AWS Certified Security Specialty SCS-C02

Q1. A company has a single AWS account and uses an Amazon EC2 instance to test application code. The company recently discovered that the instance was compromised. The instance was serving up malware. The analysis of the instance showed that the instance was compromised 35 days ago.
A security engineer must implement a continuous monitoring solution that automatically notifies the company’s security team about compromised instances through an email distribution list for high severity findings. The security engineer must implement the solution as soon as possible.
Which combination of steps should the security engineer take to meet these requirements? (Choose three.)

A. Enable AWS Security Hub in the AWS account.
B. Enable Amazon GuardDuty in the AWS account.
C. Create an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic. Subscribe the security team’s email distribution list to the topic.
D. Create an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue. Subscribe the security team’s email distribution list to the queue.
E. Create an Amazon EventBridge rule for GuardDuty findings of high severity. Configure the rule to publish a message to the topic.
F. Create an Amazon EventBridge rule for Security Hub findings of high severity. Configure the rule to publish a message to the queue.

Hint Answer: B C E

Q2. An ecommerce company has a web application architecture that runs primarily on containers. The application containers are deployed on Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS). The container images for the application are stored in Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR).
The company’s security team is performing an audit of components of the application architecture. The security team identifies issues with some container images that are stored in the container repositories.
The security team wants to address these issues by implementing continual scanning and on-push scanning of the container images. The security team needs to implement a solution that makes any findings from these scans visible in a centralized dashboard. The security team plans to use the dashboard to view these findings along with other security-related findings that they intend to generate in the future. There are specific repositories that the security team needs to exclude from the scanning process.
Which solution will meet these requirements?

A. Use Amazon Inspector. Create inclusion rules in Amazon ECR to match repositories that need to be scanned. Push Amazon Inspector findings to AWS Security Hub.
B. Use ECR basic scanning of container images. Create inclusion rules in Amazon ECR to match repositories that need to be scanned. Push findings to AWS Security Hub.
C. Use ECR basic scanning of container images. Create inclusion rules in Amazon ECR to match repositories that need to be scanned. Push findings to Amazon Inspector.
D. Use Amazon Inspector. Create inclusion rules in Amazon Inspector to match repositories that need to be scanned. Push Amazon Inspector findings to AWS Config.

Hint Answer: A

Q3. A company uses AWS Organizations to manage a multi-account AWS environment in a single AWS Region. The organization’s management account is named management-01. The company has turned on AWS Config in all accounts in the organization. The company has designated an account named security-01 as the delegated administrator for AWS Config.
All accounts report the compliance status of each account’s rules to the AWS Config delegated administrator account by using an AWS Config aggregator. Each account administrator can configure and manage the account’s own AWS Config rules to handle each account’s unique compliance requirements.
A security engineer needs to implement a solution to automatically deploy a set of 10 AWS Config rules to all existing and future AWS accounts in the organization. The solution must turn on AWS Config automatically during account creation.
Which combination of steps will meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

A. Create an AWS CloudFormation template that contains the 10 required AWS Config rules. Deploy the template by using CloudFormation StackSets in the security-01 account.
B. Create a conformance pack that contains the 10 required AWS Config rules. Deploy the conformance pack from the security-01 account.
C. Create a conformance pack that contains the 10 required AWS Config rules. Deploy the conformance pack from the management-01 account.
D. Create an AWS CloudFormation template that will activate AWS Config. Deploy the template by using CloudFormation StackSets in the security-01 account.
E. Create an AWS CloudFormation template that will activate AWS Config. Deploy the template by using CloudFormation StackSets in the management-01 account.

Hint Answer: B E

Q4. While securing the connection between a company’s VPC and its on-premises data center, a security engineer sent a ping command from an on-premises host (IP address 203.0.113.12) to an Amazon EC2 instance (IP address 172.31.16.139). The ping command did not return a response. The flow log in the VPC showed the following:

What action should be performed to allow the ping to work?
A. In the security group of the EC2 instance, allow inbound ICMP traffic.
B. In the security group of the EC2 instance, allow outbound ICMP traffic.
C. In the VPC’s NACL, allow inbound ICMP traffic.
D. In the VPC’s NACL, allow outbound ICMP traffic.

Hint Answer: D

Q5. A security engineer is configuring a new website that is named example.com. The security engineer wants to secure communications with the website by requiring users to connect to example.com through HTTPS.
Which of the following is a valid option for storing SSL/TLS certificates?

