SCS-C02 AWS Certified Security - Specialty Questions and Answers

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.

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.

This answer is correct because AWS Shield Advanced is a service that provides comprehensive protection against DDoS attacks of any size or duration. It also provides metrics and reports on the DDoS attack vectors, duration, and size. You can create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm that monitors Shield Advanced metrics such as DDoSAttackBitsPerSecond, DDoSAttackPacketsPerSecond, and DDoSAttackRequestsPerSecond to receive alerts if a DDoS attack occurs against your account.

For more information, see Monitoring AWS Shield Advanced with Amazon CloudWatch and AWS Shield Advanced metrics and alarms.

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.

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.

"When you create an Amazon GuardDuty filter, you choose specific filter criteria, name the filter and can enable the auto-archiving of findings that the filter matches. This allows you to further tune GuardDuty to your unique environment, without degrading the ability to identify threats. With auto-archive set, all findings are still generated by GuardDuty, so you have a complete and immutable history of all suspicious activity."

The following may be causing the problem for the Auditor:

A. The external ID used by the Auditor is missing or incorrect. This is a possible cause, because the external ID is a unique identifier that is used to establish a trust relationship between the accounts.The external ID must match the one that is specified in the role’s trust policy in the destination account1.

C. The Auditor has not been granted sts:AssumeRole for the role in the destination account. This is a possible cause, because sts:AssumeRole is the API action that allows the Auditor to assume the cross-account role and obtain temporary credentials.The Auditor must have an IAM policy that allows them to call sts:AssumeRole for the role ARN in the destination account2.

F. The role ARN used by the Auditor is missing or incorrect. This is a possible cause, because the role ARN is the Amazon Resource Name of the cross-account role that the Auditor wants to assume.The role ARN must be valid and exist in the destination account3.

IAM paths allow organizations to logically group IAM resources such as roles. By setting IAM paths for different teams, the company can identify and control access granularly. The iam:PassRole action is critical for delegating permissions, especially to AWS services. By attaching a Service Control Policy (SCP) that denies iam:PassRole for all roles except those in the platform team's IAM path, the organization enforces centralized delegation control.

This approach fulfills the need for logical grouping (via paths) and enforces delegated access through SCPs, in line with IAM and Governance best practices.

The most scalable and lowest-latency solution for end-to-end TLS is to configure a Network Load Balancer (NLB) with a TCP listener. This configuration allows TLS traffic to be passed through directly to the containerized applications running on ECS, preserving full encryption between the client and the container without TLS termination at the load balancer.

NLBs are optimized for handling sudden spikes in traffic (volatile traffic patterns), and passing through TLS traffic ensures the encryption is maintained from source to container.

This is a key practice under Infrastructure Security as highlighted in the AWS Certified Security – Specialty content where preserving encryption and handling scale is crucial.

A VPC peering connection is a networking connection between two VPCs that enables you to route traffic between them using private IPv4 addresses or IPv6 addresses. Instances in either VPC can communicate with each other as if they are within the same network. You can create a VPC peering connection between your own VPCs, or with a VPC in another IAM account within a single region.

Options B and C are invalid because you need to use VPC Peering

Option D is invalid because VPC Peering is available

For more information on VPC Peering please see the below Link:

http://docs.IAM.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/vpc-peering.html

The correct answer is: Set up VPC peering between the central server VPC and each of the teams VPCs. Submit your Feedback/Queries to our Experts

The AWS documentation states that you can deploy the Lambda functions inside the VPC and attach a security group to the Lambda functions. You can then provide outbound rule access to the VPC CIDR range only and update the DB instance security group to allow traffic from the Lambda security group. This method is the most secure way to meet the requirements.

this is the simplest change that can address the server issue. CloudFront is a service that provides a global network of edge locations that cache and deliver web content. Creating a CloudFront distribution and configuring the ALB as the origin can help reduce the load on the Tomcat server by serving cached content to the end users. CloudFront can also provide protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks by filtering malicious traffic at the edge locations. The other options are either ineffective or complex for solving the server issue.

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.

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 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.

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.

The steps that the Security Engineer should take to check for known vulnerabilities and limit the attack surface are:

B. Review the application security groups to ensure that only the necessary ports are open. This is a good practice to reduce the exposure of the EC2 instances to potential attacks from the Internet.Application security groups are a feature of Azure that allow you to group virtual machines and define network security policies based on those groups1.

D. Use Amazon Inspector to periodically scan the backend instances. This is a service that helps you to identify vulnerabilities and exposures in your EC2 instances and applications.Amazon Inspector can perform automated security assessments based on predefined or custom rules packages2.

Answer: C

This SCP prevents users or roles in any affected account from disabling a CloudTrail log, either directly as a command or through the console.https://asecure.cloud/a/scp_cloudtrail/

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.

This answer is correct because logging in with read-only credentials minimizes the risk of accidental or malicious changes to the AWS account. Reviewing the GuardDuty finding can help identify which API calls initiated the finding and which IAM principal was involved. Using Amazon Detective can help analyze and visualize the API calls in context, such as which resources were affected, which IP addresses were used, and how the activity deviated from normal patterns. Amazon Detective can also help identify related findings from other sources, such as AWS Config or AWS Audit Manager.

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

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/security-group-rules.html

To get objects from an S3 bucket that are encrypted with a KMS customer managed key, the security team needs to have the following factors in place:

The IAM instance profile that is attached to the EC2 instance must allow the s3:GetObject action to the S3 bucket or object in the AWS account. This permission is required to read the object from S3. Option A is incorrect because it specifies the s3:ListBucket action, which is only required to list the objects in the bucket, not to get them.

