from Amazon S3.
C. The SNS topic is not delivering raw messages to the SQS queue.
D. The S3 bucket policy does not allow CloudTrail to perform the PutObject action.
E. The IAM role used by the SIEM tool does not have permission to subscribe to the SNS topic.
F. The IAM role used by the SIEM tool does not allow the SQS:DeleteMessage action.
218. A security engineer has noticed that VPC Flow Logs are getting a lot of REJECT traffic originating from a single Amazon EC2 instance in an Auto Scaling group. The security engineer is concerned that this EC2 instance may be compromised. What immediate action should the security engineer take?
A. Remove the instance from the Auto Scaling group. Close the security group with ingress only from a single forensic IP address to perform an analysis.
B. Remove the instance from the Auto Scaling group. Change the network ACL rules to allow traffic only from a single forensic IP address to perform an analysis. Add a rule to deny all other traffic.
C. Remove the instance from the Auto Scaling group. Enable Amazon GuardDuty in that AWS account. Install the Amazon Inspector agent on the suspicious EC2 instance to perform a scan.
D. Take a snapshot of the suspicious EC2 instance. Create a new EC2 instance from the snapshot in a closed security group with ingress only from a single forensic IP address to perform an analysis.
219. A company’s director of information security wants a daily email report from AWS that contains recommendations for each company account to meet AWS Security best practices. Which solution would meet these requirements?
A. In every AWS account, configure AWS Lambda to query the AWS Support API for AWS Trusted Advisor security checks. Send the results from Lambda to an Amazon SNS topic to send reports.
B. Configure Amazon GuardDuty in a master account and invite all other accounts to be managed by the master account. Use GuardDuty’s integration with Amazon SNS to report on findings.
C. Use Amazon Athena and Amazon QuickSight to build reports off of AWS CloudTrail. Create a daily Amazon CloudWatch trigger to run the report daily and email it using Amazon SNS.
D. Use AWS Artifact’s pre-built reports and subscriptions. Subscribe the director of information security to the reports by adding the director as the security alternate contact for each account.
220. A company is using AWS Organizations to manage multiple AWS member accounts. All of these accounts have Amazon GuardDuty enabled in all Regions. The company’s AWS Security Operations Center has a centralized security account for logging and monitoring. One of the member accounts has received an excessively high bill. A security engineer discovers that a compromised Amazon EC2 instance is being used to mine cryptocurrency. The Security Operations Center did not receive a GuardDuty finding in the central security account, but there was a GuardDuty finding in the account containing the compromised EC2 instance. The security engineer needs to ensure all GuardDuty findings are available in the security account. What should the security engineer do to resolve this issue?
A. Set up an Amazon CloudWatch Events rule to forward all GuardDuty findings to the security account. Use an AWS Lambda function as a target to raise findings.
B. Set up an Amazon CloudWatch Events rule to forward all GuardDuty findings to the security account. Use an AWS Lambda function as a target to raise findings in AWS Security Hub.
C. Check that GuardDuty in the security account is able to assume a role in the compromised account using the guardduty;listfindings permission. Schedule an Amazon CloudWatch Events rule and an AWS Lambda function to periodically check for GuardDuty findings.
D. Use the aws guardduty get-members AWS CLI command in the security account to see if the account is listed. Send an invitation from GuardDuty in the security account to GuardDuty in the compromised account. Accept the invitation to forward all future GuardDuty findings.
221. A company is designing the security architecture for a global latency-sensitive web application it plans to deploy to AWS. A security engineer needs to configure a highly available and secure two tier architecture. The security design must include controls to prevent common attacks such as DDoS, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection. Which solution meets these requirements?
A. Create an Application Load Balancer (ALB) that uses public subnets across multiple Availability Zones within a single Region. Point the ALB to an Auto Scaling group with Amazon EC2 instances in private subnets across multiple Availability Zones within the same Region. Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution that uses the ALB as its origin. Create appropriate AWS WAF ACLs and enable them on the CloudFront distribution.
