Comprehensive Detailed Explanation with all AWS References

To resolve AccessDenied errors:

IAM Policy Validation:

Use IAM Access Analyzer to ensure that the policy attached to the role allows the necessary S3 actions (e.g., s3:GetObject).

Validate that the role is correctly assumed by the application.

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.

To enforce end-to-end encryption in transit, the company should do the following:

Update the web application configuration on the web servers to use HTTPS instead of HTTP when connecting to DynamoDB. This ensures that the data is encrypted when it travels from the web servers to the data store.

Update the CloudFront distribution to redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS. This ensures that the viewers always use HTTPS when they access the website through CloudFront.

Update the ALB to listen using HTTPS using the public ACM TLS certificate. Update the CloudFront distribution to connect to the HTTPS listener. This ensures that the data is encrypted when it travels from CloudFront to the ALB and from the ALB to the web servers.

Understand IMDSv2 Metrics:

IMDSv2 adds a layer of security to EC2 instance metadata by requiring a session token.

TheEC2MetadataNoTokenCloudWatch metric tracks the number of calls to IMDSv1.

Enable the IMDS Metrics:

Ensure that the EC2 instances have theDetailed Monitoringfeature enabled to publish metrics to CloudWatch.

Create a CloudWatch Dashboard:

In the CloudWatch console, create a dashboard that displays theEC2MetadataNoTokenmetric for all instances.

Verify Zero Value:

Monitor theEC2MetadataNoTokenmetric. If the value is zero for all instances, it confirms that IMDSv1 is no longer in use.

Secure Access and Validation:

Regularly monitor the dashboard to ensure no instance reverts to using IMDSv1.

Instance Metadata Service (IMDS) Documentation

CloudWatch Metrics for EC2 Instances

AWS Security Best Practices for Metadata Service

Understanding Gateway VPC Endpoint:

A gateway VPC endpoint allows traffic from the VPC to specific AWS services (e.g., Amazon S3) without traversing the public internet.

Key Configuration Points to Verify:

The route table is correctly configured to send traffic for Amazon S3 through the gateway VPC endpoint.

IAM permissions and bucket policies are correct and allow access to the specific S3 bucket.

Verify the Endpoint Policy:

Check the VPC endpoint policy to ensure it allows access to the S3 bucket. The policy might be restricting access to certain buckets, prefixes, or IAM principals.

Example VPC Endpoint Policy:

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:*",

"Resource": [

"arn:aws:s3:::example-bucket",

"arn:aws:s3:::example-bucket/*"

]

}

]

}

Testing and Validation:

Modify the endpoint policy if required and test access again from the EC2 instance.

Gateway VPC Endpoints Documentation

VPC Endpoint Policies for Amazon S3

To avoid AccessDeniedExceptions when users first attempt to encrypt using the CMK, the security specialist should recommend the following solution:

Instruct the engineering team to pass the grant token returned in the CreateGrant response to users. This allows the engineering team to use the grant token as a form of temporary authorization for the grant.

Instruct users to use that grant token in their call to encrypt. This allows the users to use the grant token as a proof that they have permission to use the CMK, and to avoid any eventual consistency issues with the grant creation.

the aws kms get-key-rotation-status command returns a boolean value that indicates whetherautomatic rotation of the customer master key (CMK) is enabled1. This commandalsoshowsthe date and time when the CMK was last rotated2. The other options are not valid ways to check the CMK rotation status.

Options A and B are incorrect since you need to add an inline policy just for the user

Option C is invalid because you don't assign an IAM role to a user

The IAM Documentation mentions the following

An inline policy is a policy that's embedded in a principal entity (a user, group, or role)—that is, the policy is an inherent part of the principal entity. You can create a policy and embed it in a principal entity, either when you create the principal entity or later.

For more information on IAM Access and Inline policies, just browse to the below URL:

https://docs.IAM.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/access

The correct answer is: Add an inline policy for the user Submit your Feedback/Queries to our Experts

To protect the sensitive data against any data breach and minimize management overhead, the security engineer should recommend the following solution:

Enable Amazon RDS encryption to encrypt the database and snapshots. This allows the security engineer to use AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) to encrypt data at rest for the database and any backups or replicas.

Enable Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) encryption on Amazon EC2 instances. This allows the security engineer to use AWS KMS to encrypt data at rest for the EC2 instances and any snapshots or volumes.

Store the database credentials in AWS Secrets Manager with automatic rotation. This allows the security engineer to encrypt and manage secrets centrally, and to configure automatic rotation schedules for them.

Set up TLS for the connection to the RDS hosted database. This allows the security engineer to encrypt data in transit between the EC2 instances and the database.

Understanding the Problem:

Logs are encrypted with a KMS-managed key (SSE-KMS), and the security engineer can read digest files but not the log files.

This indicates that the issue lies in permissions related to decryption.

KMS Key Policy:

The key policy for the KMS-managed key must explicitly allow the security engineer’s IAM user or role thekms:Decryptpermission.

Example Key Policy:

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": {

"AWS": "arn:aws:iam:::user/"

},

"Action": "kms:Decrypt",

"Resource": "*"

}

]

}

Verify the IAM Role/Policy:

Ensure that no conflicting IAM policy denies thekms:Decryptaction for the security engineer’s user or role.

Enable Access to Encrypted Logs:

Update the KMS key policy to include permissions for reading and decrypting CloudTrail logs.

AWS KMS Key Policy Documentation

Server-Side Encryption with KMS for CloudTrail

The correct answer is A. Configure an S3 Lifecycle rule on the S3 bucket to delete objects after 45 days.

The reason is that this is the simplest and most effective way to enforce the data retention policy.According to theAWS documentation1, “To manage your objects so that they are stored cost effectively throughout their lifecycle, configure their Amazon S3 Lifecycle. An S3 Lifecycle configuration is a set of rules that define actions that Amazon S3 applies to a group of objects.There are two types of actions: Transition actionsand Expiration actions.” The documentation1also states that “Expiration actions define when objects expire. Amazon S3 deletes expired objects on your behalf.” Therefore, by configuring an S3 Lifecycle rule on the S3 bucket to delete objects after 45 days, the security engineer can ensure that the data is removed from the S3 bucket according to the company’s policy.