A. Custom SSL certificate that is stored in AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)
B. Default SSL certificate that is stored in Amazon CloudFront
C. Custom SSL certificate that is stored in AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
D. Default SSL certificate that is stored in Amazon S3

Hint Answer: C

Q6. A company is expanding its group of stores. On the day that each new store opens, the company wants to launch a customized web application for that store. Each store’s application will have a non-production environment and a production environment. Each environment will be deployed in a separate AWS account. The company uses AWS Organizations and has an OU that is used only for these accounts.
The company distributes most of the development work to third-party development teams. A security engineer needs to ensure that each team follows the company’s deployment plan for AWS resources. The security engineer also must limit access to the deployment plan to only the developers who need access. The security engineer already has created an AWS CloudFormation template that implements the deployment plan.
What should the security engineer do next to meet the requirements in the MOST secure way?

A. Create an AWS Service Catalog portfolio in the organization’s management account. Upload the CloudFormation template. Add the template to the portfolio’s product list. Share the portfolio with the OU.
B. Use the CloudFormation CLI to create a module from the CloudFormation template. Register the module as a private extension in the CloudFormation registry. Publish the extension. In the OU, create an SCP that allows access to the extension.
C. Create an AWS Service Catalog portfolio in the organization’s management account. Upload the CloudFormation template. Add the template to the portfolio’s product list. Create an IAM role that has a trust policy that allows cross-account access to the portfolio for users in the OU accounts. Attach the AWSServiceCatalogEndUserFullAccess managed policy to the role.
D. Use the CloudFormation CLI to create a module from the CloudFormation template. Register the module as a private extension in the CloudFormation registry. Publish the extension. Share the extension with the OU.

Hint Answer: C

Q7. An international company has established a new business entity in South Korea. The company also has established a new AWS account to contain the workload for the South Korean region. The company has set up the workload in the new account in the ap-northeast-2 Region. The workload consists of three Auto Scaling groups of Amazon EC2 instances. All workloads that operate in this Region must keep system logs and application logs for 7 years. A security engineer must implement a solution to ensure that no logging data is lost for each instance during scaling activities. The solution also must keep the logs for only the required period of 7 years.
Which combination of steps should the security engineer take to meet these requirements? (Choose three.)

A. Ensure that the Amazon CloudWatch agent is installed on all the EC2 instances that the Auto Scaling groups launch. Generate a CloudWatch agent configuration file to forward the required logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs.
B. Set the log retention for desired log groups to 7 years.
C. Attach an IAM role to the launch configuration or launch template that the Auto Scaling groups use. Configure the role to provide the necessary permissions to forward logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs.
D. Attach an IAM role to the launch configuration or launch template that the Auto Scaling groups use. Configure the role to provide the necessary permissions to forward logs to Amazon S3.
E. Ensure that a log forwarding application is installed on all the EC2 instances that the Auto Scaling groups launch. Configure the log forwarding application to periodically bundle the logs and forward the logs to Amazon S3.
F. Configure an Amazon S3 Lifecycle policy on the target S3 bucket to expire objects after 7 years.

Hint Answer: A B C

Q8. A security engineer is designing an IAM policy to protect AWS API operations. The policy must enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) for IAM users to access certain services in the AWS production account. Each session must remain valid for only 2 hours. The current version of the IAM policy is as follows:

Which combination of conditions must the security engineer add to the IAM policy to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)
A. “Bool”: {“aws:MultiFactorAuthPresent”: “true”}
B. “Bool”: {“aws:MultiFactorAuthPresent”: “false”}
C. “NumericLessThan”: {“aws:MultiFactorAuthAge”: “7200”}
D. “NumericGreaterThan”: {“aws:MultiFactorAuthAge”: “7200”}
E. “NumericLessThan”: {“MaxSessionDuration”: “7200”}

Hint Answer: A C

Q9. A company uses AWS Organizations and has production workloads across multiple AWS accounts. A security engineer needs to design a solution that will proactively monitor for suspicious behavior across all the accounts that contain production workloads. The solution must automate remediation of incidents across the production accounts. The solution also must publish a notification to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic when a critical security finding is detected. In addition, the solution must send all security incident logs to a dedicated account. Which solution will meet these requirements?

