Amazon SCS-C02 AWS Certified Security - Specialty Exam Practice Test

Answer : D

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

Answer : A, C

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

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

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

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

Answer : C, E

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

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

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

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

Answer : C

To implement host-based security for Amazon EC2 instances and containers in Amazon ECR with minimal operational overhead and ensure automatic deployment and scanning for new workloads, the recommended solution is to configure a delegated administrator for Amazon Inspector within the AWS Organizations structure. By enabling Amazon Inspector for the organization and configuring it to automatically scan new member accounts, the company can ensure that all EC2 instances and ECR containers are analyzed for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure. Amazon Inspector will automatically assess the workloads and push findings to AWS Security Hub, providing centralized security monitoring and compliance checking. This approach ensures that as new accounts or workloads are added, they are automatically included in the security assessments, maintaining a consistent security posture across the organization with minimal manual intervention.

Answer : A

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

Answer : A

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

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

Answer : A, C, E

The correct answer is A, C, and E because they provide the most secure and efficient way to implement private connectivity to AWS services. Using interface VPC endpoints for Amazon SQS and gateway VPC endpoints for Amazon S3 allows the application to access these services without using public IP addresses or internet gateways. Modifying the endpoint policies on all VPC endpoints enables the security engineer to specify the SQS and S3 resources that the application uses and restrict access to other resources.

The other options are incorrect because they do not provide private connectivity to AWS services or they introduce unnecessary complexity or cost. Option B is incorrect because AWS Transit Gateway is used to connect multiple VPCs and on-premises networks, not to connect to AWS services. Option D is incorrect because modifying the IAM role applied to the EC2 instances is not sufficient to allow outbound traffic to the interface endpoints. The security group and route table associated with the interface endpoints also need to be configured. Option F is incorrect because AWS Firewall Manager is used to centrally manage firewall rules across multiple accounts and resources, not to connect to AWS services.