The other options are incorrect because:

B. Create an AWS Lambda function to check the last-modified date of the S3 objects and delete objects that are older than 45 days. Create an S3 event notification to invoke the Lambda function for each PutObject operation. This option is not optimal because it requires deploying and maintaining a Lambda function, which adds complexity and cost. Moreover, it does not guarantee that the data is deleted exactly after 45 days, since the Lambda function is triggered only when a new object is put into the S3 bucket. If there are no new objects for a long period of time, the Lambda function will not run and the data will not be deleted.

C. Create an AWS Lambda function to check the last-modified date of the S3 objects and delete objects that are older than 45 days. Create an Amazon EventBridge rule to invoke the Lambda function each month. This option is not optimal because it requires deploying and maintaining a Lambda function, which adds complexity and cost. Moreover, it does not guarantee that the data is deleted exactly after 45 days, since the Lambda function is triggered only once a month. If the data is older than 45 days but less than a month, it will not be deleted until the next month.

D. Configure S3 Intelligent-Tiering on the S3 bucket to automatically transition objects to another storage class. This option is not sufficient to enforce the data retention policy, because it does not delete the data from the S3 bucket. It only moves the data to a less expensive storage class based on access patterns.According to the AWS documentation2, “S3 Intelligent-Tiering optimizes storage costs by automatically moving data between two access tiers, frequent access and infrequent access, when access patterns change.” However, this feature does not expire or delete the data after a certain period of time.

Amazon Kinesis and Amazon Elasticsearch are both suitable for forensic-logging solutions. Amazon Kinesis can collect, process, and analyze streaming data in real time3. Amazon Elasticsearch can store, search, and analyze log data using the popular open-source tool Elasticsearch. The other options are not designed for forensic-logging purposes. Amazon Athena is a query service that can analyze data in S3, Amazon SQS is a message queue service that can decouple and scale microservices, and AmazonEMR is a big data platform that can run Apache Spark and Hadoop clusters.

NACL acts as a firewall at the subnet level of the VPC and we can deny the offending IP address block at the subnet level using NACL rules to block the incoming traffic to the VPC instances. Since NACL rules are applied as per the Rule numbers make sure that this rule number should take precedence over other rule numbers if there are any such rules that will allow traffic from these IP ranges. The lowest rule number has more precedence over a rule that has a higher number.

The IAM Documentation mentions the following as a best practices for IAM users

For extra security, enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for privileged IAM users (users who are allowed access to sensitive resources or APIs). With MFA, users have a device that generates a unique authentication code (a one-time password, or OTP). Users must provide both their normal credentials (like their user name and password) and the OTP. The MFA device can either be a special piece of hardware, or it can be a virtual device (for example, it can run in an app on a smartphone).

Options C is invalid because these options are not available

Option D is invalid because there is not root access for users

For more information on IAM best practices, please visit the below URL:

https://docs.IAM.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html

The correct answer is: Modify the Network ACLs associated with all public subnets in the VPC to deny access from the IP Address block.

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Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Amazon GuardDuty provides intelligent threat detection and continuous monitoring for malicious or unauthorized behavior to protect AWS accounts and workloads. It satisfies the requirement for monitoring endpoints for anomalous network traffic.

AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) simplifies the process of provisioning, managing, and deploying SSL/TLS certificates. Configuring ELB with ACM ensures encryption in transit.

AWS KMS with S3 bucket policy using x-amz-server-side-encryption ensures that S3 objects are encrypted at rest using managed keys. Denying uploads that do not use SSE with a bucket policy enforces encryption at rest.

These three actions together satisfy the stated security requirements with minimal operational overhead.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

IAM Access Analyzer can be enabled at the organization level and configured to use the org as a zone of trust. It scans IAM policies and S3 bucket policies across accounts and identifies external principals (from other AWS accounts or public access) that have access to resources.

This is the most accurate and least operationally complex method for cross-account access visibility and is highlighted under IAM governance and security controls.

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.

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The correct answer is C. Pull images from the public container registry. Publish the images to Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR) repositories with scan on push configured in a centralized AWS account. Use a CI/CD pipeline to deploy the images to different AWS accounts. Use repository policies and identity-based policies to restrict access to which IAM principals and accounts can access the images.

This solution meets the requirements because:

Amazon ECR is a fully managed container registry service that supports Docker and OCI images and artifacts1. It integrates with Amazon ECS and other AWS services to simplify the development and deployment of container-based applications.

Amazon ECR provides image scanning on push, which uses the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) database from the open-source Clair project to detect software vulnerabilities in container images2.The scan results are available in the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, orAWS SDKs2.

Amazon ECR supports cross-account access to repositories, whichallows sharing images across multiple AWS accounts3.This can be achieved by using repository policies, which are resource-based policies that specify which IAM principals and accounts can access the repositories and what actions they can perform4.Additionally, identity-based policies can be used to control which IAM roles in each account can access the repositories5.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. This option does not use repository policies to restrict cross-account access to the images, which is a requirement.Identity-based policies alone are not sufficient to control access to Amazon ECR repositories5.

B. This option does not use Amazon ECR, which is a fully managed service that provides image scanning and cross-account access features. Hosting a private container registry on EC2 instances would require more management overhead and additional security measures.

D.This option uses AWS CodeArtifact, which is a fully managed artifact repository service that supports Maven, npm, NuGet, PyPI, and generic package formats6. However, AWS CodeArtifact does not support Docker or OCI container images, which are required for Amazon ECS applications.

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.

Enable Amazon Macie for Sensitive Data Discovery (Option A):

Use Amazon Macie to identify personal health information (PHI) in S3 buckets.

Create an on-demand sensitive data discovery job with the PERSONAL_INFORMATION managed data identifier.

Enable AWS Audit Manager for Compliance Evidence (Option C):

Use AWS Audit Manager to automate evidence collection for compliance.

Select a supported framework (e.g., HIPAA) to assess compliance readiness.

Enable AWS Security Hub for Public Access Monitoring (Option E):

Enable Security Hub and use the AWS Foundational Security Best Practices standard.

Review the dashboard for failed controls related to S3 Block Public Access.

