SCS-C02 Practice Exam Questions with Answers AWS Certified Security - Specialty Certification

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 to automatically expire the key material used for encryption5.

References:

1: Customer Managed Keys - AWS Key Management Service 2: [Importing Key Material in AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) - AWS Key Management Service] 3: [Rotating Customer Master Keys - AWS Key Management Service] 4: [AWS Managed Keys - AWS Key Management Service] 5: The GNU Privacy Guard

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

One can use the CLI command list-access-keys to get the access keys. This command also returns the "CreateDate" of the keys. If the CreateDate is older than 2 months, then the keys can be deleted.

The Returns list-access-keys CLI command returns information about the access key IDs associated with the specified IAM user. If there are none, the action returns an empty list

Option A is incorrect because you might as use a script for such maintenance activities

Option C is incorrect because you would not rotate the users themselves

Option D is incorrect because you don't use IAM roles for such a purpose

For more information on the CLI command, please refer to the below Link:

http://docs.IAM.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/list-access-keys.htmll

The correct answer is: Use a script to query the creation date of the keys. If older than 2 months, create new access key and update all applications to use it inactivate the old key and delete it.

Submit your Feedback/Queries to our Experts

To provide access to the three individuals who have IAM user accounts to access the Amazon Linux 2 Amazon EC2 instances that are using the same IAM instance profile, the most appropriate solution would be to assign an IAM policy to the instance profile to allow the EC2 instances to be managed by AWS Systems Manager, provide the IAM user accounts with permission to use Systems Manager, remove the SSH keys from the EC2 instances, and use Systems Manager Session Manager to select the EC2 instance and connect.

References: : AWS Systems Manager Session Manager - AWS Systems Manager : AWS Systems Manager - AWS Management Console : AWS Identity and Access Management - AWS Management Console : Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud - Amazon Web Services : Amazon Linux 2 - Amazon Web Services : AWS Systems Manager - AWS Management Console : AWS Systems Manager - AWS Management Console : AWS Systems Manager - AWS Management Console

The correct answer is D. Import a new third-party certificate into AWS Certificate Manager (ACM). Associate the certificate with the ALB. Install the certificate on the EC2 instances.

This answer is correct because it meets the requirements of complete encryption of the traffic between external users and the application. By importing a third-party certificate into ACM, the security engineer can use it to secure the communication between the ALB and the clients. By installing the same certificate on the EC2 instances, the security engineer can also secure the communication between the ALB and the instances. This way, both the front-end and back-end connections are encrypted with SSL/TLS1.

The other options are incorrect because:

• A. Creating a new Amazon-issued certificate in AWS Secrets Manager is not a solution, because AWS Secrets Manager is not a service for issuing certificates, but for storing and managing secrets such as database credentials and API keys2. AWS Secrets Manager does not integrate with ALB or EC2 for certificate deployment.
• B. Creating a new Amazon-issued certificate in AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) and exporting it from ACM is not a solution, because ACM does not allow exporting Amazon-issued certificates3. ACM only allows exporting private certificates that are issued by an AWS Private Certificate Authority (CA)4.
• C. Importing a new third-party certificate into AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is not a solution, because IAM is not a service for managing certificates, but for controlling access to AWS resources5. IAM does not integrate with ALB or EC2 for certificate deployment.

References:

1: How SSL/TLS works 2: What is AWS Secrets Manager? 3: Exporting an ACM Certificate 4: Exporting Private Certificates from ACM 5: What is IAM?

Although you can use a IAM policy to prevent users launching resources in other regions. The best practice is to use SCP when using AWS organizations. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_manage_policies_scps_examples_general.html#example-scp-deny-region

The best solution to meet the company's requirements of offering an alternative login method while securely protecting player credentials and reducing the burden of password resets is to use Amazon Cognito with user pools. Amazon Cognito provides a fully managed service that facilitates the authentication, authorization, and user management for web and mobile applications. By configuring Amazon Cognito user pools to federate access with third-party Identity Providers (IdPs), such as social media platforms or Google, the company can allow users to sign in through these external IdPs, thereby eliminating the need for traditional username and password logins. This not only enhances user convenience but also offloads the responsibility of managing user credentials and the associated challenges like password resets to Amazon Cognito, thereby reducing the burden on the company's customer service team. Additionally, Amazon Cognito integrates seamlessly with other AWS services and follows best practices for security and compliance, ensuring that the player's credentials are protected.