A. Activate Amazon GuardDuty in each production account. In a dedicated logging account, aggregate all GuardDuty logs from each production account. Remediate incidents by configuring GuardDuty to directly invoke an AWS Lambda function. Configure the Lambda function to also publish notifications to the SNS topic.
B. Activate AWS Security Hub in each production account. In a dedicated logging account, aggregate all Security Hub findings from each production account. Remediate incidents by using AWS Config and AWS Systems Manager. Configure Systems Manager to also publish notifications to the SNS topic.
C. Activate Amazon GuardDuty in each production account. In a dedicated logging account, aggregate all GuardDuty logs from each production account. Remediate incidents by using Amazon EventBridge to invoke a custom AWS Lambda function from the GuardDuty findings. Configure the Lambda function to also publish notifications to the SNS topic.
D. Activate AWS Security Hub in each production account. In a dedicated logging account, aggregate all Security Hub findings from each production account. Remediate incidents by using Amazon EventBridge to invoke a custom AWS Lambda function from the Security Hub findings. Configure the Lambda function to also publish notifications to the SNS topic.

Hint Answer: C

Q10. A company is designing a multi-account structure for its development teams. The company is using AWS Organizations and AWS IAM Identity Center (AWS Single Sign-On). The company must implement a solution so that the development teams can use only specific AWS Regions and so that each AWS account allows access to only specific AWS services. Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

A. Use IAM Identity Center to set up service-linked roles with IAM policy statements that include the Condition, Resource, and NotAction elements to allow access to only the Regions and services that are needed.
B. Deactivate AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS) in Regions that the developers are not allowed to use.
C. Create SCPs that include the Condition, Resource, and NotAction elements to allow access to only the Regions and services that are needed.
D. For each AWS account, create tailored identity-based policies for IAM Identity Center. Use statements that include the Condition, Resource, and NotAction elements to allow access to only the Regions and services that are needed.

Hint Answer: C

Q11. A company is developing an ecommerce application. The application uses Amazon EC2 instances and an Amazon RDS MySQL database. For compliance reasons, data must be secured in transit and at rest. The company needs a solution that minimizes operational overhead and minimizes cost. Which solution meets these requirements?

A. Use TLS certificates from AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) with an Application Load Balancer. Deploy self-signed certificates on the EC2 instances. Ensure that the database client software uses a TLS connection to Amazon RDS. Enable encryption of the RDS DB instance. Enable encryption on the Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes that support the EC2 instances.
B. Use TLS certificates from a third-party vendor with an Application Load Balancer. Install the same certificates on the EC2 instances. Ensure that the database client software uses a TLS connection to Amazon RDS. Use AWS Secrets Manager for client-side encryption of application data.
C. Use AWS CloudHSM to generate TLS certificates for the EC2 instances. Install the TLS certificates on the EC2 instances. Ensure that the database client software uses a TLS connection to Amazon RDS. Use the encryption keys from CloudHSM for client-side encryption of application data.
D. Use Amazon CloudFront with AWS WAF. Send HTTP connections to the origin EC2 instances. Ensure that the database client software uses a TLS connection to Amazon RDS. Use AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) for client-side encryption of application data before the data is stored in the RDS database.

Hint Answer: A

Q12. A security engineer is working with a company to design an ecommerce application. The application will run on Amazon EC2 instances that run in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application will use an Amazon RDS DB instance for its database. The only required connectivity from the internet is for HTTP and HTTPS traffic to the application. The application must communicate with an external payment provider that allows traffic only from a preconfigured allow list of IP addresses. The company must ensure that communications with the external payment provider are not interrupted as the environment scales. Which combination of actions should the security engineer recommend to meet these requirements? (Choose three.)

A. Deploy a NAT gateway in each private subnet for every Availability Zone that is in use.
B. Place the DB instance in a public subnet.
C. Place the DB instance in a private subnet.
D. Configure the Auto Scaling group to place the EC2 instances in a public subnet.
E. Configure the Auto Scaling group to place the EC2 instances in a private subnet.
F. Deploy the ALB in a private subnet.

Hint Answer: A C E

Q13. A company discovers a billing anomaly in its AWS account. A security consultant investigates the anomaly and discovers that an employee who left the company 30 days ago still has access to the account. The company has not monitored account activity in the past. The security consultant needs to determine which resources have been deployed or reconfigured by the employee as quickly as possible. Which solution will meet these requirements?

