AWS Security Specialty Exam Questions & SCS-C01 Practice Dumps

Master your AWS Security Specialty certification journey with these real-world exam questions and SCS-C01 practice dumps. This guide includes expert-level AWS Certified Security Specialty dumps and scenario-based practice exams designed to simulate the actual SCS-C01 exam format. Covering critical domains like incident response, logging and monitoring, infrastructure security, identity access management, and data protection, this content ensures deep concept clarity. Whether you need reliable AWS Security Specialty dumps or detailed practice tests, our material helps you evaluate your readiness and strengthen your weak areas. Prepare confidently and boost your chances of success in the AWS Certified Security Specialty exam with authentic, up-to-date questions and expert-designed mock tests.

AWS Security Specialty Dumps & Sample Questions List :

1. The Security team believes that a former employee may have gained unauthorized access to AWS resources sometime in the past 3 months by using an identified access key. What approach would enable the Security team to find out what the former employee may have done within AWS?

1. Use the AWS CloudTrail console to search for user activity.

2. Use the Amazon CloudWatch Logs console to filter CloudTrail data by user.

3. Use AWS Config to see what actions were taken by the user.

4. Use Amazon Athena to query CloudTrail logs stored in Amazon S3.

2. A Security Engineer must design a solution that enables the incident Response team to audit for changes to a user’s IAM permissions in the case of a security incident. How can this be accomplished?

1. Use AWS Config to review the IAM policy assigned to users before and after the incident.

2. Run the GenerateCredentialReport via the AWS CLI, and copy the output to Amazon S3 daily for auditing purposes.

3. Copy AWS CloudFormation templates to S3, and audit for changes from the template.

4. Use Amazon EC2 Systems Manager to deploy images, and review AWS CloudTrail logs for changes.

3. The Security Engineer implemented a new vault lock policy for 10TB of data and called initiate-vaultlock 12 hours ago. The Audit team identified a typo that is allowing incorrect access to the vault. What is the MOST cost-effective way to correct this?

1. Call the abort-vault-lock operation, fix the typo, and call the initiate-vault-lock again.

2. Copy the vault data to Amazon S3, delete the vault, and create a new vault with the data.

3. Update the policy, keeping the vault lock in place.

4. Update the policy and call initiate-vault-lock again to apply the new policy.

4. A company has complex connectivity rules governing ingress, egress, and communications between Amazon 96CE4376707A97CE80D4B1916F054522 EC2 instances. The rules are so complex that they cannot be implemented within the limits of the maximum number of security groups and network access control lists (network ACLs). What mechanism will allow the company to implement all required network rules without incurring additional cost?

1. Configure AWS WAF rules to implement the required rules.

2. Use the operating system built-in, host-based firewall to implement the required rules.

3. Use a NAT gateway to control ingress and egress according to the requirements.

4. Launch an EC2-based firewall product from the AWS Marketplace, and implement the required rules in that product.

5. A company wants to control access to its AWS resources by using identities and groups that are defined in its existing Microsoft Active Directory. What must the company create in its AWS account to map permissions for AWS services to Active Directory user attributes?

1. AWS IAM groups

2. AWS IAM users

3. AWS IAM roles

4. AWS IAM access keys

6. A Security Administrator has a website hosted in Amazon S3. The Administrator has been given the following requirements: Users may access the website by using an Amazon CloudFront distribution. Users may not access the website directly by using an Amazon S3 URL. Which configurations will support these requirements? (Choose two.)

1. Associate an origin access identity with the CloudFront distribution.

2. Implement a “Principal”: “cloudfront.amazonaws.com” condition in the S3 bucket policy.

3. Modify the S3 bucket permissions so that only the origin access identity can access the bucket contents.

4. Implement security groups so that the S3 bucket can be accessed only by using the intended CloudFront distribution.

7. A company has contracted with a third party to audit several AWS accounts. To enable the audit, cross-account IAM roles have been created in each account targeted for audit. The Auditor is having trouble accessing some of the accounts. Which of the following may be causing this problem? (Choose three.)

