SCS-C02 Questions and Answers

The correct answer is A. Configure an S3 Lifecycle rule on the S3 bucket to delete objects after 45 days.

The reason is that this is the simplest and most effective way to enforce the data retention policy.According to theAWS documentation1, “To manage your objects so that they are stored cost effectively throughout their lifecycle, configure their Amazon S3 Lifecycle. An S3 Lifecycle configuration is a set of rules that define actions that Amazon S3 applies to a group of objects.There are two types of actions: Transition actionsand Expiration actions.” The documentation1also states that “Expiration actions define when objects expire. Amazon S3 deletes expired objects on your behalf.” Therefore, by configuring an S3 Lifecycle rule on the S3 bucket to delete objects after 45 days, the security engineer can ensure that the data is removed from the S3 bucket according to the company’s policy.

The other options are incorrect because:

B. Create an AWS Lambda function to check the last-modified date of the S3 objects and delete objects that are older than 45 days. Create an S3 event notification to invoke the Lambda function for each PutObject operation. This option is not optimal because it requires deploying and maintaining a Lambda function, which adds complexity and cost. Moreover, it does not guarantee that the data is deleted exactly after 45 days, since the Lambda function is triggered only when a new object is put into the S3 bucket. If there are no new objects for a long period of time, the Lambda function will not run and the data will not be deleted.

C. Create an AWS Lambda function to check the last-modified date of the S3 objects and delete objects that are older than 45 days. Create an Amazon EventBridge rule to invoke the Lambda function each month. This option is not optimal because it requires deploying and maintaining a Lambda function, which adds complexity and cost. Moreover, it does not guarantee that the data is deleted exactly after 45 days, since the Lambda function is triggered only once a month. If the data is older than 45 days but less than a month, it will not be deleted until the next month.

D. Configure S3 Intelligent-Tiering on the S3 bucket to automatically transition objects to another storage class. This option is not sufficient to enforce the data retention policy, because it does not delete the data from the S3 bucket. It only moves the data to a less expensive storage class based on access patterns.According to the AWS documentation2, “S3 Intelligent-Tiering optimizes storage costs by automatically moving data between two access tiers, frequent access and infrequent access, when access patterns change.” However, this feature does not expire or delete the data after a certain period of time.

To assess the impact of the exposed access key, the security engineer should recommend the following solution:

Analyze an IAM use report from AWS Trusted Advisor to see when the access key was last used. This allows the security engineer to use a tool that provides information about IAM entities and credentials in their account, and check if there was any unauthorized activity with the exposed access key.

these are the steps that can meet the requirements in the most secure manner. CloudTrail is a service that records AWS API calls and delivers log files to an S3 bucket. Turning on CloudTrail in each IAM account can help capture all IAM API calls made within those accounts. Updating the bucket policy of the bucket in the account that will be storing the logs can help grant other accounts permission to write log files to that bucket. The other options are either unnecessary or insecure for logging and analyzing IAM API calls.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/example-bucket-policies-vpc-endpoint.html

This answer is correct because it meets the requirements of returning the application to service, resolving the issue, and ensuring that logging is not turned off in the future. By editing the rules in the web ACL to include rules with Count actions, the security engineer can test the effect of each rule without blocking or allowing requests. By reviewing the logs, the security engineer can identify which rule is causing the problem and modify or delete it accordingly. By modifying the IAM policy of all AWS WAF administrators, the security engineer can restrict their permissions to prevent them from removing the logging configuration for any AWS WAF web ACLs.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The requirement is to remediate both existing and future noncompliant S3 buckets across multiple accounts and Regions in an AWS Organizations structure.

AWS Config Aggregator with organization-wide aggregation ensures that all accounts and Regions are continuously monitored for compliance.

By integrating a Lambda function with AWS Config rules, you can automatically remediate noncompliant resources (e.g., by applying encryption settings or blocking public access).

This solution provides both visibility and automated enforcement across the entire organization.

Options using SCPs (B and D) only prevent future actions and do not remediate existing noncompliant resources. Furthermore, scoping the aggregator to only some accounts/Regions (as in C and D) fails to meet the requirement for organization-wide remediation.

This approach aligns with Data Protection and Governance best practices in the AWS Certified Security – Specialty guidelines.

The solution to receiving automated email notifications when AWS access keys are detected on code repository sites is to use Amazon EventBridge with Amazon GuardDuty findings. Specifically, creating an EventBridge rule that targets Amazon GuardDuty findings, particularly theUnauthorizedAccess:IAMUser/InstanceCredentialExfiltrationfinding type, allows for the detection of potential unauthorized use or exposure of AWS credentials. When such a finding is detected, EventBridge can then trigger an action to send a notification via Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). By configuring an SNS topic to send emails, stakeholders can be promptly informed of such security incidents. This approach leverages AWS's native security and monitoring services to provide timely alerts with minimal operational overhead, ensuring that the company can respond quickly to potential security breaches involving exposed AWS credentials.

Comprehensive Detailed Explanation with all AWS References

To monitor EC2 instances for software vulnerabilities without installing agents and to display findings in AWS Security Hub,Amazon Inspectoris the most appropriate solution.

Amazon Inspector Overview:

Amazon Inspector is a vulnerability management service that automatically scans Amazon EC2 instances and container images in Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR) for known vulnerabilities.

It does not require agent installation as it integrates directly with EC2 metadata and uses network-based scanning.

To see Security Hub findings for accounts that are outside the organization that includes the Security Hub administrator account, the following steps are required:

Send invitations to accounts that are outside the company’s organization from the Security Hub administrator account. This will allow the administrator account to view and manage findings from those accounts. The administrator account can send invitations by using the Security Hub console, API, or CLI.For more information, see Sending invitations to member accounts.

Send an administration request from the member accounts. This will allow the member accounts to accept the invitation from the administrator account and establish a relationship with it. The member accounts can send administration requests by using the Security Hub console, API, or CLI.For more information, see Sending administration requests.

This solution will enable the company to see Security Hub findings for many AWS accounts and AWS Regions, including accounts that are outside its own organization.

The other options are incorrect because they either do not establish a relationship between the administrator and member accounts (A, B), do not enable Security Hub for all member accounts (D), or do not use a valid service for Security Hub (F).

Verified References:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/securityhub/latest/userguide/securityhub-member-accounts.html

The correct answer is C. Use AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM) to share Account-A’s VPC subnets with the remaining member accounts. Configure the member accounts to use the shared subnets to launch workloads.

This answer is correct because AWS RAM is a service that helps you securely share your AWS resources across AWS accounts, within your organization or organizational units (OUs), and with IAM roles and users for supported resource types1.One of the supported resource types is VPC subnets2, which means you can share the subnets in Account-A’s VPC with the other member accounts using AWS RAM. This way, you can meet the requirements of using a centrally managed VPC, avoiding duplicate VPCs in each account, and launching workloads in shared subnets.You can also control the access to the shared subnets by using IAM policies and resource-based policies3, which can prevent one account from modifying another account’s resources.

The other options are incorrect because:

A.Using aCloudFormation template in the member accounts to launch workloads and using the Fn::ImportValue function to obtain the subnet ID values is not a solution, because Fn::ImportValue can only import values that have been exported by another stack within the same region4. This means that you cannot use Fn::ImportValue to reference the subnet IDs that are exported by Account-A’s CloudFormation template, unless all the member accounts are in the same region as Account-A. This option also does not avoid creating duplicate VPCs in each account, which is one of the requirements.

B. Using a transit gateway in the VPC within Account-A and configuring the member accounts to use the transit gateway to access the subnets in Account-A to launch workloads is not a solution, because a transit gateway does not allow you to launch workloads in another account’s subnets.A transit gateway is a network transit hub that enables you to route traffic between your VPCs and on-premises networks5, but it does not enable you to share subnets across accounts.

D. Creating a peering connection between Account-A and the remaining member accounts and configuring the member accounts to use the subnets in Account-A through the VPC peering connection to launch workloads is not a solution, because a VPC peering connection does not allow you to launch workloads in another account’s subnets.A VPC peering connection is a networking connection betweentwo VPCs that enables you to route traffic between them privately6, but it does not enable you to share subnets across accounts.

For increased security while ensuring functionality, adjusting NACL3 to allow inbound traffic on port 5432 from the CIDR blocks of the application instance subnets, and allowing outbound traffic on ephemeral ports (1024-65536) back to those subnets creates a secure path for database access. Removing default allow-all rules enhances security by implementing the principle of least privilege, ensuring that only necessary traffic is permitted.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Amazon GuardDuty provides intelligent threat detection and continuous monitoring for malicious or unauthorized behavior to protect AWS accounts and workloads. It satisfies the requirement for monitoring endpoints for anomalous network traffic.

AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) simplifies the process of provisioning, managing, and deploying SSL/TLS certificates. Configuring ELB with ACM ensures encryption in transit.

AWS KMS with S3 bucket policy using x-amz-server-side-encryption ensures that S3 objects are encrypted at rest using managed keys. Denying uploads that do not use SSE with a bucket policy enforces encryption at rest.

These three actions together satisfy the stated security requirements with minimal operational overhead.

The correct answer is A because GuardDuty can detect and alert on EC2 instance credential exfiltration events. These events indicate that the credentials obtained from the EC2 instance metadata service are being used from an IP address that is owned by a differentAWS account than the one that owns the instance1. GuardDuty can also provide details such as the source and destination IP addresses, the AWS account ID of the attacker, and the API calls made using the exfiltrated credentials2.

The other options are incorrect because they do not provide the information needed to determine if the credentials were used to access the company’s resources from an external account. Option B is incorrect because Audit Manager does not generate InstanceCredentialExfiltration events. Audit Manager is a service that helpsyou continuously audit your AWS usage to simplify how you assess risk and compliance with regulations and industry standards3. Option C is incorrect because CloudTrail logs do not show the account ID of the caller for GetSessionToken API calls to AWS STS. CloudTrail logs show the account ID of the identity whose credentials were used to call the API4. Option D is incorrect because CloudWatch logs do not show the GetSessionToken API calls to AWS STS by default. CloudWatch logs can show the API calls made by AWS Lambda functions, Amazon API Gateway, and other AWS services that integrate with CloudWatch5.

The correct answer is A and C.

When using ABAC, the principal’s identity-based policy and the S3 bucket’s resource policy are both evaluated to determine the effective permissions. If either policy grants access to the principal, the action is allowed. If either policy denies access to the principal, the action is denied. Therefore, to enforce the tag-based condition, both policies must deny access when the tag values do not match.

In this case, the principal’s identity-based policy grants access to put objects into the S3 bucket with no conditions (A), which means that the policy does not check for the tag values. This policy overrides the condition in the bucket policy because an explicit allow always takes precedence over an implicit deny. The bucket policy can only allow or deny actions to the principal based on the condition, but it cannot override the identity-based policy.

The S3 bucket’s resource policy does not deny access to put objects ©, which means that it also does not check for the tag values. The bucket policy can only allow or deny actions to the principal based on the condition, but it cannot override the identity-based policy.

Therefore, the combination of factors A and C are causing the PutObject operation to succeed when the tag values are different.

The correct answer is A, C, and F.

To automate a response for any newly created policies that are overly permissive, the security engineer needs to use a combination of services that can monitor, analyze, remediate, and notify the security incidents.

Option A is correct because creating an AWS Step Functions state machine that checks the resource type in the finding and adds an explicit Deny statement in the trust policy for the IAM role is a valid way to remediate external access. AWS Step Functions is a service that allows you to coordinate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows. You can use Step Functions to invoke AWS Lambda functions, which can modify the IAM policies programmatically. You can also use Step Functions to publish a notification to an Amazon SNS topic, which can send messages to subscribers such as email addresses.

Option B is incorrect because creating an AWS Batch job that forwards any resource type findings to an AWS Lambda function is not a suitable way to automate a response. AWS Batch is a service that enables you to run batch computing workloads on AWS. Batch is designed for large-scale and long-running jobs that can benefit from parallelization and dynamic provisioning of compute resources. Batch is not intended for event-driven and real-time workflows that require immediate response.

Option C is correct because creating an Amazon EventBridge event rule that matches active IAM Access Analyzer findings and invokes AWS Step Functions for resolution is a valid way to monitor and analyze the security incidents. Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that allows you to connect your applications with data from various sources. EventBridge can use rules to match events and route them to targets for processing. You can use EventBridge to invoke AWS Step Functions state machines from the IAM Access Analyzer findings.

Option D is incorrect because creating an Amazon CloudWatch metric filter that matches active IAM Access Analyzer findings and invokes AWS Batch for resolution is not a suitable way to monitor and analyze the security incidents. Amazon CloudWatch is a service that provides monitoring and observability for your AWS resources and applications. CloudWatch can collect metrics, logs, and events from various sources and perform actions based on alarms or filters. However, CloudWatch cannot directly invoke AWS Batch jobs from the IAM Access Analyzer findings. You would need to use another service such as EventBridge or SNS to trigger the Batch job.

Option E is incorrect because creating an Amazon SQS queue that forwards a notification to the security team that an external principal has been granted access to the specific IAM role and has been blocked is not a valid way to notify the security incidents. Amazon SQS is a fully managed message queue service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. SQS can deliver messages to consumers that poll the queue for messages. However, SQS cannot directlyforward a notification to the security team’s email addresses. You would need to use another service such as SNS or SES to send email notifications.

Option F is correct because creating an Amazon SNS topic for external or cross-account access notices and subscribing the security team’s email addresses to the topic is a valid way to notify the security incidents. Amazon SNS is a fully managed messaging service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. SNS can deliver messages to a variety of endpoints, such as email, SMS, or HTTP. You can use SNS to send email notifications to the security team when a critical security finding is detected.

https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/reference/kms/import-key-material.html

aws kms import-key-material \

--key-id 1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab \

--encrypted-key-material fileb://EncryptedKeyMaterial.bin \

--import-token fileb://ImportToken.bin \

--expiration-model KEY_MATERIAL_EXPIRES \

--valid-to 2021-09-21T19:00:00Z

The correct answer is A. A customer managed CMK that uses customer provided key material.

A customer managed CMK is a KMS key that you create, own, and manage in your AWS account. You have full control over the key configuration, permissions, rotation, and deletion.You can use a customer managed CMK to encrypt and decrypt data in AWS services that are integrated with AWS KMS, such as Amazon EBS1.

A customer managed CMK can use either AWS provided key material or customer provided key material. AWS provided key material is generated by AWS KMS and never leaves the service unencrypted. Customer provided key material is generated outside of AWS KMS and imported into a customer managed CMK.You can specify an expiration date for the imported key material, after which the CMK becomes unusable until you reimport new key material2.

To meet the criteria of automatically expiring the key material in 90 days, you need to use customer provided key material and set the expiration date accordingly. This way, you can ensure that the data encrypted with the CMK will not be accessible after 90 days unless you reimport new key material and re-encrypt the data.

The other options are incorrect for the following reasons:

B. A customer managed CMK that uses AWS provided key material does not expire automatically. You can enable automatic rotation of the key material every year, but this does not prevent access to the data encrypted with the previous key material.You would need to manually delete the CMK and its backing key material to make the data inaccessible3.

C. An AWS managed CMK is a KMS key that is created, owned, and managed by an AWS service on your behalf. You have limited control over the key configuration, permissions, rotation, and deletion. You cannot use an AWS managed CMK to encrypt data in other AWS services or applications.You also cannot set an expiration date for the key material of an AWS managed CMK4.

D. Operation system-native encryption that uses GnuPG is not a solution that uses AWS KMS. GnuPG is a command line tool that implements the OpenPGP standard for encrypting and signing data. It does not integrate with Amazon EBS or other AWS services.It also does not provide a way toautomatically expire the key material used for encryption5.

Enable Amazon GuardDuty:

GuardDuty is a threat detection service that natively supports detecting cryptocurrency mining activity on Amazon EC2 instances.

Enable GuardDuty for the account and all AWS Regions to ensure comprehensive coverage.

Monitor GuardDuty Findings:

GuardDuty generates findings for activities associated with cryptocurrency mining (e.g., unauthorized mining, DNS queries to known mining domains).

Create an EventBridge Rule:

Define an EventBridge rule that triggers on specific GuardDuty findings related to cryptocurrency activity.

Configure the rule to send notifications to an Amazon SNS topic.

Example Rule:

{

"Source": ["aws.guardduty"],

"DetailType": ["GuardDuty Finding"],

"Detail": {

"type": ["CryptoCurrency:EC2/BitcoinTool.B"]

}

}

Advantages of GuardDuty:

Automated Threat Detection: Requires no additional setup or custom rules.

Near-Real-Time Alerts: Delivers findings and notifications with minimal delay.

Amazon GuardDuty Documentation

Creating EventBridge Rules for GuardDuty Findings

Amazon CloudWatch monitoring is a service that collects and tracksmetrics fromAWS resources and applications, and provides visualization tools and alarms to monitor performance and availability1. The health status data in format can be sent to CloudWatch as custom metrics2, and then displayed in CloudWatch dashboards3. The other options are either inefficient or insecure for monitoring application availability in near-real time.

