Ch3 Flashcards
(148 cards)
- When creating a new security group, which of the following are true? (Choose two.)
All inbound traffic is allowed by default.
All outbound traffic is allowed by default.
Connections that are allowed in must also explicitly be allowed back out.
Connections that are allowed in are automatically allowed back out.
B, D. Default security groups prevent all traffic in and allow all traffic out.
- You have a government-regulated system that will store a large amount of data on S3 standard. You must encrypt all data and preserve a clear audit trail for traceability and third-party auditing. Security policies dictate that encryption must be consistent across the entire data store. Which of the following encryption approaches would be best?
SSE-C
SSE-KMS
SSE-C
Encrypt the data prior to upload to S3 and decrypt the data when returning it to the client.
B. D is not a good answer because relying on encryption outside of S3 does not best address the concerns around consistency. It is generally better to allow AWS to handle encryption in cases where you want to ensure all encryption is the same across a data store. SSE-C, SSE-KMS, and SSE-C all provide this. However, among those three, KMS is the best option for providing clear audit trails.
- You are creating a bastion host to allow SSH access to a set of EC2 instances in a private subnet within your organization’s VPC. Which of the following should be done as part of configuring the bastion host? (Choose two.)
Ensure that the bastion host is exposed directly to the Internet.
Place the bastion host within the private subnet.
Add a route from the bastion host IP into the private subnet into the subnet’s NACLs.
Ensure that the bastion host is within the same security group as the hosts within the private subnet.
A, C. A bastion host is a publicly accessible host that allows traffic to connect to it. Then, an additional connection is made from the bastion host into a private subnet and the hosts within that subnet. Because the bastion must be accessed by public clients, it must be exposed to the Internet (A). If it is within a private subnet (B), it will not be accessible, making that answer incorrect. There also must be an explicit route from the bastion host into the private subnet (C); this is usually within a NACL. Finally, the security of the bastion must be different from the hosts in the private subnet. The bastion host should be hardened significantly as it is public, but also accessible; this is in many ways the opposite of the security requirements of hosts within a private subnet.
- Which of the following are invalid IAM actions? (Choose two.)
Limiting the root account SSH access to all EC2 instances
Allowing a user account SSH access to all EC2 instances
Removing console access for the root account
Removing console access for all non-root user accounts
A, C. AWS sometimes asks questions like this to ensure that you understand that the root account is truly a root account and you cannot restrict that account’s access. Anything that involves removing access for the root account is always invalid.
- You have a private subnet in a VPC within AWS. The instances within the subnet are unable to access the Internet. You have created a NAT gateway to solve this problem. What additional steps do you need to perform to allow the instances Internet access? (Choose two.)
Ensure that the NAT gateway is in the same subnet as the instances that cannot access the Internet.
Add a route in the private subnet to route traffic aimed at 0.0.0.0/0 at the NAT gateway.
Add a route in the public subnet to route traffic aimed at 0.0.0.0/0 at the NAT gateway.
Ensure that the NAT gateway is in a public subnet.
B, D. There are two pairs of answers here, and you need to choose the correct pair in each case. For private subnet instances, you need a route out to a NAT gateway, and that NAT gateway must be in a public subnet—otherwise, it would not itself be able to provide outbound traffic access to the Internet. That means option D is correct, as is answer B: 0.0.0.0/0 means “traffic with a destination in the Internet at large,” more or less.
- Which of the following statements regarding NAT instances and NAT gateways are false? (Choose two.)
Both NAT instances and NAT gateways are highly available.
You must choose the instance type and size when creating a NAT gateway but not when creating a NAT instance.
It is your responsibility to patch a NAT instance and AWS’s responsibility to patch a NAT gateway.
You assign a security group to a NAT instance but not to a NAT gateway.
A, B. The easiest way to handle this question is by thinking of a NAT gateway as essentially a managed service and a NAT instance as an instance (which you manage) for networking. That helps identify B as false (you never choose instance types and sizes for managed services) and C as true (AWS patches managed services). Further, since AWS manages NAT gateways, they are automatically highly available and do not need you to associate security groups. This means that A is false—NAT instances can be made highly available, but not without your manual intervention—and D is true.