1. The external ID used by the Auditor is missing or incorrect.

2. The Auditor is using the incorrect password.

3. The Auditor has not been granted sts:AssumeRole for the role in the destination account.

4. The Amazon EC2 role used by the Auditor must be set to the destination account role.

5. The secret key used by the Auditor is missing or incorrect.

6. The role ARN used by the Auditor is missing or incorrect.

8. A company requires that IP packet data be inspected for invalid or malicious content. Which of the following approaches achieve this requirement? (Choose two.)

1. Configure a proxy solution on Amazon EC2 and route all outbound VPC traffic through it. Perform inspection within proxy software on the EC2 instance.

2. Configure the host-based agent on each EC2 instance within the VPC. Perform inspection within the hostbased agent.

3. Enable VPC Flow Logs for all subnets in the VPC. Perform inspection from the Flow Log data within Amazon CloudWatch Logs.

4. Configure Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) access logs. Perform inspection from the log data within the ELB access log files.

9. Compliance requirements state that all communications between company on-premises hosts and EC2 instances be encrypted in transit. Hosts use custom proprietary protocols for their communication, and EC2 instances need to be fronted by a load balancer for increased availability. Which of the following solutions will meet these requirements?

1. Offload SSL termination onto an SSL listener on a Classic Load Balancer, and use a TCP connection between the load balancer and the EC2 instances.

2. Route all traffic through a TCP listener on a Classic Load Balancer, and terminate the TLS connection on the EC2 instances.

3. Create an HTTPS listener using an Application Load Balancer, and route all of the communication through that load balancer.

4. Offload SSL termination onto an SSL listener using an Application Load Balancer, and re-spawn and SSL connection between the load balancer and the EC2 instances.

10. An organization has a system in AWS that allows a large number of remote workers to submit data files. File sizes vary from a few kilobytes to several megabytes. A recent audit highlighted a concern that data files are not encrypted while in transit over untrusted networks. Which solution would remediate the audit finding while minimizing the effort required?

1. Upload an SSL certificate to IAM, and configure Amazon CloudFront with the passphrase for the private key.

2. Call KMS.Encrypt() in the client, passing in the data file contents, and call KMS.Decrypt() server-side.

3. Use AWS Certificate Manager to provision a certificate on an Elastic Load Balancing in front of the web service’s servers.

4. Create a new VPC with an Amazon VPC VPN endpoint, and update the web service’s DNS record.

11. An application is currently secured using network access control lists and security groups. Web servers are located in public subnets behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB); application servers are located in private subnets. How can edge security be enhanced to safeguard the Amazon EC2 instances against attack? (Choose two.)

1. Configure the application’s EC2 instances to use NAT gateways for all inbound traffic.

2. Move the web servers to private subnets without public IP addresses.

3. Configure AWS WAF to provide DDoS attack protection for the ALB.

4. Require all inbound network traffic to route through a bastion host in the private subnet.

12. Which option for the use of the AWS Key Management Service (KMS) supports key management best practices that focus on minimizing the potential scope of data exposed by a possible future key compromise?

1. Use KMS automatic key rotation to replace the master key, and use this new master key for future encryption operations without re-encrypting previously encrypted data.

2. Generate a new Customer Master Key (CMK), re-encrypt all existing data with the new CMK, and use it for all future encryption operations.

3. Change the CMK alias every 90 days, and update key-calling applications with the new key alias.

4. Change the CMK permissions to ensure that individuals who can provision keys are not the same individuals who can use the keys.

13. A Security Administrator is restricting the capabilities of company root user accounts. The company uses AWS Organizations and has enabled it for all feature sets, including consolidated billing. The top-level account is used for billing and administrative purposes, not for operational AWS resource purposes. How can the Administrator restrict usage of member root user accounts across the organization?

1. Disable the use of the root user account at the organizational root. Enable multi-factor authentication of the root user account for each organizational member account.

2. Configure IAM user policies to restrict root account capabilities for each Organizations member account.

3. Create an organizational unit (OU) in Organizations with a service control policy that controls usage of the root user. Add all operational accounts to the new OU.

4. Configure AWS CloudTrail to integrate with Amazon CloudWatch Logs and then create a metric filter for RootAccountUsage.