To stream data using an existing Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream and encrypt it in transit using a private network, the company should do the following:

Create a VPC endpoint for Kinesis Data Firehose. This allows the company to use a private connection between their VPC and Kinesis Data Firehose without requiring an internet gateway or NAT device.

Configure the application to connect to the VPC endpoint. This allows the application to stream data using Kinesis Data Firehose over AWS PrivateLink, which encrypts all traffic with TLS.

Multi-factor authentication can add one more layer of security to your IAM account Even when you go to your Security Credentials dashboard one of the items is to enable MFA on your root account

C:\Users\wk\Desktop\mudassar\Untitled.jpg

Option A is invalid because you need to have a good password policy Option B is invalid because there is no IAM Geo-Lock Option D is invalid because this is not a recommended practices For more information on MFA, please visit the below URL

http://docs.IAM.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id credentials mfa.htmll

The correct answer is: Use MFA on all users and accounts, especially on the root account.

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Requirement Analysis:

The application should only be accessible to subsidiary companies over TCP port 443.

Direct public internet access must be restricted.

Use AWS PrivateLink:

AWS PrivateLink allows secure access to services across accounts and VPCs without exposing them to the public internet.

Steps to Implement:

Parent Account:

Create aPrivateLink Endpoint Servicelinked to the Network Load Balancer (NLB).

Update the security group for the EC2 instances to allow traffic from the PrivateLink endpoint on TCP port 443.

Subsidiary Accounts:

CreateInterface Endpointsin the subsidiary VPCs. These endpoints securely route traffic to the parent company's application via PrivateLink.

Advantages of This Solution:

Compliance: Ensures secure communication without internet exposure.

Scalability: Easily supports all 1,500 subsidiaries.

Operational Simplicity: Centralized service in the parent account, while subsidiaries connect securely via endpoints.

AWS PrivateLink Documentation

Using Security Groups with AWS PrivateLink

Enable GuardDuty:

GuardDuty provides monitoring for EKS clusters by analyzing EKS audit logs.

Automatic Configuration:

No additional setup for the EKS deployment is needed. GuardDuty directly monitors API calls to detect suspicious or unauthenticated access.

Advantages:

Minimal Effort: No operational overhead for configuration.

Proactive Detection: Alerts for unauthorized or suspicious activity in near-real-time.

Amazon GuardDuty for EKS

EKS Audit Log Monitoring

To ensure minimal latency and regional availability of secrets, encrypting secrets in us-east-1 with a customer-managed KMS key and then replicating them to us-west-1 for encryption with the same key is the optimal approach. This method leverages customer-managed KMS keys for enhanced control and ensures that secrets are available in both regions, adhering to disaster recovery principles and minimizing latency by using regional endpoints.

The correct answer is C. Edit the existing trail in the Organizations management account and apply it to the organization.

The reason is that this is the simplest and most effective way to ensure that there is at least one trail configured for all existing accounts and for any account that is created in the future.According to the AWS documentation1, “If you have created an organization in AWS Organizations, you can create a trail that logs all events for all AWS accounts in that organization.This is sometimes called an organization trail.” The documentation1also states that “The management account for the organization can edit an existing trail in their account, and apply it to an organization, making it an organization trail. Organization trails log events for the management account and all member accounts in the organization.” Therefore, by editing the existing trail in the management account and applying it to the organization, the security team can ensure that all accounts are sending CloudTrail logs to a centralized S3 logging bucket.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. Create a new trail and configure it to send CloudTrail logs to Amazon S3. Use Amazon EventBridge to send notification if a trail is deleted or stopped. This option is not sufficient to ensure that there is at least one trail configured for all accounts, because it does not prevent users from deleting or stopping the trail in their accounts. Even if EventBridge sends a notification, the security team would have to manually restore or restart the trail, which is not efficient or scalable.

B. Deploy an AWS Lambda function in every account to check if there is an existing trail and create a new trail, if needed. This option is not optimal because it requires deploying and maintaining a Lambda function in every account, which adds complexity and cost. Moreover, it does not prevent users from deleting or stopping the trail after it is created by the Lambda function.

D. Create an SCP to deny the cloudtrail:Delete and cloudtrail:Stop actions. Apply the SCP to all accounts. This option is not sufficient to ensure that there is at least one trail configured for all accounts, because it does not create or apply a trail in the first place. It only prevents users from deleting or stopping an existing trail, but it does not guarantee that a trail exists in every account.

To prevent users from directly accessing an Application Load Balancer and allow access only through CloudFront, complete these high-level steps: Configure CloudFront to add a custom HTTP header to requests that it sends to the Application Load Balancer. Configure the Application Load Balancer to only forward requests that contain the custom HTTP header. (Optional) Require HTTPS to improve the security of this solution.https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/restrict-access-to-load-balancer.html

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

KMS grants are lightweight and efficient tools designed specifically for programmatic, temporary, or high-volume delegation of KMS key usage. They are ideal when access needs to be rotated or updated frequently—such as weekly changes in vendors.

KMS grants allow you to control access without changing the key policy itself. They can be easily created and revoked programmatically, which minimizes operational overhead compared to editing key or IAM policies.

This approach aligns with Identity and Access Management best practices in the AWS Certified Security – Specialty study guide for scalable cross-account key access management.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

A. New patch baseline with 0-day approval ensures that critical security patches are available immediately for deployment without delay, which is crucial in response to imminent threats.

B. Patch Now operation in Patch Manager allows for immediate patch deployment across all instances, and storing logs in Amazon S3 provides centralized evidence and audit trails for compliance and verification.

Together, these actions support rapid response, immediate patch deployment, and auditability, aligning with Infrastructure Security and Incident Response best practices.

To ensure that Security Hub can evaluate their resources for CIS AWS Foundations compliance, the security engineer should do the following:

Ensure that AWS Config is enabled in the account. This is a service that enables continuous assessment and audit of your AWS resources for compliance.

Ensure that the required AWS Config rules have been created for the CIS compliance evaluation. These are rules that represent your desired configuration settings for specific AWS resources or for an entire AWS account.

The correct answer is D. Change the existing CloudTrail trail so that it applies to all Regions.

According to the AWS documentation1, you can configure CloudTrail to deliver log files from multiple Regions to a single S3 bucket for a single account.To change an existing single-Region trail to log in all Regions, you must use the AWS CLI and add the --is-multi-region-trail option to the update-trail command2. This will ensure that you log global service events and capture all management event activity in your account.

Option A is incorrect because creating a new CloudTrail trail for each Region will incur additional costs and increase operational overhead. Option B is incorrect because changing the S3 bucket to receive notifications will not affect the delivery of log files from other Regions. Option C is incorrect because creating a new CloudTrail trail that applies to all Regions will result in duplicate log files for the original Region and also incur additional costs.

Answer: C

A is incorrect because reviewing the cross-account role permissions and the S3 bucket policy is not enough to troubleshoot the permissions issue. You also need to verify that the Amazon S3 block public access option in the member account is deactivated, as well as the permissions boundary and the SCPs of the role in the member account.

D is correct because evaluating the SCPs and the permissions boundary of the role in the member account can help you identify any missing permissions or explicit denies that could prevent the administrator from making the S3 bucket public.

E is correct because ensuring that the S3 bucket policy explicitly allows the s3 PutBucketPublicAccess action for the role in the member account can help you override any block public access settings that could prevent the administrator from making the S3 bucket public.

Enable AWS Config Managed Rule:

Activate therestricted-sshAWS Config managed rule to evaluate security groups for SSH access from0.0.0.0/0.

Create an EventBridge Rule:

Configure an EventBridge rule to trigger on compliance change events generated by therestricted-sshmanaged rule.

Set Target to SNS:

Configure the EventBridge rule to target an SNS topic that notifies the security team when a noncompliant security group is detected.

Advantages:

Provides near-real-time notifications.

Fully integrates with AWS native services for compliance monitoring.

AWS Config Managed Rules

Amazon EventBridge Documentation

The reason is that this solution will meet the requirements of collecting, reviewing, and managing the evidence from both on-premises and AWS resources to demonstrate compliance with company policy. According to the web search results12, “AWS Audit Manager helps you continuously audit your AWS usage to simplify how you manage risk and compliance with regulations and industry standards. AWS Audit Manager makes it easier to evaluate whether your policies, procedures, and activities—also known as controls—are operating as intended.” The results1 also state that “In addition to the evidence that Audit Manager collects from your AWS environment, you can also upload and centrally manage evidence from your on-premises or multicloud environment.” Therefore, by creating an assessment in AWS Audit Manager, the security engineer can use a prebuilt or custom framework that contains the relevant controls for the company policy, upload manual evidence from the on-premises workloads, and add the evidence to the assessment. After Audit Manager collects the necessary evidence from the AWS resources, the security engineer can generate an assessment report that includes all the evidence from both sources.

