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

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_manage_policies_scps_syntax.html#scp-elements-table

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.

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.

If you lose the private key for an EBS-backed instance, you can regain access to your instance. You must stop the instance, detach its root volume and attach it to another instance as a data volume, modify the authorized_keys file with a new public key, move the volume back to the original instance, and restart the instance.https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/TroubleshootingInstancesConnecting.html#replacing-lost-key-pai

To detect suspicious activity in an AWS account for VPC hosted resources, the security engineer needs to use a service that can monitor network traffic and API calls across all AWS Regions. Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that can do this by analyzing VPC Flow Logs, AWS CloudTrail event logs, and DNS logs. By activating GuardDuty across all AWS Regions, the security engineer can provide visibility for as many regions as possible. GuardDuty generates findings that contain details about the potential threats detected in the account. To respond to these findings, the security engineer needs to create a mechanism that can notify the relevant stakeholders or take remedial actions. One way to do this is to use Amazon EventBridge, which is a serverless event bus service that can connect AWS services and third-party applications. By creating an EventBridge rule that responds to GuardDuty findings and publishes them to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic, the security engineer can enable subscribers of the topic to receive notifications via email, SMS, or other methods. This is a cost-effective solution that does not require any additional infrastructure or code.

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

The reason is that this solution will meet the requirements of collecting, reviewing, and managing the evidence from both on-premises and AWS resources to demonstrate compliance with company policy. According to the web search results12, “AWS Audit Manager helps you continuously audit your AWS usage to simplify how you manage risk and compliance with regulations and industry standards. AWS Audit Manager makes it easier to evaluate whether your policies, procedures, and activities—also known as controls—are operating as intended.” The results1 also state that “In addition to the evidence that Audit Manager collects from your AWS environment, you can also upload and centrally manage evidence from your on-premises or multicloud environment.” Therefore, by creating an assessment in AWS Audit Manager, the security engineer can use a prebuilt or custom framework that contains the relevant controls for the company policy, upload manual evidence from the on-premises workloads, and add the evidence to the assessment. After Audit Manager collects the necessary evidence from the AWS resources, the security engineer can generate an assessment report that includes all the evidence from both sources.

The other options are incorrect because:

B. Install the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the on-premises workloads. Use AWS Config to deploy a conformance pack from a sample conformance pack template or a custom YAML template. Generate an assessment report after AWS Config identifies noncompliant workloads and resources. This option is not sufficient to meet the requirements, because it does not collect or manage the evidence from both sources. It only monitors and evaluates the configuration compliance of theworkloads and resources using AWS Config rules. According to the web search results3, “A conformance pack is a collection of AWS Config rules and remediation actions that can be easily deployed as a single entity in an account and a Region or across an organization in AWS Organizations.” However, a conformance pack does not provide a way to upload or include manual evidence from the on-premises workloads, nor does it generate an assessment report that contains all the evidence.

C. Set up the appropriate security standard in AWS Security Hub. Upload manual evidence from the on-premises workloads. Wait for Security Hub to collect the evidence from the AWS resources. Download the list of controls as a .csv file. This option is not optimal to meet the requirements, because it does not provide a comprehensive or audit-ready report that contains all the evidence. It only provides a list of controls and their compliance status in a .csv file format. According to the web search results4, “Security Hub provides you with a comprehensive view of your security state within AWS and helps you check your environment against security industry standards and best practices.” However, Security Hub does not provide a way to upload or include manual evidence from the on-premises workloads, nor does it generate an assessment report that contains all the evidence.

D. Install the Amazon CloudWatch agent on the on-premises workloads. Create a CloudWatch dashboard to monitor the on-premises workloads and the AWS resources. Run a query on the workloads and resources. Download the results. This option is not sufficient to meet the requirements, because it does not collect or manage the evidence from both sources. It only monitors and analyzes the metrics and logs of the workloads and resources using CloudWatch. According to the web search results, “Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service built for DevOps engineers, developers, site reliability engineers (SREs), and IT managers.” However, CloudWatch does not provide a way to upload or include manual evidence from the on-premises workloads, nor does it generate an assessment report that contains all the evidence.

the kms:ViaService condition key can be used to restrict a CMK to work with only a specific AWS service6. By configuring the CMKkey policy to allow KMS actions only when the kms:ViaService condition matches the Amazon S3 service name, you can ensure that only Amazon S3 can use the CMK7. The other options are either incorrect or insufficient for constraining a CMK to work with only Amazon S3.