B. Create an Application Load Balancer (ALB) that uses private subnets across multiple Availability Zones within a single Region. Point the ALB to an Auto Scaling group with Amazon EC2 instances in private subnets across multiple Availability Zones within the same Region. Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution that uses the ALB as its origin. Create appropriate AWS WAF ACLs and enable them on the CloudFront distribution.
C. Create an Application Load Balancer (ALB) that uses public subnets across multiple Availability Zones within a single Region. Point the ALB to an Auto Scaling group with Amazon EC2 instances in private subnets across multiple Availability Zones within the same Region. Create appropriate AWS WAF ACLs and enable them on the ALB.
D. Create an Application Load Balancer (ALB) that uses private subnets across multiple Availability Zones within a single Region. Point the ALB to an Auto Scaling group with Amazon EC2 instances in private subnets across multiple Availability Zones within the same Region. Create appropriate AWS WAF ACLs and enable them on the ALB.
222. A company is using AWS Organizations to manage multiple AWS accounts. The company has an application that allows users to assume the AppUser IAM role to download files from an Amazon S3 bucket that is encrypted with an AWS KMS CMK. However, when users try to access the files in the S3 bucket, they get an access denied error. What should a security engineer do to troubleshoot this error? (Choose three.)
A. Ensure the KMS policy allows the AppUser role to have permission to decrypt for the CMK.
B. Ensure the S3 bucket policy allows the AppUser role to have permission to get objects for the S3 bucket.
C. Ensure the CMK was created before the S3 bucket.
D. Ensure the S3 block public access feature is enabled for the S3 bucket.
E. Ensure that automatic key rotation is disabled for the CMK.
F. Ensure the SCPs within Organizations allow access to the S3 bucket.
223. A city is implementing an election results reporting website that will use Amazon CloudFront. The website runs on a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in an Auto Scaling group. Election results are updated hourly and are stored as .pdf files in an Amazon S3 bucket. A security engineer needs to ensure that all external access to the website goes through CloudFront. Which solution meets these requirements?
A. Create an IAM role that allows CloudFront to access the specific S3 bucket. Modify the S3 bucket policy to allow only the new IAM role to access its contents. Create an interface VPC endpoint for CloudFront to securely communicate with the ALB.
B. Create an IAM role that allows CloudFront to access the specific S3 bucket. Modify the S3 bucket policy to allow only the new IAM role to access its contents. Associate the ALB with a security group that allows only incoming traffic from the CloudFront service to communicate with the ALB.
C. Create an origin access identity (OAI) in CloudFront. Modify the S3 bucket policy to allow only the new OAI to access the bucket contents. Create an interface VPC endpoint for CloudFront to securely communicate with the ALB.
D. Create an origin access identity (OAI) in CloudFront. Modify the S3 bucket policy to allow only the new OAI to access the bucket contents. Associate the ALB with a security group that allows only incoming traffic from the CloudFront service to communicate with the ALB.
224. Which of the following are valid configurations for using SSL certificates with Amazon CloudFront? (Choose three.)
A. Default AWS Certificate Manager certificate
B. Custom SSL certificate stored in AWS KMS
C. Default CloudFront certificate
D. Custom SSL certificate stored in AWS Certificate Manager
E. Default SSL certificate stored in AWS Secrets Manager
F. Custom SSL certificate stored in AWS IAM
225. An AWS account administrator created an IAM group and applied the following managed policy to require that each individual user authenticate using multi-factor authentication:
After implementing the policy, the administrator receives reports that users are unable to perform Amazon EC2 commands using the AWS CLI. What should the administrator do to resolve this problem while still enforcing multi-factor authentication?
A. Change the value of aws:MultiFactorAuthPresent to true.
B. Instruct users to run the aws sts get-session-token CLI command and pass the multi-factor authentication –serial-number and –token-code parameters. Use these resulting values to make API/CLI calls.
C. Implement federated API/CLI access using SAML 2.0, then configure the identity provider to enforce multi-factor authentication.
D. Create a role and enforce multi-factor authentication in the role trust policy. Instruct users to run the sts assume-role CLI command and pass –serial-number and –token-code parameters. Store the resulting values in environment variables. Add sts:AssumeRole to NotAction in the policy.