The other options are incorrect because:

B. Install the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the on-premises workloads. Use AWS Config to deploy a conformance pack from a sample conformance pack template or a custom YAML template. Generate an assessment report after AWS Config identifies noncompliant workloads and resources. This option is not sufficient to meet the requirements, because it does not collect or manage the evidence from both sources. It only monitors and evaluates the configuration compliance of theworkloads and resources using AWS Config rules. According to the web search results3, “A conformance pack is a collection of AWS Config rules and remediation actions that can be easily deployed as a single entity in an account and a Region or across an organization in AWS Organizations.” However, a conformance pack does not provide a way to upload or include manual evidence from the on-premises workloads, nor does it generate an assessment report that contains all the evidence.

C. Set up the appropriate security standard in AWS Security Hub. Upload manual evidence from the on-premises workloads. Wait for Security Hub to collect the evidence from the AWS resources. Download the list of controls as a .csv file. This option is not optimal to meet the requirements, because it does not provide a comprehensive or audit-ready report that contains all the evidence. It only provides a list of controls and their compliance status in a .csv file format. According to the web search results4, “Security Hub provides you with a comprehensive view of your security state within AWS and helps you check your environment against security industry standards and best practices.” However, Security Hub does not provide a way to upload or include manual evidence from the on-premises workloads, nor does it generate an assessment report that contains all the evidence.

D. Install the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the on-premises workloads. Create a CloudWatch dashboard to monitor the on-premises workloads and the AWS resources. Run a query on the workloads and resources. Download the results. This option is not sufficient to meet the requirements, because it does not collect or manage the evidence from both sources. It only monitors and analyzes the metrics and logs of the workloads and resources using CloudWatch. According to the web search results, “Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service built for DevOps engineers, developers, site reliability engineers (SREs), and IT managers.” However, CloudWatch does not provide a way to upload or include manual evidence from the on-premises workloads, nor does it generate an assessment report that contains all the evidence.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/troubleshooting-launch.html#troubleshooting-launch-internal

The AWS documentation states that you can use the awslogs log driver to send log information to CloudWatch Logs. To use this method, you specify the parameters for awslogs-group and awslogs-region in the LogConfiguration property of the container definition. This method is the easiest way to send logs to CloudWatch Logs.

Q: Which data sources does GuardDuty analyze? GuardDuty analyzes CloudTrail management event logs, CloudTrail S3 data event logs, VPC Flow Logs, DNS query logs, and Amazon EKS audit logs. GuardDuty can also scan EBS volume data for possible malware when GuardDuty Malware Protection is enabled and identifies suspicious behavior indicative of malicious software in EC2 instance or container workloads. The service is optimized to consume large data volumes for near real-time processing of security detections. GuardDuty gives you access to built-in detection techniques developed and optimized for the cloud, which are maintained and continuously improved upon by GuardDuty engineering.

To allow cross-account access to resources using IAM roles, the following steps are required:

Create a role in the AWS account that contains the resources (the trusting account) and specify the AWS account that contains the IAM user (the trusted account) as a trusted entity in the role’s trust policy. This allows users from the trusted account to assume the role and access resources in the trusting account.

Ensure that the IAM user has permission to assume the role in their own AWS account. This can be done by creating an identity policy that allows the sts:AssumeRole action and attaching it to the IAM user or their group.

Ensure that there are no service control policies (SCPs) in the organization that owns the resources that deny or restrict access to the sts:AssumeRole action or the role itself. SCPs are applied to all accounts in an organization and can override any permissions granted by IAM policies.

Verified References:

https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/cross-account-access-iam

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_manage_accounts_access.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/tutorial_cross-account-with-roles.html

If you lose the private key for an EBS-backed instance, you can regain access to your instance. You must stop the instance, detach its root volume and attach it to another instance as a data volume, modify the authorized_keys file with a new public key, move the volume back to the original instance, and restart the instance.https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/TroubleshootingInstancesConnecting.html#replacing-lost-key-pai

Establishing a VPC peering connection between the VPCs in Account A and Account B and updating route tables, network ACLs, and security groups to permit the necessary traffic ensures private connectivity for the application to write to the S3 bucket without traversing the public internet. This solution is efficient and maintains network security and integrity.

AWS Nitro Enclaves are isolated and hardened virtual machines that run on EC2 instances and provide a secure environment for processing sensitive data. Nitro Enclaves have no persistent storage, interactive access, or external networking, and they can only communicate with the parent instance through a secure local channel. Nitro Enclaves also support cryptographic attestation, which allows verifying the identity and integrity of the enclave and its code. Nitro Enclaves are ideal for implementing data protection solutions such as tokenization, encryption, and key management.

Using Nitro Enclaves for the tokenization component of the application meets the requirements of isolating the sensitive data from other parts of the application, encrypting and storing the credit card numbers securely, and issuing tokens to replace the numbers. Other components of the application will not be able to access or store the credit card numbers, as they are only available within the enclave.

Utilizing AWS Config with a custom AWS Config rule (ec2-managedinstance-applications-required) enables detection of EC2 instances lacking the required software across all accounts in an organization. By creating an Amazon EventBridge rule that triggers on AWS Config events, and configuring it to invoke an AWS Lambda function, automated actions can be taken to ensure compliance. The Lambda function can leverage AWS Systems Manager Run Command to install the necessary software on non-compliant instances. This approach ensures continuous compliance and automated remediation, aligning with best practices for cloud security and management.

To configure DNSSEC for a domain registered with Route 53, the most operationally efficient solution is to migrate the zone to Route 53 with DNSSEC signing enabled, create a key-signing key (KSK) that is based on an AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) customer managed key, and add a delegation signer (DS) record to the parent zone. This way, Route 53 handles the zone-signing key (ZSK) and the signing of the records in the hosted zone, and the customer only needs to manage the KSK in AWS KMS and provide the DS record to the domain registrar. Option A is incorrect because it does not involve migrating the zone to Route 53, which would simplify the DNSSEC configuration. Option B is incorrect because it creates both a ZSK and a KSK based on AWS KMS customer managed keys, which is unnecessary and less efficient than letting Route 53 manage the ZSK. Option C is incorrect because it does not involve migrating the zone to Route 53, and it requires running the dnssec-signzone command manually, which is less efficient than letting Route 53 sign the zone automatically.Verified References:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/domain-configure-dnssec.html

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/12/announcing-amazon-route-53-support-dnssec/

because these are the actions that can improve IAM account root user security. IAM account root user is a user that has complete access to all AWS resources and services in an account. IAM account root user security is a set of best practices that help protect the account root user from unauthorized oraccidental use. Deleting the access keys for the account root user in every account can help prevent programmatic access by the account root user, which reduces the risk of compromise or misuse. Enabling MFA on every account root user in all accounts can help add an extra layer of security for console access by requiring a verification code in addition to a password. Creating a custom IAM policy to limit permissions to required actions for the account root user and attaching the policy to the account root user can help enforce the principle of least privilege and restrict the account root user from performing unnecessary or dangerous actions. The other options are either invalid or ineffective for improving IAM account root user security.

To prevent unauthorized access to the EC2 instances, the security engineer should do the following:

Restrict SSH access in the security group to only known corporate IP addresses. This allows the security engineer to use a virtual firewall that controls inbound and outbound traffic for their EC2 instances, and limit SSH access to only trusted sources.

This answer is correct because creating a new AWS account with limited privileges would provide an isolated and secure backup destination for the EBS snapshots. Allowing the new account to access the AWS KMS key used to encrypt the EBS snapshots would enable cross-account snapshot sharing without requiring re-encryption. Copying the encrypted snapshots to the new account on a recurring basis would ensure that the backups are up-to-date and consistent.

Amazon EC2 Systems Manager is a service that helps you automatically collect software inventory, apply OS patches, create system images, and configure Windows and Linux operating systems3. You can use Systems Manager to report on instance patch compliance and enforce updates during the defined maintenance windows4. The other options are either inefficient or not feasible for achieving the goals.

The correct answer is C. Update the existing bucket policy in the Amazon S3 console with the new log file prefix, and then update the log file prefix in the CloudTrail console.

