SCS-C01 : AWS Certified Security – Specialty : Part 03
The Development team receives an error message each time the team members attempt to encrypt or decrypt a Secure String parameter from the SSM Parameter Store by using an AWS KMS customer managed key (CMK).
Which CMK-related issues could be responsible? (Choose two.)
The CMK specified in the application does not exist.
The CMK specified in the application is currently in use.
The CMK specified in the application is using the CMK KeyID instead of CMK Amazon Resource Name.
The CMK specified in the application is not enabled.
The CMK specified in the application is using an alias.
An application has been written that publishes custom metrics to Amazon CloudWatch. Recently, IAM changes have been made on the account and the metrics are no longer being reported.
Which of the following is the LEAST permissive solution that will allow the metrics to be delivered?
Add a statement to the IAM policy used by the application to allow logs:putLogEvents and logs:createLogStream
Modify the IAM role used by the application by adding the CloudWatchFullAccess managed policy.
Add a statement to the IAM policy used by the application to allow cloudwatch:putMetricData.
Add a trust relationship to the IAM role used by the application for cloudwatch.amazonaws.com.
A Developer’s laptop was stolen. The laptop was not encrypted, and it contained the SSH key used to access multiple Amazon EC2 instances. A Security Engineer has verified that the key has not been used, and has blocked port 22 to all EC2 instances while developing a response plan.
How can the Security Engineer further protect currently running instances?
Delete the key-pair key from the EC2 console, then create a new key pair.
Use the modify-instance-attribute API to change the key on any EC2 instance that is using the key.
Use the EC2 RunCommand to modify the authorized_keys file on any EC2 instance that is using the key.
Update the key pair in any AMI used to launch the EC2 instances, then restart the EC2 instances.
An organization has tens of applications deployed on thousands of Amazon EC2 instances. During testing, the Application team needs information to let them know whether the network access control lists (network ACLs) and security groups are working as expected.
How can the Application team’s requirements be met?
Turn on VPC Flow Logs, send the logs to Amazon S3, and use Amazon Athena to query the logs.
Install an Amazon Inspector agent on each EC2 instance, send the logs to Amazon S3, and use Amazon EMR to query the logs.
Create an AWS Config rule for each network ACL and security group configuration, send the logs to Amazon S3, and use Amazon Athena to query the logs.
Turn on AWS CloudTrail, send the trails to Amazon S3, and use AWS Lambda to query the trails.
An application outputs logs to a text file. The logs must be continuously monitored for security incidents.
Which design will meet the requirements with MINIMUM effort?
Create a scheduled process to copy the component’s logs into Amazon S3. Use S3 events to trigger a Lambda function that updates Amazon CloudWatch metrics with the log data. Set up CloudWatch alerts based on the metrics.
Install and configure the Amazon CloudWatch Logs agent on the application’s EC2 instance. Create a CloudWatch metric filter to monitor the application logs. Set up CloudWatch alerts based on the metrics.
Create a scheduled process to copy the application log files to AWS CloudTrail. Use S3 events to trigger Lambda functions that update CloudWatch metrics with the log data. Set up CloudWatch alerts based on the metrics.
Create a file watcher that copies data to Amazon Kinesis when the application writes to the log file. Have Kinesis trigger a Lambda function to update Amazon CloudWatch metrics with the log data. Set up CloudWatch alerts based on the metrics.
The Security Engineer for a mobile game has to implement a method to authenticate users so that they can save their progress. Because most of the users are part of the same OpenID-Connect compatible social media website, the Security Engineer would like to use that as the identity provider.
Which solution is the SIMPLEST way to allow the authentication of users using their social media identities?
Amazon Cognito
AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity API
Amazon Cloud Directory
Active Directory (AD) Connector
A Software Engineer is trying to figure out why network connectivity to an Amazon EC2 instance does not appear to be working correctly. Its security group allows inbound HTTP traffic from 0.0.0.0/0, and the outbound rules have not been modified from the default. A custom network ACL associated with its subnet allows inbound HTTP traffic from 0.0.0.0/0 and has no outbound rules.
What would resolve the connectivity issue?