226. A recent security audit identified that a company’s application team injects database credentials into the environment variables of an AWS Fargate task. The company’s security policy mandates that all sensitive data be encrypted at rest and in transit. Which combination of actions should the security team take to make the application compliant with the security policy? (Choose three.)
A. Store the credentials securely in a file in an Amazon S3 bucket with restricted access to the application team IAM role. Ask the application team to read the credentials from the S3 object instead.
B. Create an AWS Secrets Manager secret and specify the key/value pairs to be stored in this secret.
C. Modify the application to pull credentials from the AWS Secrets Manager secret instead of the environment variables.
D. Add the following statement to the container instance IAM role policy:
E. Add the following statement to the task execution role policy:
F. Log in to the AWS Fargate instance, create a script to read the secret value from AWS Secrets Manager, and inject the environment variables. Ask the application team to redeploy the application.
227. A security engineer is responsible for providing secure access to AWS resources for thousands of developers in a company’s corporate identity provider (IdP). The developers access a set of AWS services from their corporate premises using IAM credentials. Due to the volume of requests for provisioning new IAM users, it is taking a long time to grant access permissions. The security engineer receives reports that developers are sharing their IAM credentials with others to avoid provisioning delays. This causes concern about overall security for the security engineer. Which actions will meet the program requirements that address security?
A. Create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm for AWS CloudTrail events. Create a metric filter to send a notification when the same set of IAM credentials is used by multiple developers.
B. Create a federation between AWS and the existing corporate IdP. Leverage IAM roles to provide federated access to AWS resources.
C. Create a VPN tunnel between the corporate premises and the VPC. Allow permissions to all AWS services only if it originates from corporate premises.
D. Create multiple IAM roles for each IAM user. Ensure that users who use the same IAM credentials cannot assume the same IAM role at the same time.
228. A company hosts an application on Amazon EC2 that is subject to specific rules for regulatory compliance. One rule states that traffic to and from the workload must be inspected for network level attacks. This involves inspecting the whole packet. To comply with this regulatory rule, a security engineer must install intrusion detection software on a c5n.4xlarge EC2 instance. The engineer must then configure the software to monitor traffic to and from the application instances. What should the security engineer do next?
A. Place the network interface in promiscuous mode to capture the traffic.
B. Configure VPC Flow Logs to send traffic to the monitoring EC2 instance using a Network Load Balancer.
C. Configure VPC traffic mirroring to send traffic to the monitoring EC2 instance using a Network Load Balancer.
D. Use Amazon Inspector to detect network-level attacks and trigger an AWS Lambda function to send the suspicious packets to the EC2 instance.
229. A company’s security officer is concerned about the risk of AWS account root user logins and has assigned a security engineer to implement a notification solution for near-real-time alerts upon account root user logins. How should the security engineer meet these requirements?
A. Create a cron job that runs a script to download the AWS IAM security credentials file, parse the file for account root user logins, and email the security team’s distribution list.
B. Run AWS CloudTrail logs through Amazon CloudWatch Events to detect account root user logins and trigger an AWS Lambda function to send an Amazon SNS notification to the security team’s distribution list.
C. Save AWS CloudTrail logs to an Amazon S3 bucket in the security team’s account. Process the CloudTrail logs with the security engineer’s logging solution for account root user logins. Send an Amazon SNS notification to the security team upon encountering the account root user login events.
D. Save VPC Flow Logs to an Amazon S3 bucket in the security team’s account, and process the VPC Flow Logs with their logging solutions for account root user logins. Send an Amazon SNS notification to the security team upon encountering the account root user login events.
230. A company wants to encrypt data locally while meeting regulatory requirements related to key exhaustion. The encryption key can be no more than 10 days old or encrypt more than 2^16 objects. Any encryption key must be generated on a FIPS-validated hardware security module (HSM). The company is cost-conscious, as it plans to upload an average of 100 objects to Amazon S3 each second for sustained operations across 5 data producers. Which approach MOST efficiently meets the company’s needs?
A. Use the AWS Encryption SDK and set the maximum age to 10 days and the maximum number of messages encrypted to 2^16. Use AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) to generate the master key and data key. Use data key caching with the Encryption SDK during the encryption process.