According to the AWS documentation1, a bucket policy is a resource-based policy that you can use to grant access permissions to your Amazon S3 bucket and the objects in it. Only the bucket owner can associate a policy with a bucket. The permissions attached to the bucket apply to all of the objects in the bucket that are owned by the bucket owner.

When you create a trail in CloudTrail, you can specify an existing S3 bucket or create a new one to store your log files. CloudTrail automatically creates a bucket policy for your S3 bucket that grants CloudTrail write-only access to deliver log files to your bucket. The bucket policy also grants read-only access to AWS services that you can use to view and analyze your log data, such as Amazon Athena, Amazon CloudWatch Logs, and Amazon QuickSight.

If you want to update the log file prefix for an existing trail, you must also update the existing bucket policy in the S3 console with the new log file prefix. The log file prefix is part of the resource ARN that identifies the objects in your bucket that CloudTrail canaccess. If you don’t update the bucket policy with the new log file prefix, CloudTrail will not be able to deliver log files to your bucket, and you will receive an error message when you try to save the change in the CloudTrail console.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. Creating a new trail with the updated log file prefix, and then deleting the original trail is not necessary and may cause data loss or inconsistency. You can simply update the existing trail and its associated bucket policy with the new log file prefix.

B. Updating the existing bucket policy in the S3 console to allow the Security Engineer’s Principal to perform PutBucketPolicy is not relevant to this issue. The PutBucketPolicy action allows you to create or replace a policy on a bucket, but it does not affect CloudTrail’s ability to deliver log files to your bucket. You still need to update the existing bucket policy with the new log file prefix.

D. Updating the existing bucket policy in the S3 console to allow the Security Engineer’s Principal to perform GetBucketPolicy is not relevant to this issue. The GetBucketPolicy action allows you to retrieve a policy on a bucket, but it does not affect CloudTrail’s ability to deliver log files to your bucket. You still need to update the existing bucket policy with the new log file prefix.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

AWS Backup supports cross-Region backup copy to another backup vault in a different AWS Region. This is the simplest and most operationally efficient method to meet the requirement of geographic redundancy (i.e., data centers several hundred miles apart).

No custom scripting, Lambda, or EventBridge scheduling is required, minimizing operational overhead and aligning with Data Protection and Disaster Recovery best practices.

To implement the solution, the security engineer should do the following:

Assign an Elastic IP address to Amazon EFS and add the Elastic IP address to the allow list for the data center firewall. This allows the security engineer to use a specific IP address for the EFS file system that can be added to the firewall rules, instead of a CIDR range or a URL.

Install the AWS CLI on the data center-based servers to mount the EFS file system. This allows the security engineer to use the mount helper provided by AWS CLI to mount the EFS file system with encryption in transit.

In the EFS security group, add the IP addresses of the data center servers to the allow list. This allows the security engineer to restrict access to the EFS file system to only certain data center-based servers.

Mount the EFS using the Elastic IP address. This allows the security engineer to use the Elastic IP address as the DNS name for mounting the EFS file system.

because these are the features that can address the CISO’s concerns about cryptographic wear-out and blast radius. Cryptographic wear-out is a phenomenon that occurs when a key is used too frequently or for too long, which increases the risk of compromise or degradation. Blast radius is a measure of how much damage a compromised key can cause to the encrypted data. S3 uses KMS to generate a unique data key for each individual object, which reduces both cryptographic wear-out and blast radius. The KMS encryption envelope digitally signs the master key during encryption, which prevents cryptographicwear-out by ensuring that only authorized parties can use the master key. The other options are either incorrect or irrelevant for addressing the CISO’s concerns.

Verify NAT Gateway Configuration (Option A):

Ensure that a NAT gateway exists in each public subnet to allow private subnet instances to access the internet for updates or API calls without exposing them directly.

Modify Private Subnet Route Tables (Option D):

Update the route tables associated with private subnets to route traffic destined for0.0.0.0/0through the NAT gateway in the same Availability Zone.

Advantages:

Network Segmentation: Ensures private subnets route traffic securely through NAT gateways.

Availability: Distributes NAT gateway resources across Availability Zones.

NAT Gateway Documentation

VPC Route Table Documentation

To meet the requirements of securing access management and implementing a centralized logging solution, the most secure solution would be to:

Install a bastion host in the management account.

Reconfigure all SSH and RDP to allow access only from the bastion host.

Install AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) on the bastion host.

Attach the AmazonSSMManagedlnstanceCore role to the bastion host.

Configure session data streaming to Amazon CloudWatch Logs in a separate logging account to audit log data

This solution provides the following security benefits:

It uses AWS Systems Manager Session Manager instead of traditional SSH and RDP protocols, which provides a secure method for accessing EC2 instances without requiring inbound firewall rules or open ports.

It provides audit trails by configuring Session Manager logging to Amazon CloudWatch Logs and creating a separate logging account to audit the log data.

It uses the AWS Systems Manager Agent to automate common administrative tasks and improve the security posture of the instances.

The separate logging account with cross-account permissions provides better data separation and improves security posture.

https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/implementations/centralized-logging/

Comprehensive Detailed Explanation with all AWS References

The simplest and most efficient way to enforce a data retention policy in Amazon S3 is by usingS3 Lifecycle rules:

S3 Lifecycle Rule:

Lifecycle rules allow you to automatically delete objects based on their age or last-modified date.

Specify a rule to delete objects after 45 days to meet the retention policy.

Action for Amazon Cognito User Pools:

Update the password policy in the Cognito user pool configuration.

Set the required minimum password length and other password complexity settings as needed.

Navigate toAmazon Cognito>User Pools>Policies, and configure the password requirements.

Action for On-Premises Active Directory:

Update the password policy in the on-premises Active Directory.

Use Group Policy Management to configure the minimum password length.

Apply the updated policy to all relevant organizational units (OUs).

IAM Password Policy:

Note that IAM does not manage Active Directory or Cognito password policies. Instead, focus on federated configurations and user pool settings.

Amazon Cognito User Pool Policies

Active Directory Password Policy

Comprehensive Detailed Explanation with all AWS References

To provide a single management portal for access and integrate with an external IdP for SSO,AWS IAM Identity Center(formerly AWS Single Sign-On) is the best solution:

AWS IAM Identity Center:

IAM Identity Center enables centralized management of access to AWS accounts within an organization.

Supports external IdPs (e.g., Okta, Azure AD) using SAML 2.0 for workforce SSO.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/Overview.Encryption.html

https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ebs-automatic-encryption/

To implement encryption at rest for both the EC2 instances and the Aurora DB cluster, the following steps are required:

For the EC2 instances, modify the EBS default encryption settings in the target AWS Region to enable encryption. This will ensure that any new EBS volumes created in that Region are encrypted by default using an AWS managed key. Alternatively, you can specify a customer managed key when creating new EBS volumes.For more information, see Amazon EBS encryption.

Use an Auto Scaling group instance refresh to replace the existing EC2 instances with new ones that have encrypted EBS volumes attached. An instance refresh is a feature that helps you update all instances in an Auto Scaling group in a rolling fashion without the need to manage the instance replacement process manually. For more information, see Replacing Auto Scaling instances based on an instance refresh.

For the Aurora DB cluster, create a new AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) encrypted DB cluster from a snapshot of the existing DB cluster. You can use either an AWS managed key or a customer managed key to encrypt the new DB cluster. You cannot enable or disable encryption for an existing DB cluster, so you have to create a new one from a snapshot.For more information, see Encrypting Amazon Aurora resources.

The other options are incorrect because they either do not enable encryption at rest for the resources (B, D), or they use the wrong service for encryption (E).

Verified References:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/EBSEncryption.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/asg-instance-refresh.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/Overview.Encryption.html

The correct answer is A. Revoke all versions of the signing profile assigned to the developer.

According to the AWS documentation1, AWS Signer is a fully managed code-signing service that helps you ensure the trust and integrity of your code. You can use Signer to sign code artifacts, such as Lambda deployment packages, with code-signing certificates that you control and manage.

A signing profile is a collection of settings that Signer uses to sign your code artifacts. A signing profile includes information such as the following:

The type of signature that you want to create (for example, a code-signing signature).

The signing algorithm that you want Signer to use to sign your code.

The code-signing certificate and its private key that you want Signer to use to sign your code.

You can create multiple versions of a signing profile, each with a different code-signing certificate. You can also revoke a version of a signing profile if you no longer want to use it for signing code artifacts.

In this case, the company wants to ensure that all the code that the developer wrote can no longer be deployed to the Lambda functions. One way to achieve this is to revoke all versions of the signing profile that was assigned to the developer. This will prevent Signer from using that signing profile to sign any new code artifacts, and also invalidate any existing signatures that were created with that signing profile. This way, the company can ensure that only trusted and authorized code can be deployed to the Lambda functions.