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

A bucket policy is a resource-based policy that defines permissions for a specific S3 bucket. It can be used to grant cross-account access to another AWS account or an IAM user or role in another account. A bucket policy can also specify which actions, resources, and conditions are allowed or denied.

A bucket ACL is an access control list that grants basic read or write permissions to predefined groups of users. It cannot be used to grant cross-account access to a specific IAM user or role in another account.

An object ACL is an access control list that grants basic read or write permissions to predefined groups of users for a specific object in an S3 bucket. It cannot be used to grant cross-account access to a specific IAM user or role in another account.

A user policy is an IAM policy that defines permissions for an IAM user or role in the same account. It cannot be used to grant cross-account access to another AWS account or an IAM user or role in another account.

For more information, see Provide cross-account access to objects in Amazon S3 buckets and Example 2: Bucket owner granting cross-account bucket permissions.

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

The correct answer is A because it allows the security engineer to add the X-Frame-Options header to the HTTPS responses from the application origin without modifying the origin itself. A Lambda@Edge function is a Lambda function that runs in response to CloudFront events, such as viewer request, origin request, origin response, or viewer response. By configuring the function to run in response to the origin response event, the security engineer can modify the response headers that CloudFront receives from the origin before sending them to the viewer1. The function can include code to add the X-Frame-Options header with the desired value, such as DENY or SAMEORIGIN, to prevent frame-related cross-site scripting attacks2.

The other options are incorrect because they are either less efficient or less secure than option A. Option B is incorrect because configuring the Lambda@Edge function to run in response to the viewer request event is not optimal, as it adds latency to the request processing and does not modify the response headers that CloudFront receives from the origin. Option C is incorrect because adding X-Frame-Options to custom headers in the origin settings does not affect the response headers that CloudFront sends to the viewer. Custom headers are only used to send additional information to the origin when CloudFront forwards a request3. Option D is incorrect because customizing the EC2 hosted application to add the X-Frame-Options header to the responses requires changing the origin code, which may not be feasible or desirable for the security engineer.

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 use the AWS SDK for Java to integrate your application with Secrets Manager3.

The IAM Documentation mentions the following

To determine whether a log file was modified, deleted, or unchanged after CloudTrail delivered it you can use CloudTrail log file integrity validation. This feature is built using industry standard algorithms: SHA-256 for hashing and SHA-256 with RSA for digital signing. This makes it computationally infeasible to modify, delete or forge CloudTrail log files without detection. You can use the IAM CLI to validate the files in the location where CloudTrail delivered them

Validated log files are invaluable in security and forensic investigations. For example, a validated log file enables you to assert positively that the log file itself has not changed, or that particular user credentials performed specific API activity. The CloudTrail log file integrity validation process also lets you know if a log file has been deleted or changed, or assert positively that no log files were delivered to your account during a given period of time.

Options B.C and D is invalid because you need to check for log File Integrity Validation for cloudtrail logs

For more information on Cloudtrail log file validation, please visit the below URL:

http://docs.IAM.amazon.com/IAMcloudtrail/latest/userguide/cloudtrail-log-file-validation-intro.html

The correct answer is: Use CloudTrail Log File Integrity Validation.

omit your Feedback/Queries to our Expert

this is the accurate reflection of the access control mechanisms that the Architect should verify. Access control mechanisms are methods that regulate who can access what resources and how. Security groups and network ACLs are two types of access control mechanisms that can be applied to EC2 instances and subnets. Security groups are stateful, meaning they remember and return traffic that was previously allowed. Network ACLs are stateless, meaning they do not remember or return traffic that was previously allowed. Security groups and network ACLs can have inbound and outbound rules that specify the source, destination, protocol, and port of the traffic. By verifying the outbound security group configuration on database servers, the inbound security group configuration on application servers, and the inbound and outbound network ACL configuration on both the database and application server subnets, the Architect can check if there are any misconfigurations or conflicts that prevent the application servers from initiating a connection to the database servers. The other options are either inaccurate or incomplete for verifying the access control mechanisms.