The outbound rules on the security group do not allow the response to be sent to the client on the ephemeral port range.
The outbound rules on the security group do not allow the response to be sent to the client on the HTTP port.
An outbound rule must be added to the network ACL to allow the response to be sent to the client on the ephemeral port range.
An outbound rule must be added to the network ACL to allow the response to be sent to the client on the HTTP port.
A Security Engineer has been asked to create an automated process to disable IAM user access keys that are more than three months old.
Which of the following options should the Security Engineer use?
In the AWS Console, choose the IAM service and select “Users”. Review the “Access Key Age” column.
Define an IAM policy that denies access if the key age is more than three months and apply to all users.
Write a script that uses the GenerateCredentialReport, GetCredentialReport, and UpdateAccessKey APIs.
Create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm to detect aged access keys and use an AWS Lambda function to disable the keys older than 90 days.
The InfoSec team has mandated that in the future only approved Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) can be used.
How can the InfoSec team ensure compliance with this mandate?
Terminate all Amazon EC2 instances and relaunch them with approved AMIs.
Patch all running instances by using AWS Systems Manager.
Deploy AWS Config rules and check all running instances for compliance.
Define a metric filter in Amazon CloudWatch Logs to verify compliance.
A pharmaceutical company has digitized versions of historical prescriptions stored on premises. The company would like to move these prescriptions to AWS and perform analytics on the data in them. Any operation with this data requires that the data be encrypted in transit and at rest.
Which application flow would meet the data protection requirements on AWS?
Digitized files -> Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose -> Amazon Elasticsearch
The Security Engineer created a new AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) key with the following key policy:
SCS-C01 AWS Certified Security – Specialty Part 03 Q11 011
What are the effects of the key policy? (Choose two.)
The policy allows access for the AWS account 111122223333 to manage key access though IAM policies.
The policy allows all IAM users in account 111122223333 to have full access to the KMS key.
The policy allows the root user in account 111122223333 to have full access to the KMS key.
The policy allows the KMS service-linked role in account 111122223333 to have full access to the KMS key.
The policy allows all IAM roles in account 111122223333 to have full access to the KMS key.
A company uses AWS Organization to manage 50 AWS accounts. The finance staff members log in as AWS IAM users in the FinanceDept AWS account. The staff members need to read the consolidated billing information in the MasterPayer AWS account. They should not be able to view any other resources in the MasterPayer AWS account. IAM access to billing has been enabled in the MasterPayer account.
Which of the following approaches grants the finance staff the permissions they require without granting any unnecessary permissions?
Create an IAM group for the finance users in the FinanceDept account, then attach the AWS managed ReadOnlyAccess IAM policy to the group.
Create an IAM group for the finance users in the MasterPayer account, then attach the AWS managed ReadOnlyAccess IAM policy to the group.
Create an AWS IAM role in the FinanceDept account with the ViewBilling permission, then grant the finance users in the MasterPayer account the permission to assume that role.
Create an AWS IAM role in the MasterPayer account with the ViewBilling permission, then grant the finance users in the FinanceDept account the permission to assume that role.
A Solutions Architect is designing a web application that uses Amazon CloudFront, an Elastic Load Balancing Application Load Balancer, and an Auto Scaling group of Amazon EC2 instances. The load balancer and EC2 instances are in the US West (Oregon) region. It has been decided that encryption in transit is necessary by using a customer-branded domain name from the client to CloudFront and from CloudFront to the load balancer.
Assuming that AWS Certificate Manager is used, how many certificates will need to be generated?
One in the US West (Oregon) region and one in the US East (Virginia) region.
Two in the US West (Oregon) region and none in the US East (Virginia) region.
One in the US West (Oregon) region and none in the US East (Virginia) region.
Two in the US East (Virginia) region and none in the US West (Oregon) region.
A Security Engineer has been asked to troubleshoot inbound connectivity to a web server. This single web server is not receiving inbound connections from the internet, whereas all other web servers are functioning properly.
The architecture includes network ACLs, security groups, and a virtual security appliance. In addition, the Development team has implemented Application Load Balancers (ALBs) to distribute the load across all web servers. It is a requirement that traffic between the web servers and the internet flow through the virtual security appliance.