The other options are incorrect because:

B. Examining the developer’s IAM roles and removing all permissions that grant access to Signer may not be sufficient to prevent the deployment of the developer’s code. The developer may have already signed some code artifacts with a valid signing profile before leaving the company, and those signatures may still be accepted by Lambda unless the signing profile is revoked.

C. Re-encrypting all source code with a new AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) key may not be effective or practical. AWS KMS is a service that lets you create and manage encryption keys for your data. However, Lambda does not require encryption keys for deploying code artifacts, only valid signatures from Signer. Therefore, re-encrypting the source code may not prevent the deployment of the developer’s code if it has already been signed with a valid signing profile. Moreover, re-encrypting all source code may be time-consuming and disruptive for other developers who are working on the same code base.

D. Using Amazon CodeGuru to profile all the code that the Lambda functions use may not help with preventing the deployment of the developer’s code. Amazon CodeGuru is a service that provides intelligent recommendations to improve your code quality and identify an application’s most expensive lines of code. However, CodeGuru does not perform any security checks or validations on your code artifacts, nor does it interact with Signer or Lambda in any way. Therefore, using CodeGuru may not prevent unauthorized or untrusted code from being deployed to the Lambda functions.

For a company using AWS Organizations that requires centralized management and automatic activation of Amazon GuardDuty across all current and future AWS accounts, setting up a delegated administrator account for GuardDuty is the optimal solution. By enabling GuardDuty in a new account and designating it as the delegated administrator, the company can centrally manage GuardDuty findings and automatically enroll new AWS accounts into GuardDuty as they are created within the organization. This approach ensures consistent threat detection and continuous monitoring across all accounts, aligning with best security practices.

To detect suspicious activity in an AWS account for VPC hosted resources, the security engineer needs to use a service that can monitor network traffic and API calls across all AWS Regions. Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that can do this by analyzing VPC Flow Logs, AWS CloudTrail event logs, and DNS logs. By activating GuardDuty across all AWS Regions, the security engineer can provide visibility for as many regions as possible. GuardDuty generates findings that contain details about the potential threats detected in the account. To respond to these findings, the security engineer needs to create a mechanism that can notify the relevant stakeholders or take remedial actions. One way to do this is to use Amazon EventBridge, which is a serverless event bus service that can connect AWS services and third-party applications. By creating an EventBridge rule that responds to GuardDuty findings and publishes them to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic, the security engineer can enable subscribers of the topic to receive notifications via email, SMS, or other methods. This is a cost-effective solution that does not require any additional infrastructure or code.

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/10/now-use-aws-systems-manager-to-view-vulnerability-identifiers-for-missing-patches-on-your-linux-instances/

The correct answer is B. Modify the network ACL that is associated with the CIDR range to allow outbound traffic to ephemeral ports.

This answer is correct because network ACLs are stateless, which means that they do not automatically allow return traffic for inbound connections. Therefore, the network ACL that is associated with the CIDR range of the new application must have outbound rules that allow traffic to ephemeral ports, which are the temporary ports used by the vendors’ machines to communicate with the application servers.Ephemeral ports are typically in the range of 1024-655351. If the network ACL does not have such rules, the vendors will not be able to connect to the application.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. Modifying the security group that is associated with the EC2 instances to have the same outbound rules as inbound rules is not a solution, because security groups are stateful, which means that they automatically allow return traffic for inbound connections.Therefore, there is no need to add outbound rules to the security group for the vendors to access the application2.

C. Modifying the inbound rules on the internet gateway to allow the required ports is not a solution, because internet gateways do not have inbound or outbound rules. Internet gateways are VPC components that enable communication between instances in a VPC and the internet.They do not filter traffic based on ports or protocols3.

D. Modifying the network ACL that is associated with the CIDR range to have the same outbound rules as inbound rules is not a solution, because it does not address the issue of ephemeral ports.The outbound rules of the network ACL must matchthe ephemeral port range of the vendors’ machines, not necessarily the inbound rules of the network ACL4.

To receive near-real-time notifications of AWS account root user sign-ins, the most effective solutions involve the use of AWS CloudTrail logs, Amazon CloudWatch Logs, and Amazon EventBridge.

Solution Cinvolves configuring AWS CloudTrail to send logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs and then setting up a CloudWatch Logs metric filter to detect successful root account logins. When such logins are detected, a CloudWatch alarm can be configured to trigger and notify an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic, which in turn can send notifications to the required endpoints. This solution provides an efficient way to monitor and alert on root account usage without requiring custom parsing or handling of log data.

Solution Euses Amazon EventBridge to monitor for specific AWS API calls, such asSignInevents that indicate a successful root account login. By configuring an EventBridge rule to trigger on these events, notifications can be sent directly to an SNS topic, which then distributes the alerts to the necessary endpoints. This approachleverages native AWS event patterns and provides a streamlined mechanism for detecting and alerting on root account activity.

Both solutions offer automation, scalability, and the ability to integrate with other AWS services, ensuring that stakeholders are promptly alerted to critical security events involving the root user.

To resolve CloudTrail's failure to deliver events to S3, verifying the S3 bucket policy for CloudTrail's write permissions (A) and ensuring the existence of the specified S3 bucket (D) are critical initial steps. These actions ensure that CloudTrail has the necessary permissions and a valid destination for log file delivery, addressing common configuration issues that can interrupt event logging.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/log-your-vpc-dns-queries-with-route-53-resolver-query-logs/

The correct answer is C. Pull images from the public container registry. Publish the images to Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR) repositories with scan on push configured in a centralized AWS account. Use a CI/CD pipeline to deploy the images to different AWS accounts. Use repository policies and identity-based policies to restrict access to which IAM principals and accounts can access the images.

This solution meets the requirements because:

Amazon ECR is a fully managed container registry service that supports Docker and OCI images and artifacts1. It integrates with Amazon ECS and other AWS services to simplify the development and deployment of container-based applications.

Amazon ECR provides image scanning on push, which uses the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) database from the open-source Clair project to detect software vulnerabilities in container images2.The scan results are available in the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, orAWS SDKs2.

Amazon ECR supports cross-account access to repositories, whichallows sharing images across multiple AWS accounts3.This can be achieved by using repository policies, which are resource-based policies that specify which IAM principals and accounts can access the repositories and what actions they can perform4.Additionally, identity-based policies can be used to control which IAM roles in each account can access the repositories5.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. This option does not use repository policies to restrict cross-account access to the images, which is a requirement.Identity-based policies alone are not sufficient to control access to Amazon ECR repositories5.

B. This option does not use Amazon ECR, which is a fully managed service that provides image scanning and cross-account access features. Hosting a private container registry on EC2 instances would require more management overhead and additional security measures.

D.This option uses AWS CodeArtifact, which is a fully managed artifact repository service that supports Maven, npm, NuGet, PyPI, and generic package formats6. However, AWS CodeArtifact does not support Docker or OCI container images, which are required for Amazon ECS applications.

To troubleshoot the issue of an EC2 instance failing to start and transitioning to a terminated state when it has an EBS volume encrypted with an AWS KMS customer managed key, a security engineer should take the following steps:

C. Verify that the KMS key that is associated with the EBS volume is in the Enabled state. If the key is not enabled, it will not function properly and could cause the EC2 instance to fail.

D. Verify that the EC2 role that is associated with the instance profile has the correct IAM instance policy to launch an EC2 instance with the EBS volume. If the instance does not have the necessary permissions, it may not be able to mount the volume and could cause the instance to fail.

Therefore, options C and D are the correct answers.

Implementing S3 Object Lock in compliance mode on the primary Region and configuring S3 replication to a secondary Region ensures the immutability of S3 objects, preventing them from being deleted or altered. This setup meets the requirement of protecting critical data from permanent deletion, even by users with administrative access. The replicated objects in the secondary Region inherit the Object Lock from the primary, ensuring consistent protection across Regions and aligning with disaster recovery requirements.

The error message indicates that the private key file permissions are too open, meaning that other users can read or write to the file. This is a security risk, as the private key should be accessible only by the owner of the file. To fix this error, the security administrator should use the chmod command to change the permissions of the private key file to 0400, which means that only the owner can read the file and no one else can read or write to it.

The chmod command takes a numeric argument that represents the permissions for the owner, group, and others in octal notation. Each digit corresponds to a set of permissions: read (4), write (2), and execute (1). The digits are added together to get the final permissions for each category. For example, 0400 means that the owner has read permission (4) and no other permissions (0), and the group and others have no permissions at all (0).