14. A company’s database developer has just migrated an Amazon RDS database credential to be stored and managed by AWS Secrets Manager. The developer has also enabled rotation of the credential within the Secrets Manager console and set the rotation to change every 30 days. After a short period of time, a number of existing applications have failed with authentication errors. What is the MOST likely cause of the authentication errors?

1. Migrating the credential to RDS requires that all access come through requests to the Secrets Manager.

2. Enabling rotation in Secrets Manager causes the secret to rotate immediately, and the applications are using the earlier credential.

3. The Secrets Manager IAM policy does not allow access to the RDS database.

4. The Secrets Manager IAM policy does not allow access for the applications.

15. A Systems Engineer has been tasked with configuring outbound mail through Simple Email Service (SES) and requires compliance with current TLS standards. The mail application should be configured to connect to which of the following endpoints and corresponding ports?

1. email.us-east-1.amazonaws.com over port 8080

2. email-pop3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com over port 995

3. email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com over port 587

4. email-imap.us-east-1.amazonaws.com over port 993

16. A Security Engineer launches two Amazon EC2 instances in the same Amazon VPC but in separate Availability Zones. Each instance has a public IP address and is able to connect to external hosts on the internet. The two instances are able to communicate with each other by using their private IP addresses, but they are not able to communicate with each other when using their public IP addresses. Which action should the Security Engineer take to allow communication over the public IP addresses?

1. Associate the instances to the same security groups.

2. Add 0.0.0.0/0 to the egress rules of the instance security groups.

3. Add the instance IDs to the ingress rules of the instance security groups.

4. Add the public IP addresses to the ingress rules of the instance security groups.

17. A company will store sensitive documents in three Amazon S3 buckets based on a data classification scheme of “Sensitive,” “Confidential,” and “Restricted.” The security solution must meet all of the following requirements: Each object must be encrypted using a unique key. Items that are stored in the “Restricted” bucket require two-factor authentication for decryption. AWS KMS must automatically rotate encryption keys annually. Which of the following meets these requirements?

1. Create a Customer Master Key (CMK) for each data classification type, and enable the rotation of it annually. For the “Restricted” CMK, define the MFA policy within the key policy. Use S3 SSE-KMS to encrypt the objects.

2. Create a CMK grant for each data classification type with EnableKeyRotation and MultiFactorAuthPresent set to true. S3 can then use the grants to encrypt each object with a unique CMK.

3. Create a CMK for each data classification type, and within the CMK policy, enable rotation of it annually, and define the MFA policy. S3 can then create DEK grants to uniquely encrypt each object within the S3 bucket.

4. Create a CMK with unique imported key material for each data classification type, and rotate them annually. For the “Restricted” key material, define the MFA policy in the key policy. Use S3 SSE-KMS to encrypt the objects.

18. The Security Engineer is managing a web application that processes highly sensitive personal information. The application runs on Amazon EC2. The application has strict compliance requirements, which instruct that all incoming traffic to the application is protected from common web exploits and that all outgoing traffic from the EC2 instances is restricted to specific whitelisted URLs. Which architecture should the Security Engineer use to meet these requirements?

1. Use AWS Shield to scan inbound traffic for web exploits. Use VPC Flow Logs and AWS Lambda to restrict egress traffic to specific whitelisted URLs.

2. Use AWS Shield to scan inbound traffic for web exploits. Use a third-party AWS Marketplace solution to restrict egress traffic to specific whitelisted URLs.

3. Use AWS WAF to scan inbound traffic for web exploits. Use VPC Flow Logs and AWS Lambda to restrict egress traffic to specific whitelisted URLs.

4. Use AWS WAF to scan inbound traffic for web exploits. Use a third-party AWS Marketplace solution to restrict egress traffic to specific whitelisted URLs.

19. A company has a customer master key (CMK) with imported key materials. Company policy requires that all encryption keys must be rotated every year. What can be done to implement the above policy?