B. Use AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) to generate an AWS managed CMK. Then use Amazon S3 client-side encryption configured to automatically rotate with every object.
C. Use AWS CloudHSM to generate the master key and data keys. Then use Boto 3 and Python to locally encrypt data before uploading the object. Rotate the data key every 10 days or after 2^16 objects have been uploaded to Amazon S3.
D. Use server-side encryption with Amazon S3 managed encryption keys (SSE-S3) and set the master key to automatically rotate.
231. A company is setting up products to deploy in AWS Service Catalog. Management is concerned that when users launch products, elevated IAM privileges will be required to create resources. How should the company mitigate this concern?
A. Add a template constraint to each product in the portfolio.
B. Add a launch constraint to each product in the portfolio.
C. Define resource update constraints for each product in the portfolio.
D. Update the AWS CloudFormation template backing the product to include a service role configuration.
232. A company is implementing a new application in a new AWS account. A VPC and subnets have been created for the application. The application has been peered to an existing VPC in another account in the same AWS Region for database access. Amazon EC2 instances will regularly be created and terminated in the application VPC, but only some of them will need access to the databases in the peered VPC over TCP port 1521. A security engineer must ensure that only the EC2 instances that need access to the databases can access them through the network. How can the security engineer implement this solution?
A. Create a new security group in the database VPC and create an inbound rule that allows all traffic from the IP address range of the application VPC. Add a new network ACL rule on the database subnets. Configure the rule to TCP port 1521 from the IP address range of the application VPC. Attach the new security group to the database instances that the application instances need to access.
B. Create a new security group in the application VPC with an inbound rule that allows the IP address range of the database VPC over TCP port 1521. Create a new security group in the database VPC with an inbound rule that allows the IP address range of the application VPC over port 1521. Attach the new security group to the database instances and the application instances that need database access.
C. Create a new security group in the application VPC with no inbound rules. Create a new security group in the database VPC with an inbound rule that allows TCP port 1521 from the new application security group in the application VPC. Attach the application security group to the application instances that need database access, and attach the database security group to the database instances.
D. Create a new security group in the application VPC with an inbound rule that allows the IP address range of the database VPC over TCP port 1521. Add a new network ACL rule on the database subnets. Configure the rule to allow all traffic from the IP address range of the application VPC. Attach the new security group to the application instances that need database access.
233. A company is running an application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application stores logs locally. A security engineer noticed that logs were lost after a scale-in event. The security engineer needs to recommend a solution to ensure the durability and availability of log data. All logs must be kept for a minimum of 1 year for auditing purposes. What should the security engineer recommend?
A. Within the Auto Scaling lifecycle, add a hook to create an Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) log volume each time an EC2 instance is created. When the instance is terminated, the EBS volume can be reattached to another instance for log review.
B. Create an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system and add a command in the user data section of the Auto Scaling launch template to mount the EFS file system during EC2 instance creation. Configure a process on the instance to copy the logs once a day from an Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume to a directory in the EFS file system.
C. Build the Amazon CloudWatch agent into the AMI used in the Auto Scaling group. Configure the CloudWatch agent to send the logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs for review. D. Within the Auto Scaling lifecycle, add a lifecycle hook at the terminating state transition and alert the engineering team by using a lifecycle notification to Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). Configure the hook to remain in the Terminating:Wait state for 1 hour to allow manual review of the security logs prior to instance termination.
234. A company needs to retain log data archives for several years to be compliant with regulations. The log data is no longer used, but it must be retained. What is the MOST secure and cost-effective solution to meet these requirements?
A. Archive the data to Amazon S3 and apply a restrictive bucket policy to deny the s3:DeleteObject API.
B. Archive the data to Amazon S3 Glacier and apply a Vault Lock policy.
C. Archive the data to Amazon S3 and replicate it to a second bucket in a second AWS Region. Choose the S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) storage class and apply a restrictive bucket policy to deny the s3:DeleteObject API.
D. Migrate the log data to a 16 TB Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume. Create a snapshot of the EBS volume.