The KMS key policy that encrypts the object in the S3 bucket must allow the kms:Decrypt action to the EC2 instance profile ARN. This permission is required to decrypt the object using the KMS key.Option D is correct.

The security group that is attached to the EC2 instance must have an outbound rule to the S3 managed prefix list over port 443. This rule is required to allow HTTPS traffic from the EC2 instance to S3 within the AWS infrastructure. Option E is correct. Option B is incorrect because it specifies the s3:ListParts action, which is only required for multipart uploads, not for getting objects. Option C is incorrect because it specifies the kms:ListKeys action, which is not required for getting objects. Option F is incorrect because it specifies an inbound rule from the S3 managed prefix list, which is not required for getting objects.Verified References:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/UsingKMSEncryption.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kms/latest/developerguide/control-access.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/vpc-endpoints-s3.html

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

Comprehensive Detailed Explanation with all AWS References

To automate response to overly permissive IAM policies:

Step Functions State Machine (A):

Use Step Functions to orchestrate remediation by adding Deny statements to policies.

Publish findings to an SNS topic for notification.

The correct answer is D. Enable CloudTrail to monitor data events for read and write operations to S3 buckets.

According to the AWS documentation1, CloudTrail data events are the resource operations performed on or within a resource. These are also known as data plane operations. Data events are often high-volume activities. For example, Amazon S3 object-level API activity (such as GetObject, DeleteObject, and PutObject) is a data event.

By default, trails do not log data events. To record CloudTrail data events, you must explicitly add the supported resources or resource types for which you want to collect activity.For more information, see Logging data events in the Amazon S3 User Guide2.

In this case, the security team wants EventBridge to watch for the s3:PutObjectAcl API invocation logs from CloudTrail.This API uses the acl subresource to set the access control list (ACL) permissions for a new or existing object in an S3 bucket3. This is a data event that affects the S3 object resource type. Therefore, the security team must enable CloudTrail to monitor data events for read and write operations to S3 buckets in order to invoke an EventBridge event for this API call.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. Modifying the EventBridge event pattern by selecting Amazon S3 and All Events as the event type will not capture the s3:PutObjectAcl API call, because this is a data event and not a management event. Management events provide information about management operations that are performed on resources in your AWS account.These are also known as control plane operations4.

B. Modifying the EventBridge event pattern by selecting Amazon S3 and Bucket Level Operations as the event type will not capture the s3:PutObjectAcl API call, because this is a data event that affects the S3 object resource type and not the S3 bucket resource type.Bucket level operations are management events that affect the configuration or metadata of an S3 bucket5.

C. Enabling CloudTrail Insights to identify unusual API activity will not help the security team monitor new S3 objects or changes to any S3 bucket policy or setting that result in public access.CloudTrail Insights helps AWS users identify andrespond to unusual activity associated with API calls and API error rates by continuously analyzing CloudTrail management events6. It does not analyze data events or generate EventBridge events.

Comprehensive Detailed Explanation with all AWS References

To implement WORM in Amazon S3 where no user, including the root account, can modify or delete objects:

S3 Object Lock in Compliance Mode:

Compliance mode ensures that the WORM policy cannot be bypassed, even by the root user.

Objects cannot be overwritten or deleted during the specified retention period.

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.

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.

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.

Submit your Feedback/Queries to our Experts

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

The key length for an RSA certificate that you use with CloudFront is 2048 bits, even though ACM supports larger keys. If you use an imported certificate with CloudFront, your key length must be 1024 or 2048 bits and cannot exceed 2048 bits. You must import the certificate in the US East (N. Virginia) Region. You must have permission to use and importthe SSL/TLS certificate

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/cnames-and-https-requirements.html

CloudHSM allows full control of your keys such including Symmetric (AES), Asymmetric (RSA), Sha-256, SHA 512, Hash Based, Digital Signatures (RSA). On the other hand, AWS Key Management Service is a multi-tenant key storage that is owned and managed byAWS1.

To support answer B, use the referencehttps://d1.IAMstatic.com/whitepapers/IAM-security-whitepaper.pdf

"For example, IAM Config provides a managed IAM Config Rules to ensure that encryption is turned on for all EBS volumes in your account."

The correct answer is B, D, and F. Designate an AWS account in an organization in AWS Organizations as a delegated administrator for Security Hub. Publish events to Amazon EventBridge from the delegated administrator account, all member accounts, and required Regions that are enabled for Security Hub findings. In each Region, create an Amazon EventBridge rule to deliver findings to an Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream. Configure the Kinesis Data Firehose delivery streams to deliver the logs to a single Amazon S3 bucket. Partition the Amazon S3 data. Use AWS Glue to crawl the S3 bucket andbuild the schema. Use Amazon Athena to query the data and create views to flatten nested attributes. Build Amazon QuickSight dashboards that use the Athena views.

According to the AWS documentation, AWS Security Hub is a service that provides you with a comprehensive view of your security state across your AWS accounts, and helps you check your environment against security standards and best practices. You can use Security Hub to aggregate security findings from various sources, such as AWS services, partner products, or your own applications.

To use Security Hub with multiple AWS accounts and Regions, you need to enable AWS Organizations with all features enabled. This allows you to centrally manage your accounts and apply policies across your organization. You can also use Security Hub as a service principal for AWS Organizations, which lets you designate a delegated administrator account for Security Hub. The delegated administrator account can enable Security Hub automatically in all existing and future accounts in your organization, and can view and manage findings from all accounts.

According to the AWS documentation, Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus that makes it easy to connect applications using data from your own applications, integrated software as a service (SaaS) applications, and AWS services. You can use EventBridge to create rules that match events from various sources and route them to targets for processing.