The Security Engineer has verified the following:
1. The rule set in the Security Groups is correct
2. The rule set in the network ACLs is correct
3. The rule set in the virtual appliance is correct
Which of the following are other valid items to troubleshoot in this scenario? (Choose two.)
Verify that the 0.0.0.0/0 route in the route table for the web server subnet points to a NAT gateway.
Verify which Security Group is applied to the particular web server’s elastic network interface (ENI).
Verify that the 0.0.0.0/0 route in the route table for the web server subnet points to the virtual security appliance.
Verify the registered targets in the ALB.
Verify that the 0.0.0.0/0 route in the public subnet points to a NAT gateway.
Which approach will generate automated security alerts should too many unauthorized AWS API requests be identified?
Create an Amazon CloudWatch metric filter that looks for API call error codes and then implement an alarm based on that metric’s rate.
Configure AWS CloudTrail to stream event data to Amazon Kinesis. Configure an AWS Lambda function on the stream to alarm when the threshold has been exceeded.
Run an Amazon Athena SQL query against CloudTrail log files. Use Amazon QuickSight to create an operational dashboard.
Use the Amazon Personal Health Dashboard to monitor the account’s use of AWS services, and raise an alert if service error rates increase.
A company has multiple production AWS accounts. Each account has AWS CloudTrail configured to log to a single Amazon S3 bucket in a central account. Two of the production accounts have trails that are not logging anything to the S3 bucket.
Which steps should be taken to troubleshoot the issue? (Choose three.)
Verify that the log file prefix is set to the name of the S3 bucket where the logs should go.
Verify that the S3 bucket policy allows access for CloudTrail from the production AWS account IDs.
Create a new CloudTrail configuration in the account, and configure it to log to the account’s S3 bucket.
Confirm in the CloudTrail Console that each trail is active and healthy.
Open the global CloudTrail configuration in the master account, and verify that the storage location is set to the correct S3 bucket.
Confirm in the CloudTrail Console that the S3 bucket name is set correctly.
Amazon CloudWatch Logs agent is successfully delivering logs to the CloudWatch Logs service. However, logs stop being delivered after the associated log stream has been active for a specific number of hours.
What steps are necessary to identify the cause of this phenomenon? (Choose two.)
Ensure that file permissions for monitored files that allow the CloudWatch Logs agent to read the file have not been modified.
Verify that the OS Log rotation rules are compatible with the configuration requirements for agent streaming.
Configure an Amazon Kinesis producer to first put the logs into Amazon Kinesis Streams.
Create a CloudWatch Logs metric to isolate a value that changes at least once during the period before logging stops.
Use AWS CloudFormation to dynamically create and maintain the configuration file for the CloudWatch Logs agent.
A company has deployed a custom DNS server in AWS. The Security Engineer wants to ensure that Amazon EC2 instances cannot use the Amazon-provided DNS.
How can the Security Engineer block access to the Amazon-provided DNS in the VPC?
Deny access to the Amazon DNS IP within all security groups.
Add a rule to all network access control lists that deny access to the Amazon DNS IP.
Add a route to all route tables that black holes traffic to the Amazon DNS IP.
Disable DNS resolution within the VPC configuration.
An employee accidentally exposed an AWS access key and secret access key during a public presentation. The company Security Engineer immediately disabled the key.
How can the Engineer assess the impact of the key exposure and ensure that the credentials were not misused? (Choose two.)
Analyze AWS CloudTrail for activity.
Analyze Amazon CloudWatch Logs for activity.
Download and analyze the IAM Use report from AWS Trusted Advisor.
Analyze the resource inventory in AWS Config for IAM user activity.
Download and analyze a credential report from IAM.
Which of the following minimizes the potential attack surface for applications?
Use security groups to provide stateful firewalls for Amazon EC2 instances at the hypervisor level.
Use network ACLs to provide stateful firewalls at the VPC level to prevent access to any specific AWS resource.
Use AWS Direct Connect for secure trusted connections between EC2 instances within private subnets.
Design network security in a single layer within the perimeter network (also known as DMZ, demilitarized zone, and screened subnet) to facilitate quicker responses to threats.