1. Enable automatic key rotation annually for the CMK.

2. Use AWS Command Line Interface to create an AWS Lambda function to rotate the existing CMK annually.

3. Import new key material to the existing CMK and manually rotate the CMK.

4. Create a new CMK, import new key material to it, and point the key alias to the new CMK. Correct

20. The Information Technology department has stopped using Classic Load Balancers and switched to Application Load Balancers to save costs. After the switch, some users on older devices are no longer able to connect to the website. What is causing this situation?

1. Application Load Balancers do not support older web browsers.

2. The Perfect Forward Secrecy settings are not configured correctly.

3. The intermediate certificate is installed within the Application Load Balancer.

4. The cipher suites on the Application Load Balancers are blocking connections.

21. A water utility company uses a number of Amazon EC2 instances to manage updates to a fleet of 2,000 Internet of Things (IoT) field devices that monitor water quality. These devices each have unique access credentials. An operational safety policy requires that access to specific credentials is independently auditable. What is the MOST cost-effective way to manage the storage of credentials?

1. Use AWS Systems Manager to store the credentials as Secure Strings Parameters. Secure by using an key.

2. Use AWS Key Management System to store a master key, which is used to encrypt the credentials. The encrypted credentials are stored in an Amazon RDS instance.

3. Use AWS Secrets Manager to store the credentials.

4. Store the credentials in a JSON file on Amazon S3 with server-side encryption.

22. A security team is responsible for reviewing AWS API call activity in the cloud environment for security violations. These events must be recorded and retained in a centralized location for both current and future AWS regions. What is the SIMPLEST way to meet these requirements?

1. Enable AWS Trusted Advisor security checks in the AWS Console, and report all security incidents for all regions.

2. Enable AWS CloudTrail by creating individual trails for each region, and specify a single Amazon S3 bucket to receive log files for later analysis.

3. Enable AWS CloudTrail by creating a new trail and applying the trail to all regions. Specify a single Amazon S3 bucket as the storage location.

4. Enable Amazon CloudWatch logging for all AWS services across all regions, and aggregate them to a single Amazon S3 bucket for later analysis.

23. An organization is using Amazon CloudWatch Logs with agents deployed on its Linux Amazon EC2 instances. The agent configuration files have been checked and the application log files to be pushed are configured correctly. A review has identified that logging from specific instances is missing. Which steps should be taken to troubleshoot the issue? (Choose two.)

1. Use an EC2 run command to confirm that the “awslogs” service is running on all instances.

2. Verify that the permissions used by the agent allow creation of log groups/streams and to put log events.

3. Check whether any application log entries were rejected because of invalid time stamps by reviewing /var/ cwlogs/rejects.log.

4. Check that the trust relationship grants the service “cwlogs.amazonaws.com” permission to write objects to the Amazon S3 staging bucket.

24. A Security Administrator is performing a log analysis as a result of a suspected AWS account compromise. The Administrator wants to analyze suspicious AWS CloudTrail log files but is overwhelmed by the volume of audit logs being generated. What approach enables the Administrator to search through the logs MOST efficiently?

1. Implement a “write-only” CloudTrail event filter to detect any modifications to the AWS account resources.

2. Configure Amazon Macie to classify and discover sensitive data in the Amazon S3 bucket that contains the CloudTrail audit logs.

3. Configure Amazon Athena to read from the CloudTrail S3 bucket and query the logs to examine account activities.

4. Enable Amazon S3 event notifications to trigger an AWS Lambda function that sends an email alarm when there are new CloudTrail API entries.

25. During a recent security audit, it was discovered that multiple teams in a large organization have placed restricted data in multiple Amazon S3 buckets, and the data may have been exposed. The auditor has requested that the organization identify all possible objects that contain personally identifiable information (PII) and then determine whether this information has been accessed. What solution will allow the Security team to complete this request?

1. Using Amazon Athena, query the impacted S3 buckets by using the PII query identifier function. Then, create a new Amazon CloudWatch metric for Amazon S3 object access to alert when the objects are accessed.

2. Enable Amazon Macie on the S3 buckets that were impacted, then perform data classification. For identified objects that contain PII, use the research function for auditing AWS CloudTrail logs and S3 bucket logs for GET operations.