Advantages:

Automated Discovery: Macie and Security Hub reduce manual effort.

Centralized Compliance Management: Audit Manager streamlines evidence collection.

Amazon Macie Documentation

AWS Audit Manager Documentation

AWS Security Hub Documentation

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 orworkloads are added, they are automatically included in the security assessments, maintaining a consistent security posture across the organization with minimal manual intervention.

the schedule key deletion function within KMS allows you to specify a waiting period before deleting a customer master key (CMK)4. The minimum waiting period is 7 days and the maximum is 30 days5. This function prevents the CMK from being used for encryption or decryption operations during the waiting period4. The other options are either invalid or ineffective for deleting a CMK within a 24-hour timeframe.

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.

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Comprehensive Detailed Explanation with all AWS References

To achieve centralized visibility of security findings from Amazon GuardDuty detectors in multiple AWS accounts under an AWS Organization, the best approach is to integrate GuardDuty withAWS Security Hub.

AWS Security Hub Overview:

Security Hub provides a unified view of security alerts and compliance checks across AWS accounts.

It supports integration with GuardDuty to automatically ingest and display findings in a centralized manner.

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 oraccidental 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.

https://docs.IAM.amazon.com/kms/latest/developerguide/services-parameter-store.html#parameter-store-cmk-fail

To support answer B, use the referencehttps://d1.IAMstatic.com/whitepapers/IAM-security-whitepaper.pdf

"For example, IAM Config provides a managed IAM Config Rules to ensure that encryption is turned on for all EBS volumes in your account."

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

Amazon S3 is a service that provides scalable, durable, and secure object storage. You can use Amazon S3 to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web1

AWS Elastic Load Balancing is a service that distributes incoming application or network traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, containers, or IP addresses. You can use Elastic Load Balancing to increase the availability and fault tolerance of your applications2

Elastic Load Balancing supports access logging, which captures detailed information about requests sent to your load balancer. Each log contains information such as the time the request was received, the client’s IP address, latencies, request paths, and server responses. You can use access logs to analyze traffic patterns and troubleshoot issues3

You can configure your load balancer to store access logs in an Amazon S3 bucket that you specify. You can also specify the interval for publishing the logs, which can be 5 or 60 minutes. The logs are stored in a hierarchical folder structure by load balancer name, IP address, year, month, day, and time.

Amazon Athena is a service that allows you to analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. You can use Athena to run ad-hoc queries and get results in seconds. Athena is serverless, so there is no infrastructure to manage and you pay only for the queries that you run.

You can use Athena to search the access logs that are stored in your S3 bucket. You can create a table in Athena that maps to your S3 bucket and then run SQL queries on the table. You can also use the Athena console or API to view and download the query results.

You can also use Athena to create queries for the required metrics, such as the number of requests per cipher or protocol. You can then publish the metrics to Amazon CloudWatch, which is a service that monitors and manages your AWS resources and applications. You can use CloudWatch to collect and track metrics, create alarms, and automate actions based on the state of your resources.

By using this solution, you can meet the requirements of ensuring that all the load balancer logs are centralized and searchable for auditing and that metrics are generated to show which ciphers are in use.

The possible reason that the IAM user cannot access the objects in the S3 bucket is D. The KMS key policy has been edited to remove the ability for the AWS account to have full access to the key.

This answer is correct because the KMS key policy is the primary way to control access to the KMS key, and it must explicitly allow the AWS account to have full access to the key.If theKMS key policy has been edited to remove this permission, then the IAM policy that grants kms:Decrypt permission to the IAM user has no effect, and the IAM user cannot decrypt the objects in the S3 bucket12.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. The IAM policy does not need to allow the kms:DescribeKey permission, because this permission is not required for decrypting objects in S3 using SSE-KMS.The kms:DescribeKey permission allows getting information about a KMSkey, such as its creation date, description, and key state3.

B. The S3 bucket has not been changed to use the AWS managed key to encrypt objects at rest, because this would not cause an Access Denied message for the IAM user. The AWS managed key is a default KMS key that is created and managed by AWS for each AWS account and Region.The IAM user does not need any permissions on this key to use it for SSE-KMS4.

C. An S3 bucket policy does not need to be added to allow the IAM user to access the objects, because the IAM user already has s3:List* and s3:Get* permissions for the S3 bucket and its objects through an IAM policy.An S3 bucket policy is an optional way to grant cross-account access or public access to an S3 bucket5.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Amazon Inspector is an automated vulnerability management service that continuously scans Amazon EC2 instances for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure. It uses a combination of the EC2 instance’s metadata and installed packages to detect CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures).

AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager automates the process of patching managed instances with both security-related and other types of updates. Together, these services provide detection and remediation capabilities, fulfilling both the detection and mitigation requirements.

This approach is directly aligned with AWS Security Specialty best practices for Infrastructure Security.

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.

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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.

The AWS documentation states that you can create a new AMI without the potentially compromised credentials and create an 1AM role that includes the correct permissions. You can then create a launch template for the Auto Scaling group to reference the new AMI and 1AM role. This method is the most secure way to remediate the security concerns without causing downtime for the application.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Using AWS WAF with an Application Load Balancer (ALB) allows you to mitigate SQL injection attacks quickly by deploying managed rule groups designed for common web exploits. This method allows the existing EC2 instances to continue operating without changes, minimizing disruption.

By fronting the EC2 instances with an ALB, you can then:

Apply WAF rules

Redirect DNS records from Route 53 to the ALB

Restrict direct EC2 access via security groups

This approach is rapid, low effort, and preserves availability, making it ideal for critical, time-sensitive security mitigations.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The requirement is to remediate both existing and future noncompliant S3 buckets across multiple accounts and Regions in an AWS Organizations structure.

AWS Config Aggregator with organization-wide aggregation ensures that all accounts and Regions are continuously monitored for compliance.

By integrating a Lambda function with AWS Config rules, you can automatically remediate noncompliant resources (e.g., by applying encryption settings or blocking public access).

This solution provides both visibility and automated enforcement across the entire organization.

Options using SCPs (B and D) only prevent future actions and do not remediate existing noncompliant resources. Furthermore, scoping the aggregator to only some accounts/Regions (as in C and D) fails to meet the requirement for organization-wide remediation.