To use EventBridge with Security Hub findings, you need to enable Security Hub as an event source in EventBridge. This will allow you to publish events from Security Hub to EventBridge in the same Region. You can then create EventBridge rules that match Security Hub findings based on criteria such as severity, type, or resource. You can also specify targets for your rules, such as Lambda functions, SNS topics, or Kinesis Data Firehose delivery streams.

According to the AWS documentation, Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is a fully managed service that delivers real-time streaming data to destinations such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Elasticsearch Service (Amazon ES), and Splunk. You can use Kinesis Data Firehose to transform and enrich your data before delivering it to your destination.

To use Kinesis Data Firehose with Security Hub findings, you need to create a Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream in each Region where you have enabled Security Hub. You can then configure the delivery stream to receive events from EventBridge as a source, and deliver the logs to a single S3 bucket as a destination. You can also enable data transformation or compression on the delivery stream if needed.

According to the AWS documentation, Amazon S3 is an object storage service that offers scalability, data availability, security, and performance. You can use S3 to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web. You can also use S3 features such as lifecycle management, encryption, versioning, and replication to optimize your storage.

To use S3 with Security Hub findings, you need to create an S3 bucket that will store the logs from Kinesis Data Firehose delivery streams. You can then partition the data in the bucket by using prefixes such as account ID or Region. This will improve the performance and cost-effectiveness of querying the data.

According to the AWS documentation, AWS Glue is a fully managed extract, transform, and load (ETL) service that makes it easy to prepare and load your data for analytics. You canuse Glue to crawl your data sources, identify data formats, and suggest schemas and transformations. You can also use Glue Data Catalog as a central metadata repository for your data assets.

To use Glue with Security Hub findings, you need to create a Glue crawler that will crawl the S3 bucket and build the schema for the data. The crawler will create tables in the Glue Data Catalog that you can query using standard SQL.

According to the AWS documentation, Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. Athena is serverless, so there is no infrastructure to manage, and you pay only for the queries that you run. You can use Athena with Glue Data Catalog as a metadata store for your tables.

To use Athena with Security Hub findings, you need to create views in Athena that will flatten nested attributes in the data. For example, you can create views that extract fields such as account ID, Region, resource type, resource ID, finding type, finding title, and finding description from the data. You can then query the views using SQL and join them with other tables if needed.

According to the AWS documentation, Amazon QuickSight is a fast, cloud-powered business intelligence service that makes it easy to deliver insights to everyone in your organization. You can use QuickSight to create and publish interactive dashboards that include machine learning insights. You can also use QuickSight to connect to various data sources, such as Athena, S3, or RDS.

To use QuickSight with Security Hub findings, you need to create QuickSight dashboards that use the Athena views as data sources. You can then visualize and analyze the findings using charts, graphs, maps, or tables. You can also apply filters, calculations, or aggregations to the data. You can then share the dashboards with your users or embed them in your applications.

To meet the requirements of storing scanned copies of customer receipts on Amazon S3, where files will be between 100 KB and 5 MB in PDF format, each retail store must have a unique encryption key, and each object must be encrypted with a unique key, the most appropriate solution would be to create a dedicated AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) customer managed key for each retail store. Then, use the S3 Put operation to upload the objects to Amazon S3, specifying server-side encryption with AWS KMS keys (SSE-KMS) and the key ID of the store’s key.

AWS Secrets Manager is a service that helps you manage, retrieve, and rotate secrets such as database credentials, API keys, and other sensitive information. By configuring automatic rotation of credentials in AWS Secrets Manager, you can ensure that your secrets are changed regularly and securely, without requiring manual intervention or application downtime. You can also specify the rotation frequency and the rotation function that performs the logic of changing the credentials on the database and updating the secret in Secrets Manager1.

E. Configure the Java application to catch a connection failure and make a call to AWS Secrets Manager to retrieve updated credentials when the password is rotated. Grant permission to the instance role associated with the EC2 instance to access Secrets Manager.

By configuring the Java application to catch a connection failure and make a call to AWS Secrets Manager to retrieve updated credentials, you can avoid hard-coding the credentials in your application code or configuration files. This way, your application can dynamically obtain the latest credentials from Secrets Manager whenever the password is rotated, without needing to restart or redeploy the application. To enable this, you need to grant permission to the instance role associated with the EC2 instance to access Secrets Manager using IAM policies2. You can also usethe AWS SDK for Java to integrate your application with Secrets Manager3.

For this scenario you would need to set up static website hosting because a custom domain name is listed as a requirement. "Amazon S3 website endpoints do not support HTTPS or access points. If you want to use HTTPS, you can use Amazon CloudFront to serve a static website hosted on Amazon S3." This is not secure. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/website-hosting-custom-domain-walkthrough.html CloudFront signed URLs allow much more fine-grained control as well as HTTPS access with custom domain names:https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/private-content-signed-urls.html

The correct answer is C. Configure Route 53 Resolver query logging on all relevant VPCs. Send the logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Use CloudWatch Insights to run queries on the source IP address and DNS name.

According to the AWS documentation1, Route 53 Resolver query logging lets you log the DNS queries that Route 53 Resolver handles for your VPCs. You can send the logs to CloudWatch Logs, Amazon S3, or Kinesis Data Firehose. The logs include information such as the following:

The AWS Region where the VPC was created

The ID of the VPC that the query originated from

The IP address of the instance that the query originated from

The instance ID of the resource that the query originated from

The date and time that the query was first made

The DNS name requested (such as prod.example.com)

The DNS record type (such as A or AAAA)

The DNS response code, such as NoError or ServFail

The DNS response data, such as the IP address that is returned in response to the DNS query

You can use CloudWatch Insights to run queries on your log data and analyze the results using graphs and statistics2. You can filter and aggregate the log data based on any field, and use operators and functions to perform calculations and transformations. For example, you can use CloudWatch Insights to find out how many queries were made for a specific domain name, or which instances made the most queries.