A. In AWS Cost Explorer, filter chart data to display results from the past 30 days. Export the results to a data table. Group the data table by resource.
B. Use AWS Cost Anomaly Detection to create a cost monitor. Access the detection history. Set the time frame to Last 30 days. In the search area, choose the service category.
C. In AWS CloudTrail, filter the event history to display results from the past 30 days. Create an Amazon Athena table that contains the data. Partition the table by event source.
D. Use AWS Audit Manager to create an assessment for the past 30 days. Apply a usage-based framework to the assessment. Configure the assessment to assess by resource.

Hint Answer: C

Q14. A company uses several AWS CloudFormation stacks to handle the deployment of a suite of applications. The leader of the company’s application development team notices that the stack deployments fail with permission errors when some team members try to deploy the stacks. However, other team members can deploy the stacks successfully. The team members access the account by assuming a role that has a specific set of permissions that are necessary for the job responsibilities of the team members. All team members have permissions to perform operations on the stacks.
Which combination of steps will ensure consistent deployment of the stacks MOST securely? (Choose three.)

A. Create a service role that has a composite principal that contains each service that needs the necessary permissions. Configure the role to allow the sts:AssumeRole action.
B. Create a service role that has cloudformation.amazonaws.com as the service principal. Configure the role to allow the sts:AssumeRole action.
C. For each required set of permissions, add a separate policy to the role to allow those permissions. Add the ARN of each CloudFormation stack in the resource field of each policy.
D. For each required set of permissions, add a separate policy to the role to allow those permissions. Add the ARN of each service that needs the permissions in the resource field of the corresponding policy.
E. Update each stack to use the service role.
F Add a policy to each member role to allow the iam:PassRole action. Set the policy’s resource field to the ARN of the service role.

Hint Answer: B D F

Q15. A company has an organization in AWS Organizations. The company wants to use AWS CloudFormation StackSets in the organization to deploy various AWS design patterns into environments. These patterns consist of Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) load balancers, Amazon RDS databases, and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) clusters or Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) clusters. Currently, the company’s developers can create their own CloudFormation stacks to increase the overall speed of delivery. A centralized CI/CD pipeline in a shared services AWS account deploys each CloudFormation stack.
The company’s security team has already provided requirements for each service in accordance with internal standards. If there are any resources that do not comply with the internal standards, the security team must receive notification to take appropriate action. The security team must implement a notification solution that gives developers the ability to maintain the same overall delivery speed that they currently have.
Which solution will meet these requirements in the MOST operationally efficient way?

A. Create an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic. Subscribe the security team’s email addresses to the SNS topic. Create a custom AWS Lambda function that will run the aws cloudformation validate-template AWS CLI command on all CloudFormation templates before the build stage in the CI/CD pipeline. Configure the CI/CD pipeline to publish a notification to the SNS topic if any issues are found.
B. Create an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic. Subscribe the security team’s email addresses to the SNS topic. Create custom rules in CloudFormation Guard for each resource configuration. In the CI/CD pipeline, before the build stage, configure a Docker image to run the cfn-guard command on the CloudFormation template. Configure the CI/CD pipeline to publish a notification to the SNS topic if any issues are found.
C. Create an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic and an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue. Subscribe the security team’s email addresses to the SNS topic. Create an Amazon S3 bucket in the shared services AWS account. Include an event notification to publish to the SQS queue when new objects are added to the S3 bucket. Require the developers to put their CloudFormation templates in the S3 bucket. Launch EC2 instances that automatically scale based on the SQS queue depth. Configure the EC2 instances to use CloudFormation Guard to scan the templates and deploy the templates if there are no issues. Configure the CI/CD pipeline to publish a notification to the SNS topic if any issues are found.
D. Create a centralized CloudFormation stack set that includes a standard set of resources that the developers can deploy in each AWS account. Configure each CloudFormation template to meet the security requirements. For any new resources or configurations, update the CloudFormation template and send the template to the security team for review. When the review is completed, add the new CloudFormation stack to the repository for the developers to use.