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

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

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

• The type of signature that you want to create (for example, a code-signing signature).
• The signing algorithm that you want Signer to use to sign your code.
• The code-signing certificate and its private key that you want Signer to use to sign your code.

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

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

The other options are incorrect because:

• B. Examining the developer’s IAM roles and removing all permissions that grant access to Signer may not be sufficient to prevent the deployment of the developer’s code. The developer may have already signed some code artifacts with a valid signing profile before leaving the company, and those signatures may still be accepted by Lambda unless the signing profile is revoked.
• C. Re-encrypting all source code with a new AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) key may not be effective or practical. AWS KMS is a service that lets you create and manage encryption keys for your data. However, Lambda does not require encryption keys for deploying code artifacts, only valid signatures from Signer. Therefore, re-encrypting the source code may not prevent the deployment of the developer’s code if it has already been signed with a valid signing profile. Moreover, re-encrypting all source code may be time-consuming and disruptive for other developers who are working on the same code base.
• D. Using Amazon CodeGuru to profile all the code that the Lambda functions use may not help with preventing the deployment of the developer’s code. Amazon CodeGuru is a service that provides intelligent recommendations to improve your code quality and identify an application’s most expensive lines of code. However, CodeGuru does not perform any security checks or validations on your code artifacts, nor does it interact with Signer or Lambda in any way. Therefore, using CodeGuru may not prevent unauthorized or untrusted code from being deployed to the Lambda functions.

References:

1: What is AWS Signer? - AWS Signer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verified References:

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

this is a way to configure a Classic Load Balancer with perfect forward secrecy cipher suites. Perfect forward secrecy is a property of encryption protocols that ensures that past and current TLS traffic stays secure even if the certificate private key is leaked. Cipher suites are sets of algorithms that determine how encryption is performed. A custom security policy is a set of cipher suites and protocols that you can select for your load balancer to support. An HTTPS listener is a process that checks for connection requests using encrypted SSL/TLS protocol. By using an HTTPS listener that uses a custom security policy that allows only perfect forward secrecy cipher suites, you can ensure that your Classic Load Balancer meets the requirements. The other options are either invalid or insufficient for configuring a Classic Load Balancer with perfect forward secrecy cipher suites.

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.

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

• Send invitations to accounts that are outside the company’s organization from the Security Hub administrator account. This will allow the administrator account to view and manage findings from those accounts. The administrator account can send invitations by using the Security Hub console, API, or CLI. For more information, see Sending invitations to member accounts.
• Send an administration request from the member accounts. This will allow the member accounts to accept the invitation from the administrator account and establish a relationship with it. The member accounts can send administration requests by using the Security Hub console, API, or CLI. For more information, see Sending administration requests.

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

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

Verified References:

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

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/singlesignon/latest/userguide/howtocmp.html

"Before you assign your permission set with IAM policies, you must prepare your member account. The name of an IAM policy in your member account must be a case-sensitive match to name of the policy in your management account. IAM Identity Center fails to assign the permission set if the policy doesn't exist in your member account."

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

The most cost-effective way to correct a typo in a vault lock policy during the 24-hour initiation period is to call the abort-vault-lock operation. This action stops the vault lock process, allowing the security engineer to correct the policy and re-initiate the vault lock with the corrected policy. This approach avoids the need for data transfer or creating a new vault, thus minimizing costs and operational overhead.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_manage_policies_scps_syntax.html#scp-elements-table

Data stored in Amazon EBS volumes is redundantly stored in multiple physical locations as part of normal operation of those services and at no additional charge. However, Amazon EBS replication is stored within the same availability zone, not across multiple zones; therefore, it is highly recommended that you conduct regular snapshots to Amazon S3 for long-term data durability Option A is invalid because there is no lifecycle policy for EBS volumes Option C is invalid because there is no EBS volume replication Option D is invalid because EBS volume encryption will not ensure business continuity For information on security for Compute Resources, please visit the below URL: https://d 1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/Security/Security_Compute_Services_Whitepaper.pdf

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

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

References: : Amazon Elastic Container Service Developer Guide

The AWS documentation states that you can create an Amazon EventBridge rule with a pattern that matches Security Hub findings events with high severity. You can then configure the rule to send the findings to a target Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic. You can subscribe the desired email addresses to the SNS topic. This method is the least operational overhead way to meet the requirements.

