SCS-C03 Exam Dumps - Amazon Web Services AWS Certified Specialty Questions and Answers

Amazon CloudWatch Logs provides a centralized, scalable service for collecting and storing logs from Amazon EC2 instances, regardless of whether the instances are On-Demand or Spot Instances. According to the AWS Certified Security – Specialty Official Study Guide, CloudWatch Logs is the recommended service for centralized log aggregation and near-real-time analysis of application and system logs.

By configuring all EC2 instances to send logs to a single CloudWatch Logs log group, the security engineer ensures that logs from all instances are available in one centralized location. Access to the log group can be restricted by using IAM policies, ensuring that only authorized users can view and analyze the logs.

CloudWatch Logs Insights provides a powerful query language with SQL-like syntax, enabling users to search, filter, aggregate, and analyze log data efficiently. This directly satisfies the requirement for SQL-style queries to identify event patterns and perform root cause analysis without requiring data movement or additional services.

Option B is incorrect because CloudWatch Logs Insights cannot query log files stored in Amazon S3. Option C is inefficient and operationally complex, as Athena cannot directly query CloudWatch Logs log groups. Option D is invalid because Amazon Detective is designed for security investigations using GuardDuty findings, not for general application log analysis.

AWS documentation explicitly states that CloudWatch Logs combined with CloudWatch Logs Insights is the most efficient and secure approach for centralized log analysis in EC2-based architectures.

AWS Certified Security – Specialty Official Study Guide

Amazon CloudWatch Logs Documentation

CloudWatch Logs Insights Query Guide

AWS best practices strongly discourage the use of long-term credentials and recommend cross-account IAM roles with temporary credentials for third-party access. According to the AWS Certified Security – Specialty Study Guide, creating an IAM role in the resource-owning account and allowing a trusted external AWS account to assume that role is the recommended pattern for external access.

By creating the IAM role in the company’s production account and specifying the consultant agency’s AWS account as the trusted principal, the company retains full control over permissions. The trust policy can enforce MFA by using the aws:MultiFactorAuthPresent condition key, ensuring that all access requires MFA. Access is granted through AWS Security Token Service (STS), which issues short-lived credentials.

Option A violates the requirement to avoid long-term credentials. Option B is designed for application user authentication, not AWS account access. Option C incorrectly places the role in the consultant’s account, reducing the company’s control over access.

This solution satisfies MFA enforcement, eliminates long-term credentials, and aligns with AWS third-party access best practices.

Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:

AWS Certified Security – Specialty Official Study Guide

AWS IAM Cross-Account Access

AWS STS and MFA Enforcement

AWS WAF provides managed and custom rules that can immediately mitigate common web exploits such as SQL injection without modifying application code. According to AWS Certified Security – Specialty documentation, placing AWS WAF in front of an Application Load Balancer is a recommended rapid-response control for legacy applications with known vulnerabilities.

Creating an ALB in front of the existing EC2 instances allows seamless traffic migration. AWS WAF SQL injection rules can be deployed and tested without downtime. Updating Route 53 to point to the ALB preserves normal operations. Restricting EC2 security groups afterward prevents bypassing the WAF.

Option B introduces CloudFront changes and single-origin testing, increasing complexity. Option C cannot be completed within 24 hours and risks downtime. Option D is invalid because AWS WAF cannot be attached directly to EC2 instances.

Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:

AWS Certified Security – Specialty Official Study Guide

AWS WAF Web ACL Architecture

AWS Application Load Balancer Security

AWS Config requires permissions at two levels to deliver configuration data: the AWS Config service role and the S3 bucket policy. The AWS Certified Security – Specialty Study Guide states that the S3 bucket policy must explicitly allow the config.amazonaws.com service principal to write objects. Additionally, the IAM role used by AWS Config must allow s3:GetBucketAcl and s3:PutObject.

If either permission is missing, AWS Config cannot deliver snapshots and will log delivery errors in CloudTrail. This dual-permission model ensures least privilege while maintaining secure delivery of compliance data.

Other options reference incorrect principals or irrelevant permissions.

Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:

AWS Certified Security – Specialty Official Study Guide

AWS Config Prerequisites

Requirements and Correct Selections

Automatically collect evidence from AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, and AWS Security Hub for an assessment report.

Correct Answer:

AWS Audit Manager controls

Why:

AWS Audit Manager is specifically designed to automatically collect, map, and organize evidence from AWS services such as CloudTrail, AWS Config, and AWS Security Hub. Audit Manager controls are used within audit frameworks to continuously gather evidence and generate assessment reports for compliance audits.

Determine which IAM principals within the AWS account have access to a specified resource.

Correct Answer:

AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer internal access analyzers

Why:

IAM Access Analyzer internal access analyzers are used to identify which IAM users, roles, or services within an account or organization have access to a specific resource. This is a core access visibility and audit requirement for IAM reviews.

Download AWS security and compliance documents on demand.

Correct Answer:

AWS Artifact reports

Why:

AWS Artifact provides on-demand access to AWS security, compliance, and audit reports, including SOC reports, ISO certifications, and compliance attestations. This service is explicitly intended for audit preparation and regulatory documentation.

AWS WAF rate-based rules are designed specifically to track the number of requests from a single IP address over a configurable time window. According to AWS Certified Security – Specialty guidance, rate-based rules integrate natively with CloudFront and emit CloudWatch metrics that can trigger alarms.

CloudFront logs and VPC Flow Logs are not real-time detection tools. ASN match rules do not count request rates.

Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:

AWS Certified Security – Specialty Official Study Guide

AWS WAF Rate-Based Rules

CloudFront and AWS WAF Integration

EC2 Instance Connect endpoints provide secure, private connectivity to EC2 instances without requiring public IP addresses, inbound internet access, or VPN connectivity. According to AWS Certified Security – Specialty documentation, Instance Connect endpoints are designed specifically for incident response and secure administrative access scenarios.

By deploying an EC2 Instance Connect endpoint in the VPC, the security team can block all external network access while still maintaining controlled access to EC2 instances through the AWS Management Console. The endpoint uses AWS-managed infrastructure and private connectivity, and access is authorized using IAM policies and instance profiles.

Options A and B rely on direct EC2 Instance Connect installation and network paths that may still depend on external access. Option C is incorrect because tunneling is not required when using the console-based Instance Connect endpoint.

This solution enables forensic access during incidents without reopening external network paths, aligning with AWS incident response best practices.

Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:

AWS Certified Security – Specialty Official Study Guide

EC2 Instance Connect Endpoint Architecture

AWS Incident Response Best Practices

Amazon GuardDuty provides continuous threat detection for compromised instances by analyzing VPC Flow Logs, DNS logs, and CloudTrail events. According to AWS Certified Security – Specialty guidance, GuardDuty is the fastest service to enable for detecting malware and compromised EC2 instances.

To notify the security team, Amazon SNS provides a native email notification mechanism with minimal setup. Amazon EventBridge integrates directly with GuardDuty findings and can filter based on severity. Creating an EventBridge rule that matches high severity GuardDuty findings and publishes to SNS ensures immediate notification.

Security Hub is not required for this use case and adds additional setup time. Amazon SQS does not support email subscriptions.

Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:

AWS Certified Security – Specialty Official Study Guide

Amazon GuardDuty Findings and Severity

Amazon EventBridge Integration with GuardDuty

Amazon GuardDuty provides fully managed threat detection across accounts when configured with delegated administration. EKS and RDS protections enable workload-aware detection with minimal setup.

Other solutions require custom pipelines and higher operational overhead.

Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:

AWS Certified Security – Specialty Official Study Guide

Amazon GuardDuty Multi-Account Architecture

Amazon Macie is the AWS service designed to discover and classify sensitive data in S3. Delegated administration enables centralized visibility across an organization. Security Hub aggregates Macie findings for a single-pane-of-glass view.

Inspector does not scan S3 data. Trusted Advisor is not a sensitive data discovery tool.

Referenced AWS Specialty Documents:

AWS Certified Security – Specialty Official Study Guide

Amazon Macie Multi-Account Architecture