235. A company uses an Amazon S3 bucket to store reports. Management has mandated that all new objects stored in this bucket must be encrypted at rest using server-side encryption with a client specified AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) CMK owned by the same account as the S3 bucket. The AWS account number is 111122223333, and the bucket name is reportbucket. The company’s security specialist must write the S3 bucket policy to ensure the mandate can be implemented. Which statement should the security specialist include in the policy?
A.
B.
C.
D.
236. A company website runs on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The instances run in an Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones. There is an Amazon CloudFront distribution in front of the ALB. Users are reporting performance problems. A security engineer discovers that the website is receiving a high rate of unwanted requests to the CloudFront distribution originating from a series of source IP addresses. How should the security engineer address this problem?
A. Using AWS Shield, configure a deny rule with an IP match condition containing the source IPs of the unwanted requests.
B. Using Auto Scaling, configure the maximum instance value to an increased count that will absorb the unwanted requests.
C. Using an Amazon VPC NACL, configure an inbound deny rule for each source IP CIDR address of the unwanted requests.
D. Using AWS WAF, configure a web ACL rate-based rule on the CloudFront distribution with a rate limit below that of the unwanted requests.
237. A developer is building a serverless application hosted on AWS that uses Amazon Redshift as a data store. The application has a separate module for read/write and read-only functionality. The modules need their own database users for compliance reasons. Which combination of steps should a security engineer implement to grant appropriate access? (Choose two.)
A. Configure cluster security groups for each application module to control access to database users that are required for read-only and read-write.
B. Configure a VPC endpoint for Amazon Redshift. Configure an endpoint policy that maps database users to each application module, and allow access to the tables that are required for read-only and read/write.
C. Configure an IAM policy for each module. Specify the ARN of an Amazon Redshift database user that allows the GetClusterCredentials API call.
D. Create local database users for each module.
E. Configure an IAM policy for each module. Specify the ARN of an IAM user that allows the GetClusterCredentials API call.
238. A company uses an external identity provider to allow federation into different AWS accounts. A security engineer for the company needs to identify the federated user that terminated a production Amazon EC2 instance a week ago. What is the FASTEST way for the security engineer to identify the federated user?
A. Review the AWS CloudTrail event history logs in an Amazon S3 bucket and look for the TerminateInstances event to identify the federated user from the role session name.
B. Filter the AWS CloudTrail event history for the TerminateInstances event and identify the assumed IAM role. Review the AssumeRoleWithSAML event call in CloudTrail to identify the corresponding username.
C. Search the AWS CloudTrail logs for the TerminateInstances event and note the event time. Review the IAM Access Advisor tab for all federated roles. The last accessed time should match the time when the instance was terminated.
D. Use Amazon Athena to run a SQL query on the AWS CloudTrail logs stored in an Amazon S3 bucket and filter on the TerminateInstances event. Identify the corresponding role and run another query to filter the AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity event for the user name.
239. A company has two software development teams that are creating applications that store sensitive data in Amazon S3. Each team’s data must always be separate. The company’s security team must design a data encryption strategy for both teams that provides the ability to audit key usage. The solution must also minimize operational overhead. What should the security team recommend?
A. Tell the application teams to use two different S3 buckets with separate AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) AWS managed CMKs. Limit the key policies to allow encryption and decryption of the CMKs to their respective teams only. Force the teams to use encryption context to encrypt and decrypt.
B. Tell the application teams to use two different S3 buckets with a single AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) AWS managed CMK. Limit the key policy to allow encryption and decryption of the CMK only. Do not allow the teams to use encryption context to encrypt and decrypt.
C. Tell the application teams to use two different S3 buckets with separate AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) customer managed CMKs. Limit the key policies to allow encryption and decryption of the CMKs to their respective teams only. Force the teams to use encryption context to encrypt and decrypt.
D. Tell the application teams to use two different S3 buckets with a single AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) customer managed CMK. Limit the key policy to allow encryption and decryption of the CMK only. Do not allow the teams to use encryption context to encrypt and decrypt.
240. A security engineer is designing a solution that will provide end-to-end encryption between clients and Docker containers running in Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS). This solution will also handle volatile traffic patterns. Which solution would have the MOST scalability and LOWEST latency?