References: : AWS Security Hub User Guide

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/user-pool-lambda-post-authentication.html

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

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 the requirement that the VPC must not send or receive network traffic through the internet. Additionally, a NAT gateway requires an elastic IP 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 internet gateway or other devices2.

https://d1.awsstatic.com/WWPS/pdf/aws_security_incident_response.pdf

The correct answer is D.

To design a solution that will proactively monitor for suspicious behavior across all the accounts that contain production workloads, the security engineer needs to use a service that can aggregate and analyze security findings from multiple sources. AWS Security Hub is a service that provides a comprehensive view of your security posture across your AWS accounts and enables you to check your environment against security standards and best practices. Security Hub also integrates with other AWS services, such as Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Config, and AWS Systems Manager, to collect and correlate security findings.

To automate remediation of incidents across the production accounts, the security engineer needs to use a service that can trigger actions based on events. Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that allows you to connect your applications with data from a variety of sources. EventBridge can use rules to match events and route them to targets for processing. You can use EventBridge to invoke a custom AWS Lambda function from the Security Hub findings. Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers.

To publish a notification to an Amazon SNS topic when a critical security finding is detected, the security engineer needs to use a service that can send messages to subscribers. Amazon SNS is a fully managed messaging service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. SNS can deliver messages to a variety of endpoints, such as email, SMS, or HTTP. You can configure the Lambda function to also publish notifications to the SNS topic.

To send all security incident logs to a dedicated account, the security engineer needs to use a service that can aggregate and store log data from multiple sources. AWS Security Hub allows you to aggregate security findings from multiple accounts into a single account using the delegated administrator feature. This feature enables you to designate an AWS account as the administrator for Security Hub in an organization. The administrator account can then view and manage Security Hub findings from all member accounts.

Therefore, option D is correct because it meets all the requirements of the solution. Option A is incorrect because GuardDuty does not provide a comprehensive view of your security posture across your AWS accounts. GuardDuty is primarily a threat detection service that monitors for malicious or unauthorized behavior. Option B is incorrect because Config and Systems Manager are not designed to automate remediation of incidents based on Security Hub findings. Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources, while Systems Manager is a service that allows you to manage your infrastructure on AWS at scale. Option C is incorrect because GuardDuty does not provide a comprehensive view of your security posture across your AWS accounts.

References:

• AWS Security Hub
• Amazon EventBridge
• AWS Lambda
• Amazon SNS
• Aggregating Security Hub findings across accounts

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.

To quickly identify other compute resources with the specific version of the web framework installed, the team should do the following:

• Scan all the EC2 instances with AWS Systems Manager to identify the vulnerable version of the web framework. This allows the team to use AWS Systems Manager Inventory to collect and query information about the software installed on their EC2 instances, and to filter the results by software name and version.

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.

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

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 or accidental 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.

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/sy mmetric-asymmetric.html

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

• Create a role in the AWS account that contains the resources (the trusting account) and specify the AWS account that contains the IAM user (the trusted account) as a trusted entity in the role’s trust policy. This allows users from the trusted account to assume the role and access resources in the trusting account.
• Ensure that the IAM user has permission to assume the role in their own AWS account. This can be done by creating an identity policy that allows the sts:AssumeRole action and attaching it to the IAM user or their group.
• Ensure that there are no service control policies (SCPs) in the organization that owns the resources that deny or restrict access to the sts:AssumeRole action or the role itself. SCPs are applied to all accounts in an organization and can override any permissions granted by IAM policies.

Verified References:

• https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/cross-account-access-iam
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_manage_accounts_access.html
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/tutorial_cross-account-with-roles.html

To allow an IAM user in one AWS account to access resources in another AWS account using IAM roles, the following steps are required:

• Create a role in the AWS account that contains the resources (the trusting account) and specify the AWS account that contains the IAM user (the trusted account) as a trusted entity in the role’s trust policy. This allows users from the trusted account to assume the role and access resources in the trusting account.
• Attach a policy to the IAM user in the trusted account that allows the user to assume the role in the trusting account. The policy must specify the ARN of the role that was created in the trusting account.
• The IAM user can then switch roles or use temporary credentials to access the resources in the trusting account.