This approach aligns with Data Protection and Governance best practices in the AWS Certified Security – Specialty guidelines.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The most scalable and lowest-latency solution for end-to-end TLS is to configure a Network Load Balancer (NLB) with a TCP listener. This configuration allows TLS traffic to be passed through directly to the containerized applications running on ECS, preserving full encryption between the client and the container without TLS termination at the load balancer.

NLBs are optimized for handling sudden spikes in traffic (volatile traffic patterns), and passing through TLS traffic ensures the encryption is maintained from source to container.

This is a key practice under Infrastructure Security as highlighted in the AWS Certified Security – Specialty content where preserving encryption and handling scale is crucial.

Action for Amazon Cognito User Pools:

Update the password policy in the Cognito user pool configuration.

Set the required minimum password length and other password complexity settings as needed.

Navigate toAmazon Cognito>User Pools>Policies, and configure the password requirements.

Action for On-Premises Active Directory:

Update the password policy in the on-premises Active Directory.

Use Group Policy Management to configure the minimum password length.

Apply the updated policy to all relevant organizational units (OUs).

IAM Password Policy:

Note that IAM does not manage Active Directory or Cognito password policies. Instead, focus on federated configurations and user pool settings.

Amazon Cognito User Pool Policies

Active Directory Password Policy

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The most operationally efficient solution is to modify the EventBridge rule's event pattern using the anything-but operator on the ProductArn attribute. This effectively filters out all findings generated by Amazon Inspector, allowing all other findings to trigger alerts as intended—without modifying Lambda code or managing additional services like SNS.

This technique aligns with Logging and Monitoring best practices to reduce noise from security alerts and improve response efficiency by filtering at the event rule level.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-use-trust-policies-with-iam-roles/

because this is a solution that can monitor each S3 bucket for unrestricted public write access and use IAM managed services. S3 is a service that provides object storage in the cloud. Systems Manager is a service that helps you automate and manage your AWS resources. You can use Systems Manager to monitor S3 bucket policies for public write access by using a State Manager association that runs a predefined document called AWS-FindS3BucketWithPublicWriteAccess. This document checks each S3 bucket in an account and reports any bucket that has public write access enabled. The other options are either not suitable or not feasible for meeting the requirements.

For Enable Geo-Restriction, choose Yes. For Restriction Type, choose Whitelist to allow access to certain countries, or choose Blacklist to block access from certain countries.https://IAM.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/cloudfront-geo-restriction/

To ensure that the load balancer only accepts connections over port 443, the security engineer should do the following:

Create a security group with a single inbound rule that allows connections from 0.0.0.0/0 on port 443. This means that the security group allows HTTPS traffic from any source IP address.

Ensure this security group is the only one associated with the ALB. This means that the security group overrides any other rules that might allow HTTP traffic on port 80.

IAM Direct Connect makes it easy to establish a dedicated network connection from your premises to IAM. Using IAM Direct Connect you can establish private connectivity between IAM and your datacenter, office, or colocation environment which in many cases can reduce your network costs, increase bandwidth throughput and provide a more consistent network experience than Internet-based connections.

Options B and C are invalid because these options will not reduce network latency

Options D is invalid because this is only used to connect 2 VPC's

For more information on IAM direct connect, just browse to the below URL:

https://IAM.amazon.com/directconnect

The correct answer is: Provision a Direct Connect connection to an IAM region using a Direct Connect partner. omit your Feedback/Queries to our Experts

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 correct answer is B. Modify the network ACL that is associated with the CIDR range to allow outbound traffic to ephemeral ports.

This answer is correct because network ACLs are stateless, which means that they do not automatically allow return traffic for inbound connections. Therefore, the network ACL that is associated with the CIDR range of the new application must have outbound rules that allow traffic to ephemeral ports, which are the temporary ports used by the vendors’ machines to communicate with the application servers.Ephemeral ports are typically in the range of 1024-655351. If the network ACL does not have such rules, the vendors will not be able to connect to the application.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. Modifying the security group that is associated with the EC2 instances to have the same outbound rules as inbound rules is not a solution, because security groups are stateful, which means that they automatically allow return traffic for inbound connections.Therefore, there is no need to add outbound rules to the security group for the vendors to access the application2.

C. Modifying the inbound rules on the internet gateway to allow the required ports is not a solution, because internet gateways do not have inbound or outbound rules. Internet gateways are VPC components that enable communication between instances in a VPC and the internet.They do not filter traffic based on ports or protocols3.

D. Modifying the network ACL that is associated with the CIDR range to have the same outbound rules as inbound rules is not a solution, because it does not address the issue of ephemeral ports.The outbound rules of the network ACL must matchthe ephemeral port range of the vendors’ machines, not necessarily the inbound rules of the network ACL4.

Requirement Analysis:

The application should only be accessible to subsidiary companies over TCP port 443.

Direct public internet access must be restricted.

Use AWS PrivateLink:

AWS PrivateLink allows secure access to services across accounts and VPCs without exposing them to the public internet.

Steps to Implement:

Parent Account:

Create aPrivateLink Endpoint Servicelinked to the Network Load Balancer (NLB).

Update the security group for the EC2 instances to allow traffic from the PrivateLink endpoint on TCP port 443.

Subsidiary Accounts:

CreateInterface Endpointsin the subsidiary VPCs. These endpoints securely route traffic to the parent company's application via PrivateLink.

Advantages of This Solution:

Compliance: Ensures secure communication without internet exposure.

Scalability: Easily supports all 1,500 subsidiaries.

Operational Simplicity: Centralized service in the parent account, while subsidiaries connect securely via endpoints.

AWS PrivateLink Documentation

Using Security Groups with AWS PrivateLink

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.

Storing sensitive information in environment variables is not a secure practice, as anyone who has access to the Lambda console or the Lambda function code can view them asplaintext. To address this security issue, the security engineer needs to use a service that can store and encrypt the environment variables, and access them at runtime using IAM permissions. The most cost-effective way to do this is to use AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store, which is a service that provides secure, hierarchical storage for configuration data management and secrets management. Parameter Store allows you to store values as standard parameters (plaintext) or secure string parameters (encrypted). Secure string parameters use a AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) customer master key (CMK) to encrypt the parameter value. To access the parameter value at runtime, the Lambda function needs to have IAM permissions to decrypt the parameter using the KMS CMK.

