Pass the Amazon Web Services AWS Certified Specialty SCS-C02 Questions and answers with CertsForce

Understanding the Requirements:

The Lambda functions need access to S3 for writing summaries.

All traffic to S3 must stay within the AWS network and not traverse the internet.

Deploy Lambda Functions in a Private Subnet:

Place the Lambda functions in a private subnet to ensure they do not directly access the internet.

Create an S3 Gateway Endpoint:

Set up a VPC gateway endpoint for Amazon S3.

The endpoint ensures all traffic to S3 stays within AWS's private network.

Update Route Table:

Modify the route table for the private subnet to include the gateway endpoint.

IAM Permissions for the Lambda Function:

Ensure the Lambda function's execution role has permissions to write to the specified S3 bucket.

Advantages:

Cost-Effective: Eliminates NAT gateway costs for S3 traffic.

Secure: Keeps all S3 traffic within AWS's private network.

VPC Endpoint for Amazon S3

Using Lambda in VPC

AWS Nitro Enclaves are isolated and hardened virtual machines that run on EC2 instances and provide a secure environment for processing sensitive data. Nitro Enclaves have no persistent storage, interactive access, or external networking, and they can only communicate with the parent instance through a secure local channel. Nitro Enclaves also support cryptographic attestation, which allows verifying the identity and integrity of the enclave and its code. Nitro Enclaves are ideal for implementing data protection solutions such as tokenization, encryption, and key management.

Using Nitro Enclaves for the tokenization component of the application meets the requirements of isolating the sensitive data from other parts of the application, encrypting and storing the credit card numbers securely, and issuing tokens to replace the numbers. Other components of the application will not be able to access or store the credit card numbers, as they are only available within the enclave.

The correct answer is A, C, and F.

To automate a response for any newly created policies that are overly permissive, the security engineer needs to use a combination of services that can monitor, analyze, remediate, and notify the security incidents.

Option A is correct because creating an AWS Step Functions state machine that checks the resource type in the finding and adds an explicit Deny statement in the trust policy for the IAM role is a valid way to remediate external access. AWS Step Functions is a service that allows you to coordinate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows. You can use Step Functions to invoke AWS Lambda functions, which can modify the IAM policies programmatically. You can also use Step Functions to publish a notification to an Amazon SNS topic, which can send messages to subscribers such as email addresses.

Option B is incorrect because creating an AWS Batch job that forwards any resource type findings to an AWS Lambda function is not a suitable way to automate a response. AWS Batch is a service that enables you to run batch computing workloads on AWS. Batch is designed for large-scale and long-running jobs that can benefit from parallelization and dynamic provisioning of compute resources. Batch is not intended for event-driven and real-time workflows that require immediate response.

Option C is correct because creating an Amazon EventBridge event rule that matches active IAM Access Analyzer findings and invokes AWS Step Functions for resolution is a valid way to monitor and analyze the security incidents. Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that allows you to connect your applications with data from various sources. EventBridge can use rules to match events and route them to targets for processing. You can use EventBridge to invoke AWS Step Functions state machines from the IAM Access Analyzer findings.

Option D is incorrect because creating an Amazon CloudWatch metric filter that matches active IAM Access Analyzer findings and invokes AWS Batch for resolution is not a suitable way to monitor and analyze the security incidents. Amazon CloudWatch is a service that provides monitoring and observability for your AWS resources and applications. CloudWatch can collect metrics, logs, and events from various sources and perform actions based on alarms or filters. However, CloudWatch cannot directly invoke AWS Batch jobs from the IAM Access Analyzer findings. You would need to use another service such as EventBridge or SNS to trigger the Batch job.

Option E is incorrect because creating an Amazon SQS queue that forwards a notification to the security team that an external principal has been granted access to the specific IAM role and has been blocked is not a valid way to notify the security incidents. Amazon SQS is a fully managed message queue service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. SQS can deliver messages to consumers that poll the queue for messages. However, SQS cannot directlyforward a notification to the security team’s email addresses. You would need to use another service such as SNS or SES to send email notifications.

Option F is correct because creating an Amazon SNS topic for external or cross-account access notices and subscribing the security team’s email addresses to the topic is a valid way to notify the security incidents. 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 use SNS to send email notifications to the security team when a critical security finding is detected.

The combination of the following actions should the Engineer take to enable users to be authenticated into the web application and call APIs are:

B. Configure a SAML identity provider in Amazon Cognito to map attributes to the Amazon Cognito user pool attributes.This is a necessary step to federate the existing users from the SAML identity provider to the Amazon Cognito user pool, which will be used for authentication and authorization1.

C. Configure the SAML identity provider to add the Amazon Cognito user pool as a relying party.This is a necessary step to establish a trust relationship between the SAML identity provider and the Amazon Cognito user pool, which will allow the users to sign in using their existing credentials2.

F. Update API Gateway to use a COGNITO_USER_POOLS authorizer.This is a necessary step to enable API Gateway to use the Amazon Cognito user pool as an authorizer for the RESTful services, which will validate the identity or access tokens that are issued by AmazonCognito when a user signs in successfully3.

The other options are incorrect because:

A.Creating a custom authorization service using AWS Lambda is not a necessary step, because Amazon Cognito user pools can provide built-in authorization features, such as scopes and groups, that can be used to control access toAPI resources4.

D.Configuring an Amazon Cognitoidentity pool to integrate with social login providers is not a necessary step, because the users already exist in a directory that is exposed through a SAML identity provider, and there is no requirement to support social login providers5.

E.Updating DynamoDB to store the user email addresses and passwords is not a necessary step, because the user credentials are already stored in the SAML identity provider, and there is no need to duplicate them in DynamoDB6.

The correct answer is D. Attach the CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy AWS managed policy to the EC2 instance role.

According to the AWS documentation1, the CloudWatch agent is a software agent that you can install on your EC2 instances to collect system-level metrics and logs. To use the CloudWatch agent, you need to attach an IAM role or user to the EC2 instance thatgrants permissions for the agent to perform actions on your behalf.The CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy is an AWS managed policy that provides the necessary permissions for the agent to write metrics and logs to CloudWatch2. By attaching this policy to the EC2 instance role, the security engineer can resolve the issue of CloudWatch not receiving the custom application-security logs.

The other options are incorrect for the following reasons:

A.Adding AWS CloudTrail to the trust policy of the EC2 instance is not relevant, because CloudTrail is a service that records API activity in your AWS account, not custom application logs3. Sending the custom logs to CloudTrail instead of CloudWatch would not meet the requirement of forwarding them to CloudWatch.

B.Adding Amazon S3 to the trust policy of the EC2 instance is not necessary, because S3 is a storage service that does not require any trust relationship with EC2 instances4. Configuring the application to write the custom logs to an S3 bucket that CloudWatch can use to ingest the logs would be an alternative solution, but it would be more complex and costly than using the CloudWatch agent directly.

C.Adding Amazon Inspector to the trust policy of theEC2 instance is not helpful, because Inspector is a service that scans EC2 instances for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure, not custom application logs5. Using Amazon Inspector instead of the CloudWatch agent would not meet the requirement of forwarding them to CloudWatch.

To prevent users from directly accessing an Application Load Balancer and allow access only through CloudFront, complete these high-level steps: Configure CloudFront to add a custom HTTP header to requests that it sends to the Application Load Balancer. Configure the Application Load Balancer to only forward requests that contain the custom HTTP header. (Optional) Require HTTPS to improve the security of this solution.https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/restrict-access-to-load-balancer.html