Verified References:

• https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/cross-account-access-iam
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_manage_accounts_access.html
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/tutorial_cross-account-with-roles.html

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

• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/domain-configure-dnssec.html
• https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/12/announcing-amazon-route-53-support-dnssec/

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/config/latest/developerguide/rds-storage-encrypted.html

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

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

because these are the steps that can ensure that the service-linked role can launch instances with encrypted volumes. A service-linked role is a type of IAM role that is linked to an AWS service and allows the service to perform actions on your behalf. A KMS grant is a mechanism that allows you to delegate permissions to use a customer master key (CMK) to a principal such as a service-linked role. A KMS grant specifies the actions that the principal can perform, such as encrypting and decrypting data. By creating a KMS grant for the service-linked role with the specified actions, you can allow the service-linked role to use the CMK in Account-2 to launch instances with encrypted volumes. By attaching an IAM policy to the role attached to the EC2 instances with KMS actions and then allowing Account-1 in the KMS key policy, you can also enable cross-account access to the CMK and allow the EC2 instances to use the encrypted volumes. The other options are either incorrect or unnecessary for meeting the requirement.

To resolve the issues, the security engineer should make the following change to the policy:

• In the statement block that contains the Sid “Allow use of the key”, under the “Condition” block, change the Kms:ViaService value to ec2.us-east-1.amazonaws.com. This allows the security engineer to restrict the use of the key to only EC2 service in the us-east-1 region, and prevent other services from using the key.

Utilizing CloudFront signed cookies is the simplest and most effective way to protect HLS video content for paying subscribers. Signed cookies provide access control for multiple files, such as video chunks in HLS streaming, without the need to generate a signed URL for each video chunk. This method simplifies the process for long video events with thousands of chunks, enhancing user experience while ensuring content protection.

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 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

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.

References:

1: AWS::Config::ConfigRule - AWS CloudFormation 2: IAM: Generate and retrieve IAM credential reports

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

The correct answer is B. Create an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic. Subscribe the third-party ticketing email system to the SNS topic. Create an Amazon EventBridge rule that includes an event pattern that matches High severity GuardDuty findings. Specify the SNS topic as the target for the Event-Bridge rule.

According to the AWS documentation1, you can use Amazon EventBridge to create rules that match events from GuardDuty and route them to targets such as Amazon SNS topics. You can use event patterns to filter events based on criteria such as severity, type, or resource. For example, you can create a rule that matches only High severity findings and sends them to an SNS topic that is subscribed by a third-party ticketing email system. This way, you can automate the creation of tickets for High severity findings and notify the security team.

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 and respond 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.

References:

1: CloudTrail log event reference - AWS CloudTrail 2: Logging data events - AWS CloudTrail 3: PutObjectAcl - Amazon Simple Storage Service 4: [Logging management events - AWS CloudTrail] 5: [Amazon S3 Event Types - Amazon Simple Storage Service] 6: Logging Insights events for trails - AWS CloudTrail

• Option B: This option meets the requirements of scanning ECS containers and ECR registries for vulnerabilities, and providing a centralized view of the findings for the audit team. AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. AWS Config conformance packs are a collection of AWS Config rules and remediation actions that can be easily deployed as a single entity in an account and a Region or across an organization in AWS Organizations. Conformance packs can help you manage configuration compliance of your AWS resources at scale by using a common framework and packaging model. You can use prebuilt conformance packs for vulnerability scanning, such as CIS Operating System Security Configuration Benchmarks or Amazon Inspector Rules for Linux Instances1. You can also create custom conformance packs to scan for vulnerabilities in programming language libraries. AWS Config aggregator is a feature that enables you to aggregate configuration and compliance data from multiple accounts and Regions into a single account and Region2. You can provide access for the audit team to use AWS Config in the account where the aggregator is configured, and view the aggregated data in the AWS Config console or API.

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

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

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

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

Therefore, options C and D are the correct answers.