The other options are incorrect because:

Option A is incorrect because setting up IAM policies from the Lambda console to hide access to the environment variables will not prevent someone who has access to the Lambda function code from viewing them as plaintext. IAM policies can only control who can perform actions on AWS resources, not what they can see in the code or the console.

Option B is incorrect because using AWS Step Functions to store the environment variables is not a secure or cost-effective solution. AWS Step Functions is a service that lets you coordinate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows. Step Functions does not provide any encryption or secrets management capabilities, and it will incur additional charges for each state transition in the workflow. Moreover, storing environment variables in Step Functions will make them visible in the execution history of the workflow, which can be accessed by anyone who has permission to view the Step Functions console or API.

Option C is incorrect because storing the environment variables in AWS Secrets Manager and accessing them at runtime is not a cost-effective solution. AWS Secrets Manager is a service that helps you protect secrets needed to access your applications, services, and IT resources. Secrets Manager enables you to rotate, manage, and retrieve secrets throughout their lifecycle. While Secrets Manager can securely store and encrypt environment variables using KMS CMKs, it will incur higher charges than Parameter Store for storing and retrieving secrets. Unless the security engineer needs the advanced features of Secrets Manager, such as automatic rotation of secrets or integration with other AWS services, Parameter Store is a cheaper and simpler option.

You can use IAM CloudTrail to get a history of IAM API calls and related events for your account. This history includes calls made with the IAM Management Console, IAM Command Line Interface, IAM SDKs, and other IAM services.

Options A,B and D are invalid becau56se you need to ensure that you use the services of CloudTrail, IAM Config, IAM Credential Reports

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

http://docs.IAM.amazon.com/IAMcloudtrail/latest/userguide/cloudtrail-user-guide.html

IAM Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit and evaluate the configurations of your IAM resources. Config continuously monitors and records your IAM resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations. With Config, you can review changes in configurations and relationships between IAM resources, dive into detailed resource configuration histories, and determine your overall compliance against the configurations specified in your internal guidelines. This enables you to simplify compliance auditing, security analysis, char management and operational troubleshooting.

For more information on the config service, please visit the below URL

https://IAM.amazon.com/config/

You can generate and download a credential report that lists all users in your account and the status of their various credentials, including passwords, access keys, and MFA devices. You can get a credential report from the IAM Management Console, the IAM SDKs and Command Line Tools, or the IAM API.

For more information on Credentials Report, please visit the below URL:

http://docs.IAM.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id credentials_getting-report.html

The correct answer is: CloudTrail, IAM Config, IAM Credential Reports Submit your Feedback/Queries to our Experts

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.

Comprehensive Detailed Explanation with all AWS References

To enable GuardDuty to monitor Kubernetes-based applications:

Enable Control Plane Logs:

GuardDuty uses control plane logs to detect malicious or unauthorized activity in Amazon EKS.

Enable EKS control plane logs (API, audit, authenticator) and ingest them into CloudWatch.

To securely store the API key, the security team should do the following:

Create a secret in AWS Secrets Manager in the security account to store the API key using AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) for encryption. This allows the security team to encrypt and manage the API key centrally, and to configure automatic rotation schedules for it.

Grant access to the IAM role used by the Lambda function so that the function can retrieve the key from Secrets Manager and call the API. This allows the security team to avoid storing the API key with the source code, and to use IAM policies to control access to the secret.

This solution meets the requirement of receiving an email notification about critical findings in AWS Security Hub. Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus that can receive events from AWS services and third-party sources, and route them to targets based on rules and filters. Amazon SNS is a fully managed pub/sub service that can send messages to various endpoints, such as email, SMS, mobile push, and HTTP. By creating an EventBridge rule that detects critical Security Hub findings and sends them to an SNS topic, the company can leverage the existing integration between these services and avoid writing custom code or managing servers. By subscribing an email endpoint to the SNS topic, the company can receive published messages in their inbox.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

To mitigate traffic volume from a specific IP address without entirely blocking it, AWS WAF’s rate-based rules are the appropriate solution. AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) provides rate-based rules that allow a user to count and limit the rate of requests from individual IP addresses.

A rate-based rule tracks the number of requests that each originating IP makes in a rolling five-minute period. If the number of requests exceeds a specified threshold, WAF applies an action such as block or count.

This makes AWS WAF an ideal tool to throttle traffic rather than block it, which directly meets the use case described.

Reference from AWS Certified Security - Specialty Official Guide:

This capability is part of AWS WAF’s standard feature set, explicitly covered under the topics of Logging and Monitoring and Mitigating DDoS and Abnormal Behavior. Rate-based rules are discussed as a method for limiting the number of incoming requests based on request patterns without denying access outright.

Understanding the IAM Policy:

The IAM useralicehas an explicit permission in the IAM policy to perform alls3:*actions on bothbucket1andbucket2resources.

This grants useralicefull access to both buckets from the IAM policy perspective.

Bucket Policy for bucket1:

The bucket policy forbucket1explicitly grants useralicefull access to this bucket.

This policy reinforces the permissions provided by the IAM policy.

Bucket Policy for bucket2:

bucket2does not have a bucket policy defined.

In the absence of a bucket policy, the permissions fall back to the IAM policy.

Effective Permissions:

Since the IAM policy grants access to both buckets, and there are no conflicting explicit deny statements, useralicecan access bothbucket1andbucket2.

IAM Policies and Bucket Policies

Evaluating Access with S3 Policies

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

To prevent developers from configuring unauthenticated Lambda function URLs, the most effective approach is to use Service Control Policies (SCPs) at the organizational level. By explicitly denying actions such as lambda:CreateFunctionUrlConfig and lambda:UpdateFunctionUrlConfig when the lambda:FunctionUrlAuthType is set to NONE, the organization ensures that only authenticated function URLs are deployed in production.

This method imposes no additional workload on developers and leverages AWS Organizations' SCPs to enforce centralized security policy — a recommended practice in the Identity and Access Management domain.