Therefore, this solution meets the requirements of logging and querying DNS traffic that goes to the on-premises DNS servers, showing details of the source IP address of the instance from which the query originated, and the DNS name that was requested in Route 53 Resolver.

The other options are incorrect because:

A.Using VPC Traffic Mirroring would not capture the DNS queries that go to the on-premises DNS servers, because Traffic Mirroring only copies network traffic from an elastic network interface of an EC2 instance to a target for analysis3.Traffic Mirroring does not include traffic that goes through a Route 53 Resolver outbound endpoint, which is used to forward queries to on-premises DNS servers4.Therefore, this solution would not meet the requirements.

B.Configuring VPC flow logs on all relevant VPCs would not capture the DNS name that was requested in Route 53 Resolver, because flow logs only record information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in a VPC5. Flow logs do not include any information about the content or payload of a packet, such as a DNS query or response.Therefore, this solution would not meet the requirements.

D.Modifying the Route 53 Resolver rules on the authoritative domains that forward to the on-premises DNS servers would not enable logging of DNS queries, because Resolver rules only specify how to forward queries for specified domain names to your network6. Resolver rules do not have any logging functionality by themselves.Therefore, this solution would not meet the requirements.

The possible steps to troubleshoot this issue are:

A. Ensure that the EC2 instance profile that is attached to the EC2 instances has permissions to create log streams and write logs.This is a necessary step because the CloudWatch agent uses the credentialsfrom the instance profile to communicate with CloudWatch1.

C. Check the CloudWatch agent configuration file on each EC2 instance to make sure that the CloudWatch agent is collecting the proper log files.This is a necessary step because the CloudWatch agent needs to know which logfiles to monitor and send to CloudWatch2.

D. Check the VPC endpoint policies of both VPC endpoints to ensure that the EC2 instances have permissions to use them.This is a necessary step because the VPC endpoint policies control which principals can access the AWS services through the endpoints3.

The other options are incorrect because:

B. Creating a metric filter on the logs is not a troubleshooting step, but a way to extract metric data from the logs. Metric filters do not affect the visibility of the logs in the AWS Management Console.

E. Creating a NAT gateway in the subnet is not a solution, because the EC2 instances do not need internet access to communicate with CloudWatch through the VPC endpoints.A NAT gateway would also incur additional costs.

F. Ensuring that the security groups allow all the EC2 instances to communicate with each other is not a necessary step, because the CloudWatch agent does not require log aggregation before sending. Each EC2 instance can send its own logs independently to CloudWatch.

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.

To create a process that will allow application teams to provision their own IAM roles, while limiting the scope of IAM roles and preventing privilege escalation, the following steps are required:

Create a service control policy (SCP) that defines the maximum permissions that can be granted to any IAM role in the organization. An SCP is a type of policy that you can use with AWS Organizations to manage permissions for all accounts in your organization. SCPs restrict permissions for entities in member accounts, including each AWS account root user, IAM users, and roles.For more information, see Service control policies overview.

Create a permissions boundary for IAM roles that matches the SCP. A permissions boundary is an advanced feature for using a managed policy to set the maximum permissions that an identity-based policy can grant to an IAM entity. A permissions boundary allows an entity to perform only the actions that are allowed by both its identity-based policies and its permissions boundaries.For more information, see Permissions boundaries for IAM entities.

Add the SCP to the root organizational unit (OU) so that it applies to all accounts in the organization. This will ensure that no IAM role can exceed the permissions defined by the SCP, regardless of how it is created or modified.

Instruct the application teams to attach the permissions boundary to any IAM role they create. This will prevent them from creating IAM roles that can escalate their own privileges or access resources they are not authorized to access.

This solution will meet the requirements with the least operational overhead, as it leverages AWS Organizations and IAM features to delegate and limit IAM role creation without requiring manual reviews or approvals.

The other options are incorrect because they either do not allow application teams to provision their own IAM roles (A), do not limit the scope of IAM roles or prevent privilege escalation (B), or do not take advantage of managed services whenever possible ©.

Verified References:

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

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/access_policies_boundaries.html

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

This solution meets the requirement of recovering the EC2 instances if the AWS account is compromised and the EBS snapshots are deleted. By creating a new AWS account with limited privileges, the company can isolate the backup snapshots from the main account and reduce the risk of accidental or malicious deletion. By allowing the new account to access the KMS key that encrypts the EBS snapshots, the company can ensure that the snapshots are copied in an encrypted form and can be decrypted when needed. By copying the encrypted snapshots to the new account on a recurring basis, the company can maintain a consistent backup schedule and minimize data loss.

Enabling AWS CloudTrail with a trail applied to all regions and specifying a single S3 bucket for storage is the simplest method to record and retain API call activity for security analysis. This configuration ensures comprehensive coverage across all current and future AWS regions, centralizing log collection and simplification of log management.

Amazon Inspector offers automated, continuous vulnerability scanning for Amazon EC2 instances. The new version includes Malware Protection, which scans for malicious software as part of its inspection process.

This capability enables both detection of software vulnerabilities and malicious activity (like viruses or rootkits), thus covering both parts of the requirement: vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure.

This falls under Infrastructure Security and aligns with recommended practices for securing compute resources on AWS.