• A is incorrect because reviewing the cross-account role permissions and the S3 bucket policy is not enough to troubleshoot the permissions issue. You also need to verify that the Amazon S3 block public access option in the member account is deactivated, as well as the permissions boundary and the SCPs of the role in the member account.
• D is correct because evaluating the SCPs and the permissions boundary of the role in the member account can help you identify any missing permissions or explicit denies that could prevent the administrator from making the S3 bucket public.
• E is correct because ensuring that the S3 bucket policy explicitly allows the s3 PutBucketPublicAccess action for the role in the member account can help you override any block public access settings that could prevent the administrator from making the S3 bucket public.

A bastion host is a special purpose computer on a network specifically designed and configured to withstand attacks. The computer generally hosts a single application, for example a proxy server, and all other services are removed or limited to reduce the threat to the computer.

In IAM, A bastion host is kept on a public subnet. Users log on to the bastion host via SSH or RDP and then use that session to manage other hosts in the private subnets.

Options A and B are invalid because the bastion host needs to sit on the public network. Option D is invalid because bastion hosts are not used for monitoring For more information on bastion hosts, just browse to the below URL:

https://docsIAM.amazon.com/quickstart/latest/linux-bastion/architecture.htl

The correct answer is: Bastion hosts allow users to log in using RDP or SSH and use that session to SSH into internal network to access private subnet resources.

Submit your Feedback/Queries to our Experts

The correct answer is B and D. In the dedicated security account, create an Amazon S3 bucket. Configure S3 Object Lock in compliance mode and a retention period of 2 years on the S3 bucket. Set the bucket policy to allow the organization’s member accounts to write to the S3 bucket. Create an AWS CloudTrail trail for the organization. Configure logs to be delivered to the logging Amazon S3 bucket in the dedicated security account.

According to the AWS documentation, AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of your AWS account. With CloudTrail, you can log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure. CloudTrail provides event history of your AWS account activity, including actions taken through the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command line tools, and other AWS services.

To use CloudTrail 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 CloudTrail as a service principal for AWS Organizations, which lets you create an organization trail that applies to all accounts in your organization. An organization trail logs events for all AWS Regions and delivers the log files to an S3 bucket that you specify.

To create an organization trail, you need to use an administrator account, such as the organization’s management account or a delegated administrator account. You can then configure the trail to deliver logs to an S3 bucket in the dedicated security account. This will ensure that all account activity across all member accounts and regions is logged and reported to the security account.

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 CloudTrail logs, you need to create an S3 bucket in the dedicated security account that will store the logs from the organization trail. You can then configure S3 Object Lock on the bucket to prevent objects from being deleted or overwritten for a fixed amount of time or indefinitely. You can also enable compliance mode on the bucket, which prevents any user, including the root user in your account, from deleting or modifying a locked object until it reaches its retention date.

To set a retention period of 2 years on the S3 bucket, you need to create a default retention configuration for the bucket that specifies a retention mode (either governance or compliance) and a retention period (either a number of days or a date). You can then set the bucket policy to allow the organization’s member accounts to write to the S3 bucket. This will ensure that all logs are retained in a secure storage location within the security account for 2 years and no changes or deletions are allowed.

Option A is incorrect because setting the bucket policy to allow the organization’s management account to write to the S3 bucket is not sufficient, as it will not grant access to the other member accounts in the organization.

Option C is incorrect because using an S3 Lifecycle configuration that expires objects after 2 years is not secure, as it will allow users to delete or modify objects before they expire.

Option E is incorrect because using Lambda and Kinesis Data Firehose to forward logs from one S3 bucket to another is not necessary, as CloudTrail can directly deliver logs to an S3 bucket in another account. It also introduces additional operational overhead and complexity.

To ensure that database credentials are stored securely and rotated periodically, the security engineer should do the following:

• Use AWS Secrets Manager to store database credentials. This allows the security engineer to encrypt and manage secrets centrally, and to configure automatic rotation schedules for them.
• Use IAM roles for ECS tasks to restrict access to database credentials to specific containers only. This allows the security engineer to grant fine-grained permissions to ECS tasks based on their roles, and to avoid sharing credentials as plaintext with other teammates.

To meet the requirement of changing the key material for new files whenever a potential key breach occurs, the most appropriate solution would be to create a new customer managed key, add a key rotation schedule to the key, and invoke the key rotation schedule every time the security team requests a key change.

References: : Rotating AWS KMS keys - AWS Key Management Service