3. Enable Amazon GuardDuty and enable the PII rule set on the S3 buckets that were impacted, then perform data classification. Using the PII findings report from GuardDuty, query the S3 bucket logs by using Athena for GET operations.

4. Enable Amazon Inspector on the S3 buckets that were impacted, then perform data classification. For identified objects that contain PII, query the S3 bucket logs by using Athena for GET operations.

26. During a recent internal investigation, it was discovered that all API logging was disabled in a production account, and the root user had created new API keys that appear to have been used several times. What could have been done to detect and automatically remediate the incident?

1. Using Amazon Inspector, review all of the API calls and configure the inspector agent to leverage SNS topics to notify security of the change to AWS CloudTrail, and revoke the new API keys for the root user.

2. Using AWS Config, create a config rule that detects when AWS CloudTrail is disabled, as well as any calls to the root user create-api-key. Then use a Lambda function to re-enable CloudTrail logs and deactivate the root API keys.

3. Using Amazon CloudWatch, create a CloudWatch event that detects AWS CloudTrail deactivation and a separate Amazon Trusted Advisor check to automatically detect the creation of root API keys. Then use a Lambda function to enable AWS CloudTrail and deactivate the root API keys.

4. Using Amazon CloudTrail, create a new CloudTrail event that detects the deactivation of CloudTrail logs, and a separate CloudTrail event that detects the creation of root API keys. Then use a Lambda function to enable CloudTrail and deactivate the root API keys.

27. 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?

1. The outbound rules on the security group do not allow the response to be sent to the client on the ephemeral port range.

2. The outbound rules on the security group do not allow the response to be sent to the client on the HTTP port.

3. 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.

4. An outbound rule must be added to the network ACL to allow the response to be sent to the client on the HTTP port.

28. An application has a requirement to be resilient across not only Availability Zones within the application’s primary region but also be available within another region altogether. Which of the following supports this requirement for AWS resources that are encrypted by AWS KMS?

1. Copy the application’s AWS KMS CMK from the source region to the target region so that it can be used to decrypt the resource after it is copied to the target region.

2. Configure AWS KMS to automatically synchronize the CMK between regions so that it can be used to decrypt the resource in the target region.

3. Use AWS services that replicate data across regions, and re-wrap the data encryption key created in the source region by using the CMK in the target region so that the target region’s CMK can decrypt the database encryption key.

4. Configure the target region’s AWS service to communicate with the source region’s AWS KMS so that it can decrypt the resource in the target region.

29. 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?

1. In the AWS Console, choose the IAM service and select “Users”. Review the “Access Key Age” column.

2. Define an IAM policy that denies access if the key age is more than three months and apply to all users.

3. Write a script that uses the GenerateCredentialReport, GetCredentialReport, and UpdateAccessKey APIs.

4. Create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm to detect aged access keys and use an AWS Lambda function to disable the keys older than 90 days.

30. An organization policy states that all encryption keys must be automatically rotated every 12 months. Which AWS Key Management Service (KMS) key type should be used to meet this requirement?

1. AWS managed Customer Master Key (CMK)

2. Customer managed CMK with AWS generated key material

3. Customer managed CMK with imported key material

4. AWS managed data key

31. 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?

1. Terminate all Amazon EC2 instances and relaunch them with approved AMIs.

2. Patch all running instances by using AWS Systems Manager.

3. Deploy AWS Config rules and check all running instances for compliance.

4. Define a metric filter in Amazon CloudWatch Logs to verify compliance.

32. A Security Engineer received an AWS Abuse Notice listing EC2 instance IDs that are reportedly abusing other hosts. Which action should the Engineer take based on this situation? (Choose three.)

1. Use AWS Artifact to capture an exact image of the state of each instance.

2. Create EBS Snapshots of each of the volumes attached to the compromised instances.

3. Capture a memory dump.

4. Log in to each instance with administrative credentials to restart the instance.

33. 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?

1. Digitized files -> Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics

2. Digitized files -> Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose -> Amazon S3 -> Amazon Athena

3. Digitized files -> Amazon Kinesis Data Streams -> Kinesis Client Library consumer -> Amazon S3 -> Athena

4. Digitized files -> Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose -> Amazon Elasticsearch

34 A Security Administrator is configuring an Amazon S3 bucket and must meet the following security requirements: Encryption in transit Encryption at rest Logging of all object retrievals in AWS CloudTrail Which of the following meet these security requirements? (Choose three.)