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 configure end-to-end encryption between the Elastic Load Balancer and the EC2 instances with the least operational effort, the most appropriate solution would be to use Amazon issued AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) certificates on the EC2 instances and the Elastic Load Balancer to configure end-to-end encryption.

 AWS Certificate Manager - Amazon Web Services : Elastic Load Balancing - Amazon Web Services : Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud - Amazon Web Services : AWS Certificate Manager - Amazon Web Services

Collect Operating System Logs:

Install the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the bastion hosts to collect logs, including failed login attempts from/var/log/auth.logor equivalent files.

Create a Metric Filter:

Use CloudWatch Logs to create a metric filter for failed login attempts by identifying log patterns (e.g.,Failed password).

Set Up a CloudWatch Alarm:

Define an alarm in CloudWatch to trigger when the metric exceeds a threshold of 5 failed attempts within a 5-minute period.

Configure SNS for Notifications:

Use Amazon SNS to send alerts to system administrators.

Use SNS message filtering to ensure only the designated administrator for the specific bastion host receives the notification.

Monitoring CloudWatch Logs

SNS Message Filtering

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 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.

GuardDuty can trigger an EventBridge rule upon detecting a suspicious finding (e.g., unusual traffic volume). Using Lambda, the automation can:

Remove the affected instance from the Auto Scaling group to prevent it from being terminated and replaced.

Isolate the instance by applying a restrictive security group.

This approach aligns with AWS incident response best practices, which recommend isolation over termination to preserve forensic data while minimizing disruption to the application.

To allow cross-account access to a KMS key, the key policy of the KMS key must grant permission to the external account or principal, and the IAM policy of the external account or principal must delegate the key policy permission. In this case, the new Lambda function in the development account needs to use the KMS key in the security account, so the key policy of the KMS key must allow access to the IAM role of the new Lambda function in the development account (option E), and the IAM role of the new Lambda function in the development account must have an IAM policy that allows access to the KMS key in the security account (option C). Option A is incorrect because it creates an IAM role for the new Lambda function in the security account, not in the development account. Option B is incorrect because it attaches a key policy to an IAM role, which is not valid. Option D is incorrect because it allows access to the IAM role of the new Lambda function in the security account, not in the development account.Verified References:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kms/latest/developerguide/key-policy-modifying-external-accounts.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/key-policy-requirements-EBS-encryption.html

The correct answer is B because it checks the configuration of the CloudWatch alarm that is supposed to monitor the CloudTrail log events. The analyst should verify that a metric filter was created to extract the relevant information from the log events, such as the event name, source, and user identity. The analyst should also verify that the metric filter wasmapped to an alarm that triggers when a certain threshold is reached, and that the alarm notification action is set up correctly to send alerts to the analyst1.

The other options are incorrect because they do not address the issue of the CloudWatch alarm not working as expected. Option A is incorrect because CloudTrail and S3 bucket access logging are not related to the monitoring of security group changes. CloudTrail logs the API calls made to AWS services, and S3 bucket access logging records the requestsmade to thebucket2. OptionC is incorrect because CloudWatch dashboards are used to display metrics and alarms in a graphical way, but they do not affect the functionality of the alarm3. Option D is incorrect because the IAM policy permissions for cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics and cloudwatch:ListMetrics are not required to monitor the CloudTrail log events. These permissions are used to retrieve the statistics and list of metrics for a given namespace4.

B. Amazon Inspector now supports Lambda scanning for vulnerabilities. Designating a delegated administrator provides centralized visibility into findings across the organization.

C. Tag-based suppression enables filtering of findings for non-production resources (e.g., test or dev Lambda functions). By using tags and configuring suppression filters in Inspector, only relevant production findings appear in the dashboard.

This approach provides continuous monitoring, centralized reporting, and filtering based on environment, fulfilling Infrastructure Security requirements.

To enforce end-to-end encryption in transit, the company should do the following:

Update the web application configuration on the web servers to use HTTPS instead of HTTP when connecting to DynamoDB. This ensures that the data is encrypted when it travels from the web servers to the data store.

Update the CloudFront distribution to redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS. This ensures that the viewers always use HTTPS when they access the website through CloudFront.

Update the ALB to listen using HTTPS using the public ACM TLS certificate. Update the CloudFront distribution to connect to the HTTPS listener. This ensures that the data is encrypted when it travels from CloudFront to the ALB and from the ALB to the web servers.

Create an Account-Wide Data Protection Policy:

Use AWS CloudWatch Logs account-level data protection policies to prevent sensitive data exposure.

Define the policy with appropriate AWS managed data identifiers or custom identifiers specific to the company's sensitive data.

Apply the policy across all log groups in the account, ensuring coverage for both existing and future log groups.

Restrict Developer Access to Unmasked Data:

Explicitly deny thelogs:UnmaskIAM permission to developers. This prevents developers from accessing unmasked sensitive data in log entries.

Automatic Policy Application:

Account-wide data protection policies automatically apply to new log groups created in the future, ensuring scalability and compliance without manual intervention.

Testing and Verification:

Test the policy with sample log entries containing sensitive data to ensure proper masking.

Verify that developers can troubleshoot logs without exposing sensitive information.

AWS CloudWatch Logs Data Protection Documentation

AWS Identity and Access Management Permissions for CloudWatch Logs

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.

The correct answer is C. Specify Amazon CloudWatch as the destination for the access logs. Export the CloudWatch logs to an Amazon S3 bucket. Use Amazon Athena to query the logs and to filter the logs by host.

According to the AWS documentation1, AWS WAF offers logging for the traffic that your web ACLs analyze. The logs include information such as the time that AWS WAF received the request from your protected AWS resource, detailed information about the request, and the action setting for the rule that the request matched. You can send yourlogs to an Amazon CloudWatch Logs log group, an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket, or an Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose.