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

The solution to receiving automated email notifications when AWS access keys are detected on code repository sites is to use Amazon EventBridge with Amazon GuardDuty findings. Specifically, creating an EventBridge rule that targets Amazon GuardDuty findings, particularly theUnauthorizedAccess:IAMUser/InstanceCredentialExfiltrationfinding type, allows for the detection of potential unauthorized use or exposure of AWS credentials. When such a finding is detected, EventBridge can then trigger an action to send a notification via Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). By configuring an SNS topic to send emails, stakeholders can be promptly informed of such security incidents. This approach leverages AWS's native security and monitoring services to provide timely alerts with minimal operational overhead, ensuring that the company can respond quickly to potential security breaches involving exposed AWS credentials.

Users in member accounts will not have sufficient permissions to delete the organization trail, turn logging on or off, change what types of events are logged, or otherwise alter the organization trail in any way.https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awscloudtrail/latest/userguide/creating-trail-organization.html

By disabling SSL termination, you are leaving an unsecure connection from the ELB to the back end instances. Hence this means that part of the data transit is not being encrypted.

Option B is incorrect because this would not guarantee complete encryption of data in transit

Option C and D are incorrect because these would not guarantee encryption

For more information on SSL Listeners for your load balancer, please visit the below URL:

http://docs.IAM.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancine/latest/classic/elb-https-load-balancers.htmll

The correct answer is: Use S3 SSE and use SSL for data in transit

Submit your Feedback/Queries to our Experts

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/Overview.Encryption.html

https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ebs-automatic-encryption/

To implement encryption at rest for both the EC2 instances and the Aurora DB cluster, the following steps are required:

For the EC2 instances, modify the EBS default encryption settings in the target AWS Region to enable encryption. This will ensure that any new EBS volumes created in that Region are encrypted by default using an AWS managed key. Alternatively, you can specify a customer managed key when creating new EBS volumes.For more information, see Amazon EBS encryption.

Use an Auto Scaling group instance refresh to replace the existing EC2 instances with new ones that have encrypted EBS volumes attached. An instance refresh is a feature that helps you update all instances in an Auto Scaling group in a rolling fashion without the need to manage the instance replacement process manually. For more information, see Replacing Auto Scaling instances based on an instance refresh.

For the Aurora DB cluster, create a new AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) encrypted DB cluster from a snapshot of the existing DB cluster. You can use either an AWS managed key or a customer managed key to encrypt the new DB cluster. You cannot enable or disable encryption for an existing DB cluster, so you have to create a new one from a snapshot.For more information, see Encrypting Amazon Aurora resources.

The other options are incorrect because they either do not enable encryption at rest for the resources (B, D), or they use the wrong service for encryption (E).

Verified References:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/EBSEncryption.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/asg-instance-refresh.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/Overview.Encryption.html

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 toautomatically expire the key material used for encryption5.

Create an Account-Wide Data Protection Policy:

Use AWS CloudWatch Logs account-level data protection policies to prevent sensitive data exposure.

Define the policy with appropriate AWS managed data identifiers or custom identifiers specific to the company's sensitive data.

Apply the policy across all log groups in the account, ensuring coverage for both existing and future log groups.

Restrict Developer Access to Unmasked Data:

Explicitly deny thelogs:UnmaskIAM permission to developers. This prevents developers from accessing unmasked sensitive data in log entries.

Automatic Policy Application:

Account-wide data protection policies automatically apply to new log groups created in the future, ensuring scalability and compliance without manual intervention.

Testing and Verification:

Test the policy with sample log entries containing sensitive data to ensure proper masking.

Verify that developers can troubleshoot logs without exposing sensitive information.

AWS CloudWatch Logs Data Protection Documentation

AWS Identity and Access Management Permissions for CloudWatch Logs

The correct answer is B. Instruct users to run the aws sts get-session-token CLI command and pass the multi-factor authentication --serial-number and --token-code parameters. Use these resulting values to make API/CLI calls.

According to the AWS documentation1, the aws sts get-session-token CLI command returns a set of temporary credentials for an AWS account or IAM user. The credentials consist of an access key ID, a secret access key, and a security token. These credentials are valid for the specified duration only. The session duration for IAM users can be between 15 minutes and 36 hours, with a default of 12 hours.

You can use the --serial-number and --token-code parameters to provide the MFA device serial number and the MFA code from the device. The MFA device must be associated with the user who is making the get-session-token call. If you do not provide these parameters when your IAM user or role has a policy that requires MFA, you will receive an Access Denied error.

The temporary security credentials that are returned by the get-session-token command can then be used to make subsequent API or CLI calls that require MFA authentication. You can use environment variables or a profile in your AWS CLI configuration file to specify the temporary credentials.

Therefore, this solution will resolve the problem of users being unable to perform EC2 commands using the AWS CLI, while still enforcing MFA.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. Changing the value of aws:MultiFactorAuthPresent to true will not work, because this is a condition key that is evaluated by AWS when a request is made. You cannot set this value manually in your policy or request. You must provide valid MFA information to AWS for this condition key to be true.

C. Implementing federated API/CLI access using SAML 2.0 may work, but it requires more operational effort than using the get-session-token command. You would need to configure a SAML identity provider and trust relationship with AWS, and use a custom SAML client to request temporary credentials from AWS STS. This solution may also introduce additional security risks if the identity provider is compromised.

D. Creating a role and enforcing MFA in the role trust policy may work, but it also requires more operational effort than using the get-session-token command. You would need to create a role for each user or group that needs to perform EC2 commands, and specify a trust policy that requires MFA. You would also need to grant the users permission to assume the role, and instruct them to use the sts assume-role command instead of the get-session-token command.

The most cost-effective way to correct a typo in a vault lock policy during the 24-hour initiation period is to call theabort-vault-lockoperation. 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.

Comprehensive Detailed Explanation with all AWS References

The simplest and most efficient way to enforce a data retention policy in Amazon S3 is by usingS3 Lifecycle rules:

S3 Lifecycle Rule:

Lifecycle rules allow you to automatically delete objects based on their age or last-modified date.

Specify a rule to delete objects after 45 days to meet the retention policy.