1. Specify “aws:SecureTransport”: “true” within a condition in the S3 bucket policy.

2. Enable a security group for the S3 bucket that allows port 443, but not port 80.

3. Set up default encryption for the S3 bucket.

4. Enable Amazon CloudWatch Logs for the AWS account.

5. Enable API logging of data events for all S3 objects.

35. 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?

1. Create an IAM group for the finance users in the FinanceDept account, then attach the AWS managed ReadOnlyAccess IAM policy to the group.

2. Create an IAM group for the finance users in the MasterPayer account, then attach the AWS managed ReadOnlyAccess IAM policy to the group.

3. 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.

4. 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.

36. A Security Engineer is trying to determine whether the encryption keys used in an AWS service are in compliance with certain regulatory standards. Which of the following actions should the Engineer perform to get further guidance? 

1. Read the AWS Customer Agreement.

2. Use AWS Artifact to access AWS compliance reports.

3. Post the question on the AWS Discussion Forums.

4. Run AWS Config and evaluate the configuration outputs.

37. 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?

1. One in the US West (Oregon) region and one in the US East (Virginia) region.

2. Two in the US West (Oregon) region and none in the US East (Virginia) region.

3. One in the US West (Oregon) region and none in the US East (Virginia) region.

4. Two in the US East (Virginia) region and none in the US West (Oregon) region.

38. 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.)

1. The CMK specified in the application does not exist.

2. The CMK specified in the application is currently in use.

3. The CMK specified in the application is using the CMK KeyID instead of CMK Amazon Resource Name.

4. The CMK specified in the application is not enabled.

5. The CMK specified in the application is using an alias.

39. Which approach will generate automated security alerts should too many unauthorized AWS API requests be identified?

1. Create an Amazon CloudWatch metric filter that looks for API call error codes and then implement an alarm based on that metric’s rate.

2. 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.

3. Run an Amazon Athena SQL query against CloudTrail log files. Use Amazon QuickSight to create an operational dashboard.

4. Use the Amazon Personal Health Dashboard to monitor the account’s use of AWS services, and raise an alert if service error rates increase.

40. 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?

1. Add a statement to the IAM policy used by the application to allow logs:putLogEvents and logs:createLogStream

2. Modify the IAM role used by the application by adding the CloudWatchFullAccess managed policy.

3. Add a statement to the IAM policy used by the application to allow cloudwatch:putMetricData.

4. Add a trust relationship to the IAM role used by the application for cloudwatch.amazonaws.com.

41. 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.)

1. Verify that the log file prefix is set to the name of the S3 bucket where the logs should go.

2. Verify that the S3 bucket policy allows access for CloudTrail from the production AWS account IDs.

3. Create a new CloudTrail configuration in the account, and configure it to log to the account’s S3 bucket.

4. Confirm in the CloudTrail Console that each trail is active and healthy.

5. Open the global CloudTrail configuration in the master account, and verify that the storage location is set to the correct S3 bucket.

6. Confirm in the CloudTrail Console that the S3 bucket name is set correctly.

42. 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?

1. Delete the key-pair key from the EC2 console, then create a new key pair.

2. Use the modify-instance-attribute API to change the key on any EC2 instance that is using the key.

3. Use the EC2 RunCommand to modify the authorized_keys file on any EC2 instance that is using the key.

4. Update the key pair in any AMI used to launch the EC2 instances, then restart the EC2 instances.

43. 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.)

1. Ensure that file permissions for monitored files that allow the CloudWatch Logs agent to read the file have not been modified.

2. Verify that the OS Log rotation rules are compatible with the configuration requirements for agent streaming.

3. Configure an Amazon Kinesis producer to first put the logs into Amazon Kinesis Streams.

4. Use AWS CloudFormation to dynamically create and maintain the configuration file for the CloudWatch Logs agent.

44. 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?