The other options are incorrect because they either do not change the permissions at all (D), or they give too much or too little permissions to the owner, group, or others (A, C).

Verified References:

https://superuser.com/questions/215504/permissions-on-private-key-in-ssh-folder

https://www.baeldung.com/linux/ssh-key-permissions

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The most operationally efficient solution is to modify the EventBridge rule's event pattern using the anything-but operator on the ProductArn attribute. This effectively filters out all findings generated by Amazon Inspector, allowing all other findings to trigger alerts as intended—without modifying Lambda code or managing additional services like SNS.

This technique aligns with Logging and Monitoring best practices to reduce noise from security alerts and improve response efficiency by filtering at the event rule level.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/reference_policies_examples_aws_deny-requested-region.html

An Application Load Balancer (ALB) is a type of load balancer that operates at the application layer (layer 7) of the OSI model. It can distribute incoming traffic based on the content of the request, such as the host header, path, or query parameters. An ALB can also terminate TLS connections and decrypt requests from clients before sending them to the targets.

To implement TLS for incoming traffic to the application, the following steps are required:

Create a public ALB in a public subnet and register the EC2 instances as targets in a target group.

Create two listeners for the ALB, one on port 80 for HTTP traffic and one on port 443 for HTTPS traffic.

Create a rule for the listener on port 80 to redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS using the same host, path, and query parameters.

Provision a public TLS certificate in AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for the domain name of the application. ACM is a service that lets you easily provision, manage, and deploy public and private SSL/TLS certificates for use with AWS services and your internal connected resources.

Attach the certificate to the listener on port 443 and configure the security policy to negotiate secure connections between clients and the ALB.

Configure the security groups for the ALB and the EC2 instances to allow inbound traffic on ports 80 and 443 from the internet and outbound traffic on any port to the EC2 instances.

This solution will meet the requirements of implementing TLS for incoming traffic without impacting performance or requiring end-to-end encryption. The ALB will handle the TLS termination and decryption, while forwarding unencrypted requests to the EC2 instances.

Verified References:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/introduction.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/create-https-listener.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/acm-overview.html

To improve the security at the edge of the solution to defend against a large, layer 7 DDoS attack, the security engineer should do the following:

Configure AWS WAF with a rate-based rule that imposes a rate limit that automatically blocks requests when the rate limit is exceeded. This allows the security engineer to use a rule that tracks the number of requests from a single IP address and blocks subsequent requests if they exceed a specified threshold within a specified time period.

The correct answer is D. The AWS Config rules have a MaximumExecutionFrequency value of 24 hours.

According to the AWS documentation1, the MaximumExecutionFrequency parameter specifies the maximum frequency with which AWS Config runs evaluations for a rule. For AWS Config managed rules, this value can be one of the following:

One_Hour

Three_Hours

Six_Hours

Twelve_Hours

TwentyFour_Hours

If the rule is triggered by configuration changes, it will still run evaluations when AWS Config delivers the configuration snapshot. However, if the rule is triggered periodically, it will not run evaluations more often than the specified frequency.

In this case, the security engineer enabled four AWS Config managed rules that are triggered periodically. Therefore, these rules will only run evaluations every 24 hours, regardless of when the IAM credential report is generated. This means that the resources will display as noncompliant until the next evaluation cycle, which could take up to 24 hours after the IAM access keys are rotated.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. The IAM credential report can be generated at any time, but it will not affect the compliance status of the resources until the next evaluation cycle of the AWS Config rules.

B. The security engineer was able to invoke the IAM GenerateCredentialReport API operation, which means they have the GenerateCredentialReport permission.This permission is required to generate a credential report that lists all IAM users in an AWS account and their credential status2.

C. The security engineer does not need the GetCredentialReport permission to enable or evaluate AWS Config rules.This permission is required to retrieve a credential report that was previously generated by using the GenerateCredentialReport operation2.

you need to configure the Amazon Inspector agent to use the CVE rule package, which is a set of rules that check for vulnerabilitiesand exposures on your EC2 instances5. You also need to install an additional integration library that enables communication between the Amazon Inspector agent and Security Hub6. Security Hub is a service that provides you with a comprehensive view of your securitystate in AWS and helps you check your environment against security industry standards and best practices7. The other options are either incorrect or incomplete for meeting the requirement.

IAM Direct Connect makes it easy to establish a dedicated network connection from your premises to IAM. Using IAM Direct Connect you can establish private connectivity between IAM and your datacenter, office, or colocation environment which in many cases can reduce your network costs, increase bandwidth throughput and provide a more consistent network experience than Internet-based connections.

Options B and C are invalid because these options will not reduce network latency

Options D is invalid because this is only used to connect 2 VPC's

For more information on IAM direct connect, just browse to the below URL:

https://IAM.amazon.com/directconnect

The correct answer is: Provision a Direct Connect connection to an IAM region using a Direct Connect partner. omit your Feedback/Queries to our Experts

the most secure way to meet the requirements. TLS is a protocol that provides encryption and authentication for data in transit. ALB is a service that distributes incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances. HIDS is a system that monitors and detects malicious activity on a host. ECDHE is a type of cipher suite that supports perfect forward secrecy, which is a property that ensures that past and current TLS traffic stays secure even if the certificate private key is leaked. By creating a listener on the ALB that does not enable PFS cipher suites, and using encrypted connections to the servers using ECDHE cipher suites, you can ensure that the HIDS agents can capture the traffic of the EC2 instance without compromising the privacy of the users. The other options are either less secure or less compatible with the third-party solution.

Understanding the IAM Policy:

The IAM useralicehas an explicit permission in the IAM policy to perform alls3:*actions on bothbucket1andbucket2resources.

This grants useralicefull access to both buckets from the IAM policy perspective.

Bucket Policy for bucket1:

The bucket policy forbucket1explicitly grants useralicefull access to this bucket.

This policy reinforces the permissions provided by the IAM policy.

Bucket Policy for bucket2:

bucket2does not have a bucket policy defined.

In the absence of a bucket policy, the permissions fall back to the IAM policy.

Effective Permissions:

Since the IAM policy grants access to both buckets, and there are no conflicting explicit deny statements, useralicecan access bothbucket1andbucket2.

IAM Policies and Bucket Policies

Evaluating Access with S3 Policies

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/using-managed-response-headers-policies.html#managed-response-headers-policies-security

The SecurityHeadersPolicy is a managed policy provided by Amazon CloudFront that includes a set of recommended security headers to enhance the security of your website. These headers help protect against various types of attacks, including man-in-the-middle attacks. By applying the SecurityHeadersPolicy to your CloudFront distribution, the necessary security headers will be automatically added to the responses sent by CloudFront. This reduces operational overhead because you don't have to manually configure or manage the headers yourself.

Generate a Data Key:

Use theaws kms generate-data-keycommand to request a data key from AWS KMS.

The data key will include both a plaintext version and an encrypted version.

Example command:

bash

aws kms generate-data-key --key-id --key-spec AES_256

Encrypt the File:

Use the plaintext data key to encrypt the 2 KB file using standard encryption libraries or utilities (e.g., OpenSSL).

Secure the Encrypted Data Key:

Store the encrypted version of the data key alongside the encrypted file for future decryption.

Least Privilege Principle:

Ensure the EC2 instance role has the minimum necessary permissions to callkms:GenerateDataKeyandkms:Decrypt.

Testing and Validation:

Verify that the encrypted file can be successfully decrypted using the stored encrypted data key and the KMS key.

AWS KMS GenerateDataKey API

AWS KMS Best Practices

Encrypting Data with AWS KMS

The correct answer is C. The GuardDuty integration with Security Hub was never activated in the AWS account where the finding was generated.

The reason is that Security Hub does not automatically receive findings from GuardDuty unless the integration is activated in each AWS account.According to the AWS documentation1, “The Amazon GuardDuty integration with Security Hub enables you to send findings from GuardDuty to Security Hub. Security Hub can then include those findings in its analysis of your security posture.” However, this integration is not enabled by default and requires manual activation in each AWS account.The documentation1also states that “You must activate the integration in each AWS account that you want to send findings from GuardDuty to Security Hub.”

Therefore, even though the company has configured the security tooling account as the delegated administrator for GuardDuty and Security Hub, and has enabled these services for existing and new AWS accounts, it still needs to activate the GuardDuty integration with Security Hub in each account. Otherwise, the findings from GuardDuty will not be sent to Security Hub and will not be visible in the delegated administrator account.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. VPC flow logs are not required for GuardDuty to generate DNS findings. GuardDuty uses VPC flow logs as one of the data sources for network connection findings, but not for DNS findings.According to the AWS documentation2, “GuardDuty uses VPC Flow Logs as a data source for network connection findings.”

