Practice Free SCS-C03 Exam Online Questions
A security engineer needs to implement a solution to identify any sensitive data that is stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. The solution must report on sensitive data in the S3 bucket by using an existing Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic.
Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST implementation effort?
- A . Enable AWS Config. Configure AWS Config to monitor for sensitive data in the S3 bucket and to send notifications to the SNS topic.
- B . Create an AWS Lambda function to scan the S3 bucket for sensitive data that matches a pattern.
Program the Lambda function to send notifications to the SNS topic. - C . Configure Amazon Macie to use managed data identifiers to identify and categorize sensitive data.
Create an Amazon EventBridge rule to send notifications to the SNS topic. - D . Enable Amazon GuardDuty. Configure AWS CloudTrail S3 data events. Create an Amazon
CloudWatch alarm that reacts to GuardDuty findings and sends notifications to the SNS topic.
C
Explanation:
Amazon Macie is the AWS service designed specifically to discover, classify, and report sensitive data stored in Amazon S3. According to the AWS Certified Security C Specialty Study Guide, Macie uses machine learning and managed data identifiers to automatically detect sensitive data types such as PII and financial information.
Macie integrates natively with Amazon EventBridge, allowing findings to be routed to other services such as Amazon SNS with minimal configuration. Creating an EventBridge rule to forward Macie findings to an existing SNS topic satisfies the notification requirement without custom code.
Option A is invalid because AWS Config does not inspect object contents. Option B requires custom development and ongoing maintenance. Option D is incorrect because Amazon GuardDuty focuses on threat detection, not sensitive data discovery.
AWS documentation emphasizes Macie as the lowest-effort and most accurate solution for sensitive data identification in S3.
Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:
AWS Certified Security C Specialty Official Study Guide
Amazon Macie Sensitive Data Discovery
Amazon EventBridge Integration with Security Services
A company is migrating one of its legacy systems from an on-premises data center to AWS. The application server will run on AWS, but the database must remain in the on-premises data center for compliance reasons. The database is sensitive to network latency. Additionally, the data that travels between the on-premises data center and AWS must have IPsec encryption.
Which combination of AWS solutions will meet these requirements? (Select TWO.)
- A . AWS Site-to-Site VPN
- B . AWS Direct Connect
- C . AWS VPN CloudHub
- D . VPC peering
- E . NAT gateway
A,B
Explanation:
The database islatency-sensitive, so the connectivity option should minimize jitter and provide more consistent performance than traversing the public internet.AWS Direct Connectprovides a dedicated network connection from the on-premises environment into AWS, typically delivering more stable throughput and lower/consistent latency characteristics compared with internet-based paths. However, Direct Connect by itself does not automatically provideIPsec encryption.
To satisfy the explicit requirement that traffic must haveIPsec encryption, the common AWS pattern is to run anAWS Site-to-Site VPN(IPsec tunnels) in conjunction with Direct Connect. This can be done as “VPN over Direct Connect” to encrypt the traffic while still taking advantage of Direct Connect’s private, predictable connectivity. This combination meets both requirements: improved latency characteristics (Direct Connect) and IPsec encryption (Site-to-Site VPN).
The other options do not fit. VPN CloudHub (Option C) is for connecting multiple remote sites together via AWS as a hub-and-spoke, not a primary low-latency private link. VPC peering (Option D) is only for VPC-to-VPC connectivity and does not connect to on-premises. NAT gateway (Option E) is for outbound internet/NAT translation and does not provide private encrypted connectivity to on-premises.
A company is implementing new compliance requirements to meet customer needs. According to the new requirements, the company must not use any Amazon RDS DB instances or DB clusters that lack encryption of the underlying storage. The company needs a solution that will generate an email alert when an unencrypted DB instance or DB cluster is created. The solution also must terminate the unencrypted DB instance or DB cluster.
Which solution will meet these requirements in the MOST operationally efficient manner?
- A . Create an AWS Config managed rule to detect unencrypted RDS storage. Configure an automatic remediation action to publish messages to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic that includes an AWS Lambda function and an email delivery target as subscribers. Configure the Lambda function to delete the unencrypted resource.
- B . Create an AWS Config managed rule to detect unencrypted RDS storage. Configure a manual remediation action to invoke an AWS Lambda function. Configure the Lambda function to publish messages to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic and to delete the unencrypted resource.