The correct answer is B and C.

B. Allow port 443 from source 0.0.0.0/0.

This is correct because port 443 is used for HTTPS traffic, which must be able to access the website from any source IP address.

C. Allow port 22 from 192.168.100.0/24.

This is correct because port 22 is used for SSH, which is the management protocol for the web server. The management subnet is 192.168.100.0/24, so only this subnet should be allowed to access port 22.

A. Allow port 22 from source 0.0.0.0/0.

This is incorrect because it would allow anyone to access port 22, which is a security risk. SSH should be restricted to the management subnet only.

D. Allow port 22 from 10.0.1.0/24.

This is incorrect because it would allow the website subnet to access port 22, which is unnecessary and a security risk. SSH should be restricted to the management subnet only.

E. Allow port 443 from 10.0.1.0/24.

This is incorrect because it would limit the HTTPS traffic to the website subnet only, which defeats the purpose of having a public website.

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.

To enable S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) for objects that are encrypted with SSE-KMS, the following steps are required:

Grant the IAM role the kms.Decrypt permission for the key in us-east-1 that encrypts source objects. This will allow the IAM role to decrypt the source objects before replicating them to the destination bucket. The kms.Decrypt permission must be granted in the key policy of the source KMS key or in an IAM policy attached to the IAM role.

Grant the IAM role the kms.Encrypt permission for the key in us-west-2 that encrypts objects that are in the destination S3 bucket. This will allow the IAM role to encrypt the replica objects with the destination KMS key before storing them in the destination bucket. The kms.Encrypt permission must be granted in the key policy of the destination KMS key or in an IAM policy attached to the IAM role.

This solution will remediate the issue of encrypted objects not being replicated to the destination bucket.

The other options are incorrect because they either do not grant the necessary permissions for CRR (A, C, D), or do not use a valid encryption method for CRR (E).

Verified References:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/replication-config-for-kms-objects.html

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

GuardDuty can trigger an EventBridge rule upon detecting a suspicious finding (e.g., unusual traffic volume). Using Lambda, the automation can:

Remove the affected instance from the Auto Scaling group to prevent it from being terminated and replaced.

Isolate the instance by applying a restrictive security group.

This approach aligns with AWS incident response best practices, which recommend isolation over termination to preserve forensic data while minimizing disruption to the application.

these are the solutions that can securely rotate the secrets for the production RDS database using Secrets Manager. Secrets Manager is a service that helps you manage secrets such as database credentials, API keys, and passwords. You can use Secrets Manager to rotate secrets automatically by using a Lambda function that runs on a schedule. The Lambda function needs to have access to both the RDS instance and the Secrets Manager service. Option B places the RDS instance in a private subnet and the Lambda function in the same VPC in another private subnet. The private subnet with the Lambda function needs to use a NAT gateway to access Secrets Manager over the internet. Option E places the RDS instance and the Lambda function in the same private subnet and configures a Secrets Manager interface endpoint, which is a private connection between the VPC and Secrets Manager. The other options are either insecure or incorrect for rotating secrets using Secrets Manager.

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.

For increased security while ensuring functionality, adjusting NACL3 to allow inbound traffic on port 5432 from the CIDR blocks of the application instance subnets, and allowing outbound traffic on ephemeral ports (1024-65536) back to those subnets creates a secure path for database access. Removing default allow-all rules enhances security by implementing the principle of least privilege, ensuring that only necessary traffic is permitted.

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/10/now-use-aws-systems-manager-to-view-vulnerability-identifiers-for-missing-patches-on-your-linux-instances/

Adjusting the IAM policy attached to the IAM role used by EC2 instances to include the necessary AWS Logs API actions for publishing logs to CloudWatch Logs addresses the issue. This ensures that the EC2 instances have the required permissions to interact with CloudWatch Logs, facilitating the successful publication of logs from the instances.

Amazon Security Lake, when configured with a delegated administrator account in AWS Organizations, provides a centralized solution for aggregating, organizing, and prioritizing security data from multiple sources including AWS services, AWS Marketplace solutions, and on-premises systems. By enabling Security Lake for the organization and adding the necessary AWS accounts, the solution centralizes the collection and analysis of log data. This setup leverages the organization's structure to streamline log aggregation and normalization, making it an efficient solution for the specified requirements. The use of Amazon Athena for querying the log data further enhances the ability to analyze and respond to security findings across the organization.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

A. New patch baseline with 0-day approval ensures that critical security patches are available immediately for deployment without delay, which is crucial in response to imminent threats.

B. Patch Now operation in Patch Manager allows for immediate patch deployment across all instances, and storing logs in Amazon S3 provides centralized evidence and audit trails for compliance and verification.

Together, these actions support rapid response, immediate patch deployment, and auditability, aligning with Infrastructure Security and Incident Response best practices.

The most likely cause of the error is that the instance profile for the EC2 instance does not have the s3:PutObject permission for the S3 bucket. This permission is needed to upload logs to the bucket. Therefore, the security engineer should ensure that the instance profile has this permission.

One possible solution is to attach the AWSImageBuilderFullAccess policy to the instance profile for the EC2 instance. This policy grants full access to Image Builder resources and related AWS services, including the s3:PutObject permission for any bucket with “imagebuilder” in its name. However, this policy may grant more permissions than necessary, which violates the principle of least privilege.

Another possible solution is to create a custom policy that only grants the s3:PutObject permission for the specific S3 bucket that is used for logging. This policy can be attached to the instance profile along with the other policies that are required for Image Builder functionality: EC2InstanceProfileForImageBuilder, EC2InstanceProfileForImageBuilderECRContainerBuilds, and AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore. This solution follows the principle of least privilege more closely than the previous one.

Ensure that the following policies are attached to the instance profile for the EC2 instance: EC2InstanceProfileForImageBuilder, EC2InstanceProfileForImageBuilderECRContainerBuilds, and AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore.

Ensure that the instance profile for the EC2 instance has the s3:PutObject permission for the S3 bucket. This can be done by either attaching the AWSImageBuilderFullAccess policy or creating a custom policy with this permission.