A. Configure a Network Load Balancer to terminate the TLS traffic and then re-encrypt the traffic to the containers.
B. Configure an Application Load Balancer to terminate the TLS traffic and then re-encrypt the traffic to the containers.
C. Configure a Network Load Balancer with a TCP listener to pass through TLS traffic to the containers.
D. Configure Amazon Route to use multi value answer routing to send traffic to the containers.
241. A company uses an AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) CMK to encrypt application data before it is stored. The company’s security policy was recently modified to require encryption key rotation annually. A security engineer must ensure that annual global key rotation is enabled for the key without making changes to the application. What should the security engineer do to accomplish this requirement?
A. Create new AWS managed keys. Configure the key schedule for the annual rotation. Create an alias to point to the new keys.
B. Enable automatic annual key rotation for the existing customer managed CMKs. Update the application encryption library to use a new key ID for all encryption operations. Fall back to the old key ID to decrypt data that was encrypted with previous versions of the key.
C. Create new AWS managed CMKs. Configure the key schedule for annual rotation. Create an alias to point to the new CMKs.
D. Enable automatic annual key rotation for the existing customer managed CMKs. Update the application encryption library to use a new key ID for all encryption operations. Create a key grant for the old CMKs and update the code to point to the ARN of the grants.
242. A company is collecting AWS CloudTrail log data from multiple AWS accounts by managing individual trails in each account and forwarding log data to a centralized Amazon S3 bucket residing in a log archive account. After CloudTrail introduced support for AWS Organizations trails, the company decided to further centralize management and automate deployment of the CloudTrail logging capability across all of its AWS accounts. The company’s security engineer created an AWS Organizations trail in the master account, enabled server-side encryption with AWS KMS managed keys (SSE-KMS) for the log files, and specified the same bucket as the storage location. However, the engineer noticed that logs recorded by the new trail were not delivered to the bucket. Which factors could cause this issue? (Choose two.)
A. The CMK key policy does not allow CloudTrail to make encrypt and decrypt API calls against the key.
B. The CMK key policy does not allow CloudTrail to make GenerateDatakey API calls against the key.
C. The IAM role used by the CloudTrail trail does not have permissions to make PutObject API calls against a folder created for the Organizations trail.
D. The S3 bucket policy does not allow CloudTrail to make PutObject API calls against a folder created for the Organizations trail.
E. The CMK key policy does not allow the IAM role used by the CloudTrail trail to use the key for cryptographic operations.
243. A company’s AWS CloudTrail logs are all centrally stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. The security team controls the company’s AWS account. The security team must prevent unauthorized access and tampering of the CloudTrail logs. Which combination of steps should the security team take? (Choose three.)
A. Configure server-side encryption with AWS KMS managed encryption keys (SSE-KMS) B. Compress log file with secure gzip.
C. Create an Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events) rule to notify the security team of any modifications on CloudTrail log files.
D. Implement least privilege access to the S3 bucket by configuring a bucket policy.
E. Configure CloudTrail log file integrity validation.
F. Configure Access Analyzer for S3.
244. Amazon GuardDuty has detected communications to a known command and control endpoint from a company’s Amazon EC2 instance. The instance was found to be running a vulnerable version of a common web framework. The company’s security operations team wants to quickly identify other compute resources with the specific version of that framework installed. Which approach should the team take to accomplish this task?
A. Scan all the EC2 instances for noncompliance with AWS Config. Use Amazon Athena to query AWS CloudTrail logs for the framework installation.
B. Scan all the EC2 instances with the Amazon Inspector Network Reachability rules package to identify instances running a web server with RecognizedPortWithListener findings.
C. Scan all the EC2 instances with AWS Systems Manager to identify the vulnerable version of the web framework.
D. Scan all the EC2 instances with AWS Resource Access Manager to identify the vulnerable version of the web framework.
245. A VPC endpoint for Amazon CloudWatch Logs was recently added to a company’s VPC. The company’s system administrator has verified that private DNS is enabled and that the appropriate route tables and security groups have been updated. The role attached to the Amazon EC2 instance is:
The CloudWatch Logs agent is running and attempting to write to a CloudWatch Logs stream in the same AWS account. However, no logs are being updated in CloudWatch Logs. What is the likely cause of this issue?