- C . Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that evaluates RDS event patterns and is initiated by the creation of DB instances or DB clusters. Configure the rule to publish messages to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic that includes an AWS Lambda function and an email delivery target as subscribers. Configure the Lambda function to delete the unencrypted resource.
- D . Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that evaluates RDS event patterns and is initiated by the creation of DB instances or DB clusters. Configure the rule to invoke an AWS Lambda function. Configure the Lambda function to publish messages to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic and to delete the unencrypted resource.
A
Explanation:
AWS Config provides managed rules that continuously evaluate resource configurations against compliance requirements. The AWS Certified Security C Specialty documentation highlights AWS Config managed rules as the preferred mechanism for enforcing configuration compliance at scale. The managed rule for encrypted RDS storage automatically detects DB instances and clusters that are created without encryption enabled.
By configuring automatic remediation, AWS Config can immediately invoke corrective actions without manual intervention. Integrating remediation with an Amazon SNS topic enables automated email notifications, while an AWS Lambda function can terminate the noncompliant resource. This creates a fully automated detect-alert-remediate workflow.
Option B requires manual remediation, which increases operational effort and delays enforcement. Options C and D rely on Amazon EventBridge, which evaluates events rather than configuration state and does not provide continuous compliance monitoring. AWS Config is explicitly designed for configuration compliance and governance use cases.
This solution aligns with AWS governance best practices by combining continuous monitoring, automated remediation, and centralized alerting with minimal operational overhead.
Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:
AWS Certified Security C Specialty Official Study Guide
AWS Config Managed Rules
AWS Config Automatic Remediation
A company’s developers are using AWS Lambda function URLs to invoke functions directly. Thecompany must ensure that developers cannot configure or deploy unauthenticated functions in production accounts. The company wants to meet this requirement by using AWS Organizations. The solution must not require additional work for the developers.
Which solution will meet these requirements?
- A . Require the developers to configure all function URLs to support cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) when the functions are called from a different domain.
- B . Use an AWS WAF delegated administrator account to view and block unauthenticated access to function URLs in production accounts, based on the OU of accounts that are using the functions.
- C . Use SCPs to allow all lambda:CreateFunctionUrlConfig and lambda:UpdateFunctionUrlConfig actions that have a lambda:FunctionUrlAuthType condition key value of AWS_IAM.
- D . Use SCPs to deny all lambda:CreateFunctionUrlConfig and lambda:UpdateFunctionUrlConfig actions that have a lambda:FunctionUrlAuthType condition key value of NONE.
D
Explanation:
AWS Organizations service control policies (SCPs) are designed to enforce preventive guardrails across accounts without requiring application-level changes. According to the AWS Certified Security
C Specialty documentation, SCPs can restrict specific API actions or require certain condition keys to enforce security standards centrally. AWS Lambda function URLs support two authentication modes: AWS_IAM and NONE. When the authentication type is set to NONE, the function URL becomes publicly accessible, which introduces a significant security risk in production environments.
By using an SCP that explicitly denies the lambda:CreateFunctionUrlConfig and lambda:UpdateFunctionUrlConfig actions when the lambda:FunctionUrlAuthType condition key equals NONE, the organization ensures that unauthenticated function URLs cannot be created or modified in production accounts. This enforcement occurs at the AWS Organizations level and applies automatically to all accounts within the specified organizational units (OUs). Developers are not required to change their workflows or add additional controls, satisfying the requirement of no additional developer effort.
Option A relates to browser-based access controls and does not provide authentication or authorization enforcement. Option B is not valid because AWS WAF cannot be attached directly to AWS Lambda function URLs. Option C is incorrect because SCPs do not grant permissions; they only limit permissions. AWS documentation clearly states that SCPs define maximum available permissions and are evaluated before IAM policies.
This approach aligns with AWS best practices for centralized governance, least privilege, and preventive security controls.
Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:
AWS Certified Security C Specialty Official Study Guide
AWS Organizations Service Control Policies Documentation
AWS Lambda Security and Function URL Authentication Overview
A company is using AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch to monitor resources in an AWS account. The company’s developers have been using an IAM role in the account for the last 3 months.
A security engineer needs to refine the customer managed IAM policy attached to the role to ensure that the role provides least privilege access.
Which solution will meet this requirement with the LEAST effort?
- A . Implement AWS IAM Access Analyzer policy generation on the role.
- B . Implement AWS IAM Access Analyzer policy validation on the role.
- C . Search CloudWatch logs to determine the actions the role invoked and to evaluate the permissions.