1. Turn on VPC Flow Logs, send the logs to Amazon S3, and use Amazon Athena to query the logs.

2. Install an Amazon Inspector agent on each EC2 instance, send the logs to Amazon S3, and use Amazon EMR to query the logs.

3. 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.

4. Turn on AWS CloudTrail, send the trails to Amazon S3, and use AWS Lambda to query the trails.

45. 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?

1. Deny access to the Amazon DNS IP within all security groups.

2. Add a rule to all network access control lists that deny access to the Amazon DNS IP.

3. Add a route to all route tables that black holes traffic to the Amazon DNS IP.

4. Disable DNS resolution within the VPC configuration.

46. 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?

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

47. 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.)

1. Analyze AWS CloudTrail for activity.

2. Analyze Amazon CloudWatch Logs for activity.

3. Download and analyze the IAM Use report from AWS Trusted Advisor.

4. Analyze the resource inventory in AWS Config for IAM user activity.

5. Download and analyze a credential report from IAM.

48. 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?

1. Amazon Cognito

2. AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity API

3. Amazon Cloud Directory

4. Active Directory (AD) Connector

49. Which of the following minimizes the potential attack surface for applications?

1. Use security groups to provide stateful firewalls for Amazon EC2 instances at the hypervisor level.

2. Use network ACLs to provide stateful firewalls at the VPC level to prevent access to any specific AWS resource.

3. Use AWS Direct Connect for secure trusted connections between EC2 instances within private subnets.

4. 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.

50. A distributed web application is installed across several EC2 instances in public subnets residing in two Availability Zones. Apache logs show several intermittent brute-force attacks from hundreds of IP addresses at the layer 7 level over the past six months.  What would be the BEST way to reduce the potential impact of these attacks in the future?

1. Use custom route tables to prevent malicious traffic from routing to the instances.

2. Update security groups to deny traffic from the originating source IP addresses.

3. Use network ACLs.

4. Install intrusion prevention software (IPS) on each instance.

FAQs

1. What is the AWS Certified Security Specialty SCS-C01 certification?

It is an advanced AWS certification that validates expertise in securing AWS workloads, data protection, and compliance.

2. How do I become AWS Certified Security Specialty certified?

You need to prepare with AWS security concepts, register for the SCS-C01 exam on the AWS Certification Portal, and pass it.

3. What are the prerequisites for the AWS Certified Security Specialty exam?

There are no mandatory prerequisites, but AWS recommends at least 2–5 years of IT security experience and knowledge of AWS services.

4. How much does the AWS SCS-C01 certification exam cost?

The exam fee is $300 USD.

5. How many questions are on the AWS Certified Security Specialty exam?

The exam includes 65 multiple-choice and multiple-response questions.

6. What is the passing score for the AWS Security Specialty SCS-C01 exam?

You need a scaled score of 750 out of 1000 to pass.

7. How long is the AWS Certified Security Specialty exam?

The exam duration is 170 minutes.

8. What topics are covered in the AWS Certified Security Specialty SCS-C01 exam?

It covers incident response, logging, monitoring, infrastructure security, IAM, data protection, and compliance.

9. How difficult is the AWS Security Specialty certification exam?

It is considered challenging due to its depth in security and compliance topics across multiple AWS services.

10. How long does it take to prepare for the AWS SCS-C01 certification exam?

Most candidates take 8–12 weeks of study and practice, depending on prior AWS knowledge.

11. Are there any AWS Certified Security Specialty SCS-C01 sample questions or practice tests available?

Yes, AWS provides sample questions, and CertiMaan offers dumps and practice tests.

12. What is the validity period of the AWS Certified Security Specialty certification?

The certification is valid for 3 years.

13. Can I retake the AWS Security Specialty exam if I fail?

Yes, you can retake it after 14 days by paying the exam fee again.

14. What jobs can I get with an AWS Certified Security Specialty certification?

You can work as a Cloud Security Engineer, Security Architect, Compliance Specialist, or DevSecOps Engineer.

15. How much salary can I earn with the AWS Certified Security Specialty SCS-C01 certification?

Professionals typically earn between $110,000–$150,000 annually, depending on role and location.