1: Using managed policies for EC2 Image Builder - EC2 Image Builder 2: PutObject - Amazon Simple Storage Service 3: AWSImageBuilderFullAccess - AWS Managed Policy

The correct answer is A and C.

When using ABAC, the principal’s identity-based policy and the S3 bucket’s resource policy are both evaluated to determine the effective permissions. If either policy grants access to the principal, the action is allowed. If either policy denies access to the principal, the action is denied. Therefore, to enforce the tag-based condition, both policies must deny access when the tag values do not match.

In this case, the principal’s identity-based policy grants access to put objects into the S3 bucket with no conditions (A), which means that the policy does not check for the tag values. This policy overrides the condition in the bucket policy because an explicit allow always takes precedence over an implicit deny. The bucket policy can only allow or deny actions to the principal based on the condition, but it cannot override the identity-based policy.

The S3 bucket’s resource policy does not deny access to put objects ©, which means that it also does not check for the tag values. The bucket policy can only allow or deny actions to the principal based on the condition, but it cannot override the identity-based policy.

Therefore, the combination of factors A and C are causing the PutObject operation to succeed when the tag values are different.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The GuardDuty finding “IAMUser/InstanceCredentialExfiltration” indicates that temporary credentials from the instance metadata service have been stolen and used from an unusual location. The immediate priority is to revoke all existing IAM sessions for that instance profile to block the compromised credentials.

This is considered a critical containment action. IAM allows active session revocation, which invalidates credentials associated with a compromised instance profile.

This is explicitly covered under the Incident Response domain in the AWS Security Specialty study material, which emphasizes session revocation and credential rotation in response to exfiltration events.

Comprehensive Detailed Explanation with all AWS References

To log object-level activity and validate log file integrity:

CloudTrail Data Events with Log File Validation:

CloudTrail data events log object-level activity in S3 buckets.

Enable log file validation to ensure integrity using a digital signature.

To assess the impact of the exposed access key, the security engineer should recommend the following solution:

Analyze an IAM use report from AWS Trusted Advisor to see when the access key was last used. This allows the security engineer to use a tool that provides information about IAM entities and credentials in their account, and check if there was any unauthorized activity with the exposed access key.

An Application Load Balancer (ALB) is a type of load balancer that operates at the application layer (layer 7) of the OSI model. It can distribute incoming traffic based on the content of the request, such as the host header, path, or query parameters. An ALB can also terminate TLS connections and decrypt requests from clients before sending them to the targets.

To implement TLS for incoming traffic to the application, the following steps are required:

Create a public ALB in a public subnet and register the EC2 instances as targets in a target group.

Create two listeners for the ALB, one on port 80 for HTTP traffic and one on port 443 for HTTPS traffic.

Create a rule for the listener on port 80 to redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS using the same host, path, and query parameters.

Provision a public TLS certificate in AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for the domain name of the application. ACM is a service that lets you easily provision, manage, and deploy public and private SSL/TLS certificates for use with AWS services and your internal connected resources.

Attach the certificate to the listener on port 443 and configure the security policy to negotiate secure connections between clients and the ALB.

Configure the security groups for the ALB and the EC2 instances to allow inbound traffic on ports 80 and 443 from the internet and outbound traffic on any port to the EC2 instances.

This solution will meet the requirements of implementing TLS for incoming traffic without impacting performance or requiring end-to-end encryption. The ALB will handle the TLS termination and decryption, while forwarding unencrypted requests to the EC2 instances.

Verified References:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/introduction.html

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

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/acm-overview.html

you need to configure the Amazon Inspector agent to use the CVE rule package, which is a set of rules that check for vulnerabilitiesand exposures on your EC2 instances5. You also need to install an additional integration library that enables communication between the Amazon Inspector agent and Security Hub6. Security Hub is a service that provides you with a comprehensive view of your securitystate in AWS and helps you check your environment against security industry standards and best practices7. The other options are either incorrect or incomplete for meeting the requirement.

The condition of "s3:x-amz-server-side-encryption":"IAM:kms" ensures that objects uploaded need to be encrypted.

Options B,C and D are invalid because you have to ensure the condition of ns3:x-amz-server-side-encryption":"IAM:kms" is present

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://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/Security/Security_Compute_Services_Whitepaper.pdf

The correct answer is C. Edit the existing trail in the Organizations management account and apply it to the organization.

The reason is that this is the simplest and most effective way to ensure that there is at least one trail configured for all existing accounts and for any account that is created in the future.According to the AWS documentation1, “If you have created an organization in AWS Organizations, you can create a trail that logs all events for all AWS accounts in that organization.This is sometimes called an organization trail.” The documentation1also states that “The management account for the organization can edit an existing trail in their account, and apply it to an organization, making it an organization trail. Organization trails log events for the management account and all member accounts in the organization.” Therefore, by editing the existing trail in the management account and applying it to the organization, the security team can ensure that all accounts are sending CloudTrail logs to a centralized S3 logging bucket.

The other options are incorrect because:

A. Create a new trail and configure it to send CloudTrail logs to Amazon S3. Use Amazon EventBridge to send notification if a trail is deleted or stopped. This option is not sufficient to ensure that there is at least one trail configured for all accounts, because it does not prevent users from deleting or stopping the trail in their accounts. Even if EventBridge sends a notification, the security team would have to manually restore or restart the trail, which is not efficient or scalable.

B. Deploy an AWS Lambda function in every account to check if there is an existing trail and create a new trail, if needed. This option is not optimal because it requires deploying and maintaining a Lambda function in every account, which adds complexity and cost. Moreover, it does not prevent users from deleting or stopping the trail after it is created by the Lambda function.

D. Create an SCP to deny the cloudtrail:Delete and cloudtrail:Stop actions. Apply the SCP to all accounts. This option is not sufficient to ensure that there is at least one trail configured for all accounts, because it does not create or apply a trail in the first place. It only prevents users from deleting or stopping an existing trail, but it does not guarantee that a trail exists in every account.

Amazon EC2 Systems Manager is a service that helps you automatically collect software inventory, apply OS patches, create system images, and configure Windows and Linux operating systems3. You can use Systems Manager to report on instance patch compliance and enforce updates during the defined maintenance windows4. The other options are either inefficient or not feasible for achieving the goals.