To create a log analysis solution for the AWS WAF web ACLs, you can use Amazon Athena, which is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL2. You can use Athena to query and filter the AWS WAF logs by host or any other criteria. Athena is serverless, so there is no infrastructure to manage, and you pay only for the queries that you run.

To use Athena with AWS WAF logs, you need to export the CloudWatch logs to an S3 bucket.You can do this by creating a subscription filter that sends your log events to a Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream, which then delivers the data to an S3 bucket3.Alternatively, you can use AWS DMS to migrate your CloudWatch logs to S34.

After you have exported your CloudWatch logs to S3, you can create a table in Athena that points to your S3 bucket and use the AWS service log format that matches your log schema5. For example, if you are using format for your AWS WAF logs, you can use the AWSSerDe serde. Then you can run SQL queries on your Athena table and filter the results by host or any other field in your log data.

Therefore, this solution meets the requirements of creating a log analysis solution for the AWS WAF web ACLs with the most operational efficiency. This solution does not require setting up any additional infrastructure or services, and it leverages the existing capabilities of CloudWatch, S3, and Athena.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. Specifying Amazon Redshift as the destination for the access logs is not possible, because AWS WAF does not support sending logs directly to Redshift. You would need to use an intermediate service such as Kinesis Data Firehose or AWS DMS to load the data from CloudWatch or S3 to Redshift.Deploying the Amazon Athena Redshift connector is not necessary, because you can query Redshift data directly from Athena without using a connector6. This solution would also incur additional costs and operational overhead of managing a Redshift cluster.

B. Specifying Amazon CloudWatch as the destination for the access logs is possible, but using Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights to design a query to filter the logs by host is not efficient or scalable.CloudWatch Logs Insights is a feature that enables you to interactively search and analyze your log data in CloudWatch Logs7.However, CloudWatch Logs Insights has somelimitations, such as a maximum query duration of 20 minutes, a maximum of 20 log groups per query, and a maximum retention period of 24 months8. These limitations may affect your ability to perform complex and long-running analysis on your AWS WAF logs.

D. Specifying Amazon CloudWatch as the destination for the access logs is possible, but using Amazon Redshift Spectrum to query the logs and filter them by host is not efficient or cost-effective.Redshift Spectrum is a feature of Amazon Redshift that enables you to run queries against exabytes of data in S3 without loading or transforming any data9. However, Redshift Spectrum requires a Redshift cluster to process the queries, which adds additional costs and operational overhead.Redshift Spectrum also charges you based on the number ofbytes scanned by each query, which can be expensive if you have large volumes of log data10.

The below diagram from an IAM blog shows how security groups can be monitored

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

Option A is invalid because you need to use Cloudwatch Events to check for chan,

Option B is invalid because you need to use Cloudwatch Events to check for chang

Option C is invalid because IAM inspector is not used to monitor the activity on Security Groups

For more information on monitoring security groups, please visit the below URL:

Ihttpsy/IAM.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-automatically-revert-and-receive-notifications-about-changes-to-your-amazonj 'pc-security-groups/

The correct answer is: Use Cloudwatch events to be triggered for any changes to the Security Groups. Configure the Lambda function for email notification as well.

Submit your Feedback/Queries to our Experts

To address the issue of an Amazon EC2 instance receiving suspicious requests over an open TCP port, the most effective solution is to update the Network Access Control List (NACL) associated with the subnet where the EC2 instance resides. By adding a deny rule for the specific TCP port and source IP addresses involved in the suspicious activity, the security team can effectively block unwanted traffic at the subnet level. NACLs act as a stateless firewall for controlling traffic in and out of subnets, allowing for broad-based traffic filtering. This measure ensures that only legitimate traffic can reach the EC2 instance, thereby enhancing security without affecting the application's availability to other users. It's a more granular and immediate way to block specific traffic compared to modifying security group rules, which are stateful and apply at the instance level.

Amazon Security Lake, when configured with a delegated administrator account in AWS Organizations, provides a centralized solution for aggregating, organizing, and prioritizing security data from multiple sources including AWS services, AWS Marketplace solutions, and on-premises systems. By enabling Security Lake for the organization and adding the necessary AWS accounts, the solution centralizes the collection and analysis of log data. This setup leverages the organization's structure to streamline log aggregation and normalization, making it an efficient solution for the specified requirements. The use of Amazon Athena for querying the log data further enhances the ability to analyze and respond to security findings across the organization.

Understanding Gateway VPC Endpoint:

A gateway VPC endpoint allows traffic from the VPC to specific AWS services (e.g., Amazon S3) without traversing the public internet.

Key Configuration Points to Verify:

The route table is correctly configured to send traffic for Amazon S3 through the gateway VPC endpoint.

IAM permissions and bucket policies are correct and allow access to the specific S3 bucket.

Verify the Endpoint Policy:

Check the VPC endpoint policy to ensure it allows access to the S3 bucket. The policy might be restricting access to certain buckets, prefixes, or IAM principals.

Example VPC Endpoint Policy:

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:*",

"Resource": [

"arn:aws:s3:::example-bucket",

"arn:aws:s3:::example-bucket/*"

]

}

]

}

Testing and Validation:

Modify the endpoint policy if required and test access again from the EC2 instance.

Gateway VPC Endpoints Documentation

VPC Endpoint Policies for Amazon S3

The combination of solutions that will meet the requirements are:

A. Create a local individual break glass IAM user for the security team. Create a trail in AWS CloudTrail that has Amazon CloudWatch Logs turned on. Use Amazon EventBridge to monitor local user activities. This is a valid solution because it allows the security team to access the workload AWS account and instances using a local IAM user that does not depend on SAML federation.It also enables logging and monitoring of the break glass user activities using AWS CloudTrail, Amazon CloudWatch Logs, and Amazon EventBridge123.