A. The EC2 instance role is not allowing the appropriate Put actions.
B. The EC2 instance role policy is incorrect and should be changed to:
C. The CloudWatch Logs endpoint policy is not allowing the appropriate Put actions.
D. The CloudWatch Logs resource policy is not allowing the appropriate List actions.
246. A security engineer is defining the controls required to protect the AWS account root user credentials in an AWS Organizations hierarchy. The controls should also limit the impact in case these credentials have been compromised. Which combination of controls should the security engineer propose? (Choose three.)
A. Apply the following SCP:
B. Apply the following SCP:
C. Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for the root user.
D. Set a strong randomized password and store it in a secure location.
E. Create an access key ID and secret access key, and store them in a secure location.
F. Apply the following permissions boundary to the root user:
247. A large government organization is moving to the cloud and has specific encryption requirements. The first workload to move requires that a customer’s data be immediately destroyed when the customer makes that request. Management has asked the security team to provide a solution that will securely store the data, allow only authorized applications to perform encryption and decryption, and allow for immediate destruction of the data. Which solution will meet these requirements?
A. Use AWS Secrets Manager and an AWS SDK to create a unique secret for the customer-specific data.
B. Use AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) and the AWS Encryption SDK to generate and store a data encryption key for each customer.
C. Use AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) with service-managed keys to generate and store customer-specific data encryption keys.
D. Use AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) and create an AWS CloudHSM custom key store. Use CloudHSM to generate and store a new CMK for each customer.
248. A company has a web-based application using Amazon CloudFront and running on Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The ALB is terminating TLS and balancing load across ECS service tasks. A security engineer needs to design a solution to ensure that application content is accessible only through CloudFront and that it is never accessible directly. How should the security engineer build the MOST secure solution?
A. Add an origin custom header. Set the viewer protocol policy to HTTP and HTTPS. Set the origin protocol policy to HTTPS only. Update the application to validate the CloudFront custom header.
B. Add an origin custom header. Set the viewer protocol policy to HTTPS only. Set the origin protocol policy to match the viewer. Update the application to validate the CloudFront custom header.
C. Add an origin custom header. Set the viewer protocol policy to redirect HTTP to HTTPS. Set the origin protocol policy to HTTP only. Update the application to validate the CloudFront custom header.
D. Add an origin custom header. Set the viewer protocol policy to redirect HTTP to HTTPS. Set the origin protocol policy to HTTPS only. Update the application to validate the CloudFront custom header.
249. A company needs to migrate several applications to AWS. This will require storing more than 5,000 credentials. To meet compliance requirements, the company will use its existing password management system for key rotation, auditing, and integration with third-party secrets containers. The company has a limited budget and is seeking the most cost-effective solution that is still secure. How should the company accomplish this at the LOWEST cost?
A. Configure the company’s key management solution to integrate with AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store.
B. Configure the company’s key management solution to integrate with AWS Secrets Manager.
C. Use an Amazon S3 encrypted bucket to store the secrets and configure the applications with the appropriate roles to access the secrets.
D. Configure the company’s key management solution to integrate with AWS CloudHSM.
250. Amazon GuardDuty has detected communications to a known command and control endpoint from a company’s Amazon EC2 instance. The instance was found to be running a vulnerable version of a common web framework. The company’s security operations team wants to quickly identify other compute resources with the specific version of that framework installed. Which approach should the team take to accomplish this task?
A. Scan all the EC2 instances for noncompliance with AWS Config. Use Amazon Athena to query AWS CloudTrail logs for the framework installation.
B. Scan all the EC2 instances with the Amazon Inspector Network Reachability rules package to identify instances running a web server with RecognizedPortWithListener findings.
C. Scan all the EC2 instances with AWS Systems Manager to identify the vulnerable version of the web framework.
D. Scan all the EC2 instances with AWS Resource Access Manager to identify the vulnerable version of the web framework.