Hint Answer: B

Q16. A company has an application that uses dozens of Amazon DynamoDB tables to store data. Auditors find that the tables do not comply with the company’s data protection policy. The company’s retention policy states that all data must be backed up twice each month: once at midnight on the 15th day of the month and again at midnight on the 25th day of the month. The company must retain the backups for 3 months.
Which combination of steps should a security engineer take to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

A. Use the DynamoDB on-demand backup capability to create a backup plan. Configure a lifecycle policy to expire backups after 3 months.
B. Use AWS DataSync to create a backup plan. Add a backup rule that includes a retention period of 3 months.
C. Use AWS Backup to create a backup plan. Add a backup rule that includes a retention period of 3 months.
D. Set the backup frequency by using a cron schedule expression. Assign each DynamoDB table to the backup plan.
E. Set the backup frequency by using a rate schedule expression. Assign each DynamoDB table to the backup plan.

Hint Answer: C D

Q17. A company has an AWS account that hosts a production application. The company receives an email notification that Amazon GuardDuty has detected an Impact:IAMUser/AnomalousBehavior finding in the account. A security engineer needs to run the investigation playbook for this security incident and must collect and analyze the information without affecting the application. Which solution will meet these requirements MOST quickly?

A. Log in to the AWS account by using read-only credentials. Review the GuardDuty finding for details about the IAM credentials that were used. Use the IAM console to add a DenyAll policy to the IAM principal.
B. Log in to the AWS account by using read-only credentials. Review the GuardDuty finding to determine which API calls initiated the finding. Use Amazon Detective to review the API calls in context.
C. Log in to the AWS account by using administrator credentials. Review the GuardDuty finding for details about the IAM credentials that were used. Use the IAM console to add a DenyAll policy to the IAM principal.
D. Log in to the AWS account by using read-only credentials. Review the GuardDuty finding to determine which API calls initiated the finding. Use AWS CloudTrail Insights and AWS CloudTrail Lake to review the API calls in context.

Hint Answer: B

Q18. Company A has an AWS account that is named Account A. Company A recently acquired Company B, which has an AWS account that is named Account B. Company B stores its files in an Amazon S3 bucket. The administrators need to give a user from Account A full access to the S3 bucket in Account B. After the administrators adjust the IAM permissions for the user in Account A to access the S3 bucket in Account B, the user still cannot access any files in the S3 bucket.
Which solution will resolve this issue?

A. In Account B, create a bucket ACL to allow the user from Account A to access the S3 bucket in Account B.
B. In Account B, create an object ACL to allow the user from Account A to access all the objects in the S3 bucket in Account B.
C. In Account B, create a bucket policy to allow the user from Account A to access the S3 bucket in Account B.
D. In Account B, create a user policy to allow the user from Account A to access the S3 bucket in Account B.

Hint Answer: C

Q19. A company wants to receive an email notification about critical findings in AWS Security Hub. The company does not have an existing architecture that supports this functionality. Which solution will meet the requirement?

A. Create an AWS Lambda function to identify critical Security Hub findings. Create an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic as the target of the Lambda function. Subscribe an email endpoint to the SNS topic to receive published messages.
B. Create an Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream. Integrate the delivery stream with Amazon EventBridge. Create an EventBridge rule that has a filter to detect critical Security Hub findings. Configure the delivery stream to send the findings to an email address.
C. Create an Amazon EventBridge rule to detect critical Security Hub findings. Create an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic as the target of the EventBridge rule. Subscribe an email endpoint to the SNS topic to receive published messages.
D. Create an Amazon EventBridge rule to detect critical Security Hub findings. Create an Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) topic as the target of the EventBridge rule. Use the Amazon SES API to format the message. Choose an email address to be the recipient of the message.

Hint Answer: C

Q20. A company has several petabytes of data. The company must preserve this data for 7 years to comply with regulatory requirements. The company’s compliance team asks a security officer to develop a strategy that will prevent anyone from changing or deleting the data. Which solution will meet this requirement MOST cost-effectively?

A. Create an Amazon S3 bucket. Configure the bucket to use S3 Object Lock in compliance mode. Upload the data to the bucket. Create a resource-based bucket policy that meets all the regulatory requirements.
B. Create an Amazon S3 bucket. Configure the bucket to use S3 Object Lock in governance mode. Upload the data to the bucket. Create a user-based IAM policy that meets all the regulatory requirements.
C. Create a vault in Amazon S3 Glacier. Create a Vault Lock policy in S3 Glacier that meets all the regulatory requirements. Upload the data to the vault.
D. Create an Amazon S3 bucket. Upload the data to the bucket. Use a lifecycle rule to transition the data to a vault in S3 Glacier. Create a Vault Lock policy that meets all the regulatory requirements.

Hint Answer: C