E. Configure AWS Systems Manager Session Manager for Amazon EC2. Configure an AWS CloudTrail filter based on Session Manager. Send the results to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic. This is a valid solution because it allows the security team to access the workload instances without opening any inbound ports or managing SSH keys or bastion hosts.It also enables logging and notification of the breakglass user activities using AWS CloudTrail, Session Manager, and Amazon SNS456.

The other options are incorrect because:

B.Creating a break glass EC2 key pair for the AWS account and providing it to the security team is not a valid solution, because it requires opening inbound ports on the instances and managing SSH keys, which increases the security risk and complexity7.

C.Creating a break glass IAM role for the account and allowing security team members to perform the AssumeRoleWithSAML operation is not a valid solution, because it still dependson SAML federation, which might not work in case of SAML errors8.

D.Creating a local individual break glass IAM user on the operating system level of each workload instance and configuring unrestricted security groups on theinstances to grant access to the break glass IAM users is not a valid solution,because it requires opening inbound ports on the instances and managing multiple local users, which increases the security risk and complexity9.

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

You can establish a private connection between your VPC and Secrets Manager by creating an interface VPC endpoint. Interface endpoints are powered by AWS PrivateLink, a technology that enables you to privately access Secrets Manager APIs without an internet gateway, NAT device, VPN connection, or AWS Direct Connect connection. Reference:https://docs.aws.amazon.com/secretsmanager/latest/userguide/vpc-endpoint-overview.html

The correct answer is D. Configure a Secrets Manager interface VPC endpoint. Include the Lambda function’s private subnet during the configuration process.

A Secrets Manager interface VPC endpoint is a private connection between the VPC and Secrets Manager that does not require an internet gateway, NAT device, VPN connection, or AWS Direct Connect connection1. By configuring a Secrets Manager interface VPC endpoint, the security engineer can enable the custom Lambda function to communicate with Secrets Manager without sending or receiving network traffic through the internet.The security engineer must include the Lambda function’s private subnet during the configuration process to allow the function to use the endpoint2.

The other options are incorrect for the following reasons:

A.An egress-only internet gateway is a VPC component that allows outbound communication over IPv6 from instances in the VPC to the internet, and prevents the internet from initiating an IPv6 connection with the instances3. However, this option does not meet the requirement that the VPC must not send or receive network traffic through the internet.Moreover, an egress-only internet gateway is for use with IPv6 traffic only, and Secrets Manager does not support IPv6 addresses2.

B.A NAT gateway is a VPC component that enables instances in a private subnet to connect to the internet or other AWS services, but prevents the internet from initiating connections with those instances4. However, this option does not meet therequirement that the VPC must not send or receive network traffic through the internet.Additionally, a NAT gateway requires an elasticIP address, which is a public IPv4 address4.

C.A VPC peering connection is a networking connection between two VPCs that enables you to route traffic between them using private IPv4 addresses or IPv6 addresses5. However, this option does not work because Secrets Manager does not have a default VPC that can be peered with.Furthermore, a VPC peering connection does not provide a private connection to Secrets Manager APIs without an internetgateway or other devices2.

The possible reason that the IAM user cannot access the objects in the S3 bucket is D. The KMS key policy has been edited to remove the ability for the AWS account to have full access to the key.

This answer is correct because the KMS key policy is the primary way to control access to the KMS key, and it must explicitly allow the AWS account to have full access to the key.If theKMS key policy has been edited to remove this permission, then the IAM policy that grants kms:Decrypt permission to the IAM user has no effect, and the IAM user cannot decrypt the objects in the S3 bucket12.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. The IAM policy does not need to allow the kms:DescribeKey permission, because this permission is not required for decrypting objects in S3 using SSE-KMS.The kms:DescribeKey permission allows getting information about a KMSkey, such as its creation date, description, and key state3.

B. The S3 bucket has not been changed to use the AWS managed key to encrypt objects at rest, because this would not cause an Access Denied message for the IAM user. The AWS managed key is a default KMS key that is created and managed by AWS for each AWS account and Region.The IAM user does not need any permissions on this key to use it for SSE-KMS4.

C. An S3 bucket policy does not need to be added to allow the IAM user to access the objects, because the IAM user already has s3:List* and s3:Get* permissions for the S3 bucket and its objects through an IAM policy.An S3 bucket policy is an optional way to grant cross-account access or public access to an S3 bucket5.

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.

The correct answer is B. Configure CloudTrail to send events to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Create a metric filter for the relevant log group. Create a filter pattern with eventName matching ConsoleLogin and errorMessage matching “Failed authentication”. Create a CloudWatch alarm with a threshold of 3 and a period of 5 minutes.

This answer is correct because it meets the requirements of sending an alert when three or more failed sign-in attempts to the AWS Management Console occur during a 5-minute period. By configuring CloudTrail to send events to CloudWatch Logs, the securityengineer can create a metric filter that matches the desired pattern of failed sign-in events.Then, by creating a CloudWatch alarm based on the metric filter, the security engineer can set a threshold of 3 and a period of 5 minutes, and choose an action such as sending an email or an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) message when the alarm is triggered12.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. Turning on Insights events on the trail and configuring an alarm on the insight is not a solution, because Insights events are used to analyze unusual activity in management events, such as spikes in API call volume or error rates.Insights events do not capturefailed sign-in attempts to the AWS Management Console3.