B. The VPC DHCP option configured for a custom OpenDNS resolver does not affect GuardDuty’s ability to generate DNS findings. GuardDuty uses DNS logs as one of the data sources for DNS findings, regardless of the DNS resolver used by the VPC.According to the AWS documentation2, “GuardDuty uses DNS logs as a data source for DNS activity findings.”

D. Cross-Region aggregation in Security Hub is not relevant for this scenario, since the company operates out of a single AWS Region. Cross-Region aggregation in Security Hub allows you to aggregate security findings from multiple Regions into a single Region, where you can view and manage them. However, this feature is not needed if the company only uses one Region.According to the AWS documentation3, “Cross-Region aggregation enables you to aggregate security findings from multiple Regions into a single Region.”

This answer is correct because downloading the updated SAML metadata file from the identity service provider ensures that AWS has the latest information about the identity provider, including the new public key. Updating the file in the AWS identity provider entitydefined in IAM by using the AWS CLI allows AWS to verify the signature of the SAML assertions sent by the identity provider. This solution also minimizes operational overhead because it can be automated with a script or a cron job.

This solution ensures that the Lambda functions are deployed inside the VPC and can communicate with the Amazon RDS DB instance securely. The security group attached to the Lambda functions only allows outbound traffic to the VPC CIDR range, and the DB instance security group only allows traffic from the Lambda security group. This solution ensures that the Lambda functions can communicate with the DB instance securely and that the DB instance is not exposed to the public internet.

To securely and cost-effectively retain log data archives for several years, the company should do the following:

Archive the data to Amazon S3 Glacier and apply a Vault Lock policy. This allows the company to use a low-cost storage class that is designed for long-term archival of data that is rarely accessed. It also allows the company to enforce compliance controls on their S3 Glacier vault by locking a vault access policy that cannot be changed.

AWS Organizations and SCPs:

SCPs allow centralized control over permissions across all accounts in an AWS Organization.

Use SCPs to prevent specific actions, such as S3 bucket deletion, across all accounts.

Create an SCP for S3 Bucket Deletion:

Define an SCP that explicitly denies thes3:DeleteBucketaction.

Example SCP:

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Deny",

"Action": "s3:DeleteBucket",

"Resource": "*"

}

]

}

Attach SCP to the Root or Specific OUs:

Attach the SCP to the root of the organization or specific organizational units (OUs) as needed.

Advantages:

Scalability: Applies to all accounts in the organization without the need for individual configuration.

Compliance: Ensures sensitive S3 buckets are protected from accidental or malicious deletion.

AWS Organizations SCP Documentation

Restricting S3 Actions with SCPs

When implementing DNSSEC for a subdomain in Amazon Route 53 and encountering a broken trust chain error, creating a Delegation Signer (DS) record in the parent hosted zone is the correct approach. The DS record is essential for establishing the trust chain between the parent and child zones by linking the DNSSEC-signed subdomain to its parentdomain. This step is crucial for DNS resolvers to validate the authenticity of DNS responses, thereby resolving the broken trust chain issue and ensuring the integrity and authenticity of the DNS data for the secured subdomain.

the aws kms get-key-rotation-status command returns a boolean value that indicates whetherautomatic rotation of the customer master key (CMK) is enabled1. This commandalsoshowsthe date and time when the CMK was last rotated2. The other options are not valid ways to check the CMK rotation status.

these are the recommended actions to take when you receive an abuse notice fromAWS8. You shouldreview the abuse notice to see what content or activity was reported and detach the internet gateway from the VPC to isolate the affected instances from the internet. You should also remove any rules that allow inbound traffic from 0.0.0.0/0 from the security groups and create a network access control list (NACL) rule to deny all traffic inbound from the internet. You should then delete the compromised instances and any associated resources that you did not create. The other options are either inappropriate or unnecessary for responding to the abuse notice.

To secure the images to limit their distribution, the company should take the following actions:

Update the S3 bucket policy to restrict access to a CloudFront origin access identity (OAI). This allows the company to use a special CloudFront user that can access objects in their S3 bucket, and prevent anyone else from accessing them directly.

Add a CloudFront geo restriction deny list of countries where the company lacks a license. This allows the company to use a feature that controls access to their content based on the geographic location of their viewers, and block requests from countries where they do not have a distribution license.

The combination of the following actions should the Engineer take to enable users to be authenticated into the web application and call APIs are:

B. Configure a SAML identity provider in Amazon Cognito to map attributes to the Amazon Cognito user pool attributes.This is a necessary step to federate the existing users from the SAML identity provider to the Amazon Cognito user pool, which will be used for authentication and authorization1.

C. Configure the SAML identity provider to add the Amazon Cognito user pool as a relying party.This is a necessary step to establish a trust relationship between the SAML identity provider and the Amazon Cognito user pool, which will allow the users to sign in using their existing credentials2.

F. Update API Gateway to use a COGNITO_USER_POOLS authorizer.This is a necessary step to enable API Gateway to use the Amazon Cognito user pool as an authorizer for the RESTful services, which will validate the identity or access tokens that are issued by AmazonCognito when a user signs in successfully3.

The other options are incorrect because:

A.Creating a custom authorization service using AWS Lambda is not a necessary step, because Amazon Cognito user pools can provide built-in authorization features, such as scopes and groups, that can be used to control access toAPI resources4.

D.Configuring an Amazon Cognitoidentity pool to integrate with social login providers is not a necessary step, because the users already exist in a directory that is exposed through a SAML identity provider, and there is no requirement to support social login providers5.

E.Updating DynamoDB to store the user email addresses and passwords is not a necessary step, because the user credentials are already stored in the SAML identity provider, and there is no need to duplicate them in DynamoDB6.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

To prevent developers from configuring unauthenticated Lambda function URLs, the most effective approach is to use Service Control Policies (SCPs) at the organizational level. By explicitly denying actions such as lambda:CreateFunctionUrlConfig and lambda:UpdateFunctionUrlConfig when the lambda:FunctionUrlAuthType is set to NONE, the organization ensures that only authenticated function URLs are deployed in production.

This method imposes no additional workload on developers and leverages AWS Organizations' SCPs to enforce centralized security policy — a recommended practice in the Identity and Access Management domain.

To set up AWS Security Hub for centralized security monitoring across all accounts in an AWS Organization with the least operational overhead, the best actions to take are:

Solution A: Configure a finding aggregation Region for Security Hub. This allows Security Hub to aggregate findings from multiple regions into a single designated region, simplifying monitoring and analysis. By centralizing findings, the security team can have a unified view of security alerts and compliance statuses across all accounts and regions, enhancing the efficiency of security operations.

Solution C: Turn on the option to automatically enable accounts for Security Hub within the AWS Organization. This ensures that as new accounts are created and added to the organization, they are automatically enrolled in Security Hub, and their findings are included in the centralized monitoring. This automation reduces the manual effort required to manage account enrollment and ensures comprehensive coverage of security monitoring across the organization.

These actions collectively ensure that Security Hub is effectively configured to manage security findings across all accounts and regions, providing a comprehensive and automated approach to security monitoring with minimal manual intervention.

The correct answer is D. Remove Amazon SES from the root SCP.

This answer is correct because the root SCP is the most restrictive policy that applies to all accounts in the organization. The root SCP explicitly denies access to Amazon SES by using the NotAction element, which means that any action that is not listed in the element is denied. Therefore, removing Amazon SES from the root SCP will allow the developers to access it, as long as there are no other SCPs or IAM policies that deny it.

The other options are incorrect because:

A.Adding a resource policy that allows each member of the group to access Amazon SES is not a solution, because resource policies are not supported by Amazon SES1.Resource policies are policies that are attached to AWS resources, suchas S3 buckets or SNS topics, to control access to those resources2. Amazon SES does not have any resources that can have resource policies attached to them.

B.Adding a resource policy that allows “Principal”: {“AWS”: “arn:aws:iam::account-number:group/Dev”} is not a solution, because resource policies do not support IAM groups asprincipals3.Principals are entities that can perform actions on AWS resources, such as IAM users, roles, or AWSaccounts4.IAM groups are not principals, but collections of IAM users that share the same permissions5.

C.Removing the AWS Control Tower control (guardrail) that restricts access to Amazon SES is not a solution, because AWS Control Tower does not have any guardrails that restrict access to Amazon SES6.Guardrails are high-level rules that govern the overall behavior of an organization’s accounts7.AWS Control Tower provides a set of predefined guardrails that cover security, compliance, and operations domains8.