- D . Use AWS Trusted Advisor to compare the policies assigned to the role against AWS best practices.
A
Explanation:
AWS IAM Access Analyzer policy generation is specifically designed to help security engineers generate least-privilege IAM policies based on actual usage recorded in AWS CloudTrail. According to the AWS Certified Security C Specialty documentation, policy generation analyzes historical CloudTrail data to identify the exact API actions and resources that a role has accessed over a specified time period.
Because the role has been actively used for three months, there is sufficient CloudTrail data for IAM Access Analyzer to generate a refined customer managed policy automatically. This significantly reduces manual effort and eliminates the need to analyze logs or infer permissions. The generated policy can be reviewed and attached directly to the role, ensuring least privilege access with minimal
engineering effort.
Option B only validates existing policies for security warnings and does not reduce permissions.
Option C requires manual analysis of CloudWatch logs, which is time-consuming and error-prone.
Option D does not analyze real usage and cannot generate role-specific least privilege policies.
AWS documentation explicitly recommends IAM Access Analyzer policy generation as the fastest and most accurate method to refine IAM permissions based on observed behavior.
Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:
AWS Certified Security C Specialty Official Study Guide
AWS IAM Access Analyzer Policy Generation
AWS IAM Least Privilege Best Practices
A company’s public website consists of an Application Load Balancer (ALB), a set of Amazon EC2 instances that run a stateless application behind the ALB, and an Amazon DynamoDB table from which the application reads data. The company is concerned about malicious scanning and DDoS attacks. The company wants to impose a restriction in which each client IP address can read the data only3 times in any 5-minute period.
Which solution will meet this requirement with the LEAST effort?
- A . Set up AWS WAF in front of the ALB. Create a rule that blocks requests that exceed the limit of 3 requests in any 5-minute period for each IP address.
- B . Create an AWS Lambda function based on an Amazon CloudWatch request. Configure the Lambda function to count the requests for each IP address in rolling 5-minute intervals and to provide notification if the count exceeds 3.
- C . Modify the EC2 application to count the source IP address of requests and calculate a rolling 5-minute sum. Return an error message if the count sum is greater than 3.
- D . Add source IP address and request time to the DynamoDB table. Add a 5-minute TTL setting based on request time. Change the read capacity of the DynamoDB table throughput to 3.
A
Explanation:
This is a classic Layer 7 rate-limiting requirement tied toclient IPand atime window, and AWS WAF provides this natively withrate-based rules. Placing AWS WAF in front of the ALB allows the company to count requests per source IP over a rolling window and take action (block, CAPTCHA/challenge, or count depending on configuration) once the threshold is exceeded. This approach mitigates scanning and application-layer request floods early, before requests consume EC2 or DynamoDB capacity, and it requires minimal custom code or operational work.
Options B and C require building and maintaining custom counting logic (either in Lambda or in the application), which increases complexity and risk of errors, and it also introduces operational overhead for scaling state tracking across many IPs. Option D is not appropriate: altering DynamoDB capacity does not enforce “per-IP reads,” and storing per-request metadata in the same table is an anti-pattern that increases write load and complexity.
Therefore, using AWS WAF rate-based protection at the ALB is the least-effort, most effective solution.
A company runs a web application on a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. Amazon GuardDuty and AWS Security Hub are enabled. The security engineer needs an automated response to anomalous traffic that follows AWS best practices and minimizes application disruption.
Which solution will meet these requirements?
- A . Use EventBridge to disable the instance profile access keys.
- B . Use EventBridge to invoke a Lambda function that removes the affected instance from the Auto Scaling group and isolates it with a restricted security group.
- C . Use Security Hub to update the subnet network ACL to block traffic.
- D . Send GuardDuty findings to Amazon SNS for email notification.
B
Explanation:
AWS incident response best practices emphasize isolating compromised resources rather than immediately terminating them. According to AWS Certified Security C Specialty documentation, removing an instance from an Auto Scaling group prevents replacement loops, while applying a restrictive security group isolates the instance for forensic analysis.
Using Amazon EventBridge to trigger an AWS Lambda function enables automated, consistent responses to GuardDuty findings. This approach minimizes disruption to the application because healthy instances continue serving traffic while the affected instance is isolated.
Disabling credentials or modifying network ACLs can have broader impact on unrelated workloads.
SNS notifications alone do not provide response automation.
AWS recommends isolate-and-investigate patterns for EC2 incident response.
Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:
AWS Certified Security C Specialty Official Study Guide
Amazon GuardDuty Automated Responses
AWS Incident Response Playbooks
A security engineer for a company is investigating suspicious traffic on a web application in the AWS Cloud. The web application is protected by an Application Load Balancer (ALB) behind an Amazon CloudFront distribution. There is an AWS WAF web ACL associated with the ALB. The company stores AWS WAF logs in an Amazon S3 bucket.
The engineer notices that all incoming requests in the AWS WAF logs originate from a small number of IP addresses that correspond to CloudFront edge locations. The security engineer must identify the source IP addresses of the clients that are initiating the suspicious requests.
Which solution will meet this requirement?
- A . Enable VPC Flow Logs in the VPC where the ALB is deployed. Examine the source field to capture the client IP addresses.
- B . Inspect the X-Forwarded-For header in the AWS WAF logs to determine the original client IP addresses.
- C . Modify the CloudFront distribution to disable ALB connection reuse. Examine the clientIp field in the AWS WAF logs to identify the original client IP addresses.
- D . Configure CloudFront to add a custom header named Client-IP to origin requests that are sent to the ALB.
B
Explanation:
When Amazon CloudFront is used in front of an Application Load Balancer, CloudFront becomes the immediate source of incoming requests to the ALB. As a result, AWS WAF logs record theCloudFront edge location IP addressesas the client IPs, not the original viewer IP addresses. This behavior is explicitly documented in the AWS Certified Security C Specialty Study Guide and the AWS WAF and CloudFront integration documentation.
To preserve the original client IP address, CloudFront automatically adds theX-Forwarded-For HTTP header, which contains the IP address of the originating client followed by any proxy addresses involved in forwarding the request. AWS WAF logs include this header, making it the authoritative source for identifying true client IP addresses when CloudFront is used.
Option A is incorrect because VPC Flow Logs capture network-level metadata and will only show CloudFront IP addresses, not the original client IPs. Option C is incorrect because disabling connection reuse does not change how client IPs are logged in AWS WAF. Option D is unnecessary and unsupported as a requirement because CloudFront already provides the required information through standard headers.
AWS documentation consistently states thatX-Forwarded-Foris the correct and supported mechanism for tracing client IPs in CloudFront-protected applications.
AWS Certified Security C Specialty Official Study Guide
AWS WAF Developer Guide C Logging
Amazon CloudFront Developer Guide C Request Headers
A company has security requirements for Amazon Aurora MySQL databases regarding encryption, deletion protection, public access, and audit logging. The company needs continuous monitoring and real-time visibility into compliance status.
Which solution will meet these requirements?
- A . Use AWS Audit Manager with a custom framework.
- B . Enable AWS Config and use managed rules to monitor Aurora MySQL compliance.
- C . Use AWS Security Hub configuration policies.
- D . Use EventBridge and Lambda with custom metrics.
B
Explanation:
AWS Config is the AWS service designed to continuously evaluate resource configurations against defined rules. According to the AWS Certified Security C Specialty Study Guide, AWS Config managed rules exist specifically to check database encryption, public accessibility, deletion protection, and log exports for Amazon RDS and Aurora.
AWS Config provides a real-time compliance timeline and displays the compliance state of each resource against each rule at any point in time. This granular visibility is required to assess ongoing compliance with security policies.
Audit Manager generates reports but does not provide continuous compliance monitoring. Security Hub aggregates findings but does not track configuration drift. EventBridge and Lambda introduce unnecessary complexity.
Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:
AWS Certified Security C Specialty Official Study Guide
AWS Config Managed Rules for RDS
AWS Continuous Compliance Monitoring
CloudFormation stack deployments fail for some users due to permission inconsistencies.
Which combination of steps will ensure consistent deployments MOST securely? (Select THREE.)
- A . Create a composite principal service role.
- B . Create a service role with cloudformation.amazonaws.com as the principal.
- C . Attach scoped policies to the service role.
- D . Attach service ARNs in policy resources.
- E . Update each stack to use the service role.
- F . Allow iam:PassRole to the service role.
B,E,F
Explanation:
AWS best practices require CloudFormation to assume a dedicated service role. This ensures consistent permissions regardless of the user. Users must have iam:PassRole permission to pass the role. Updating stacks to use the service role enforces uniform deployment behavior.
Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:
AWS Certified Security C Specialty Official Study Guide
AWS CloudFormation Service Roles