C. Creating an Amazon Athena table from the CloudTrail events and running a query for failed sign-in events is not a solution, because it does not provide a mechanism to send an alert based on the query results.Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that allows analyzing data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL, but it does not support creating notifications or alarms from queries4.

D. Creating an analyzer in AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer and configuring it to send an Amazon SNS notification when a failed sign-in event occurs 3 times for any IAM user within a period of 5 minutes is not a solution, because IAM Access Analyzer is not a service that monitors sign-in events, but a service that helps identify resources that are shared with external entities.IAM Access Analyzer does not generate findings for failed sign-in attempts to the AWS Management Console5.

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.

because these are the factors that could affect the outbound connection to the internet from a server in a private subnet. The outbound network ACL rules on the private subnet and both the inbound and outbound rules on the public subnet must allow the traffic to pass through8. The security group applied to the application load balancer and NAT gateway must also allow the traffic from the private subnet9. The 0.0.0.0/0 route in the private subnet route table must point to the NAT gateway in the public subnet, not the internet gateway10. The other options are either irrelevant or incorrect for troubleshooting the outbound connection issue.

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

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

the kms:ViaService condition key can be used to restrict a CMK to work with only a specific AWS service6. By configuring the CMKkey policy to allow KMS actions only when the kms:ViaService condition matches the Amazon S3 service name, you can ensure that only Amazon S3 can use the CMK7. The other options are either incorrect or insufficient for constraining a CMK to work with only Amazon S3.

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/

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

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.

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.

Understand IMDSv2 Metrics:

IMDSv2 adds a layer of security to EC2 instance metadata by requiring a session token.

TheEC2MetadataNoTokenCloudWatch metric tracks the number of calls to IMDSv1.

Enable the IMDS Metrics:

Ensure that the EC2 instances have theDetailed Monitoringfeature enabled to publish metrics to CloudWatch.

Create a CloudWatch Dashboard:

In the CloudWatch console, create a dashboard that displays theEC2MetadataNoTokenmetric for all instances.

Verify Zero Value:

Monitor theEC2MetadataNoTokenmetric. If the value is zero for all instances, it confirms that IMDSv1 is no longer in use.

Secure Access and Validation:

Regularly monitor the dashboard to ensure no instance reverts to using IMDSv1.

Instance Metadata Service (IMDS) Documentation

CloudWatch Metrics for EC2 Instances

AWS Security Best Practices for Metadata Service

Centralize Access Management with IAM Roles:

Create roles in the testing and production accounts with permissions specific to resources in those accounts.

Add a policy that allowssts:AssumeRolefor trusted accounts.

Establish Trust Between Accounts:

Update the trust policies of the roles in the testing and production accounts to allow the roles in the development account to assume them.

Example Trust Policy:

{

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

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": {

"AWS": "arn:aws:iam:::role/"

},

"Action": "sts:AssumeRole"

}

]

}

Role Switching for Access:

Developers in the development account can use the AWS Management Console or CLI to assume the roles in the testing or production accounts.

Advantages of This Solution:

Scalability: No need to create individual credentials for each developer in every account.

Security: Credentials are dynamically assumed and not shared across accounts.

Ease of Management: Centralized role management simplifies permissions and reduces administrative overhead.

Cross-Account Access in AWS

Using Roles to Delegate Permissions

IAM Policies and Trust Relationships

One can use the IAM Encryption CLI to encrypt the data before sending it across to the S3 bucket. Options A and C are invalid because this would still mean that data is transferred in plain text Option D is invalid because you cannot just enable client side encryption for the S3 bucket For more information on Encrypting and Decrypting data, please visit the below URL:

https://IAM.amazonxom/blogs/securirv/how4o-encrvpt-and-decrypt-your-data-with-the-IAM-encryption-cl

The correct answer is: Use the IAM Encryption CLI to encrypt the data first Submit your Feedback/Queries to our Experts

The correct answer is C. Change the Resource element to “arn:aws:s3:::DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/*”.

The reason is that the Resource element in the bucket policy specifies which objects in the bucket are affected by the policy. In this case, the policy only applies to the bucket itself, not the objects inside it. Therefore, the Lambda function cannot access the objects with the s3:GetObject permission. To fix this, the Resource element should include a wildcard (*) to match all objects in the bucket. This way, the policy grants the Lambda function permission to read any object in the bucket.

The other options are incorrect for the following reasons:

A. Removing the Condition element would not help, because it only restricts access based on the source IP address of the request. The Principal element should not be changed to the Lambda function ARN, because it specifies who is allowed or denied access by the policy. The policy should allow access to any principal ("*") and rely on IAM roles or policies to control access to the Lambda function.

B. Changing the Action element to include s3:GetBucket* would not help, because it would grant additional permissions that are not needed by the Lambda function, such as s3:GetBucketAcl or s3:GetBucketPolicy. The s3:GetObject* permission is sufficient for reading objects in the bucket.

D. Changing the Resource element to the Lambda function ARN would not make sense, because it would mean that the policy applies to the Lambda function itself, not the bucket or its objects. The Principal element should not be changed to s3.amazonaws.com, because it would grant access to any AWS service that uses S3, not just Lambda.

AWS KMS supports asymmetric KMS keys that represent a mathematically related RSA, elliptic curve (ECC), or SM2 (China Regions only) public and private key pair. These key pairs are generated in AWS KMS hardware security modules certified under the FIPS 140-2 Cryptographic Module Validation Program, except in the China (Beijing) and China (Ningxia) Regions. The private key never leaves the AWS KMS HSMs unencrypted.https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kms/latest/developerguide/symmetric-asymmetric.html

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.

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.

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