- What types of rules does a security group allow? (Choose two.)
Allow rules
Prevent rules
Deny rules
Inbound rules
A, D. Security groups only contain allow rules, not deny rules (and prevent rules are not an actual rule type). Then, you can create both inbound and outbound rules.
- Which of the following are true about security groups? (Choose two.)
You can specify deny rules, but not allow rules.
By default, a security group includes an outbound rule that allows all outbound traffic.
You can specify specific separate rules for inbound and outbound traffic.
Security groups are stateless.
B, C. You specify allow rules for security groups, so A is false. B and C are true: Default security groups allow all outbound traffic, and you specify separate inbound and outbound rules. Finally, security groups are stateful, not stateless, so D is false.
- Which of the following are not true about security groups? (Choose two.)
Allow rules take priority over deny rules.
Responses to allowed inbound traffic are allowed to flow back out.
You can specify specific separate rules for inbound and outbound traffic.
If there are no outbound rules, then all outbound traffic is allowed to flow out.
A, D. A is false, as security groups don’t provide for deny rules. B and C are both true (and therefore are not correct answers). D is false, because without specific outbound rules, nothing is allowed to flow out. (Note that by default, there is an allowance for all outgoing traffic in security groups, although that can be removed.)
- Which of the following must a security group have when you create it? (Choose two.)
At least one inbound rule
A name
A description
At least one outbound rule
B, C. A security group can actually have no inbound or outbound rules, so A and D are not required. A security group does require a name and description, though.
- Which of the following is a security group associated with?
An ELB
A network interface
An ALB
A network access list
B. A security group can be attached to multiple constructs, like an EC2 instance, but is ultimately associated with a network interface, which in turn is attached to individual instances. This is a tough question and probably at the very edge of what the exam might ask.
- Which of the following are default rules on a default security group, such as the one that comes with the default VPC? (Choose two.)
Outbound: 0.0.0.0/0 for all protocols allowed
Inbound: 0.0.0.0/0 for all protocols allowed
Outbound: ::/0 for all protocols allowed
Inbound: ::/0 for all protocols allowed
A, C. The easiest way to work this is to recognize that default security groups never allow broad inbound traffic. That eliminates B and D and leaves rules that allow all outbound traffic for both IPv4 (A) and IPv6 (C).
- Which of the following are parts of a security group rule? (Choose two.)
A protocol
A subnet
An instance ID
A description
A, D. Security group rules have a protocol and a description. They do not have a subnet, although they can have CIDR blocks or single IP addresses. Instances can associate with a security group, but a security group does not itself refer to a specific instance.
- Which of the following describes server-side encryption for S3 bucket data?
You encrypt and upload data to S3, managing the encryption process yourself.
You encrypt and upload data to S3, allowing AWS to manage the encryption process.
You request AWS to encrypt an object before saving it to S3.
You encrypt an object, but AWS uploads and decrypts the object.
C
- Which of the following are valid steps in enabling client-side encryption for S3? (Choose two.)
Download the AWS CLI and SSH to your S3 key store.
Use a KMS-managed customer master key.
Download an AWS SDK for encrypting data on the client side.
Turn on bucket encryption for the target S3 buckets.
B, C. For client-side encryption, you’ll need a master key, which can either be a KMS-managed key (option B) or a client-side master key. You’ll also need an SDK for encrypting the client-side data (C).
- Which of the following is not a way to manage server-side encryption keys for S3?
SSE-S3
SSE-KMS
SSE-E
SSE-C
C. You’ll probably simply need to memorize this one. SSE-S3, SSE-KMS, and SSE-C are all valid approaches to S3 encryption; SSE-E is made up.
- Which of the following encryption key management options is best for managing keys but allowing S3 to handle the actual encryption of data?
SSE-S3
SSE-KMS
Client-side encryption keys
SSE-C
D. SSE-C allows the customer (the C in SSE-C) to manage keys, but S3 then handles the actual encryption of data.
- You have a customer that has a legacy security group that is very suspicious of all things security in the cloud. The customer wants to use S3, but doesn’t trust AWS encryption, and you need to enable its migration to the cloud. What option would you recommend to address the company’s concerns?
SSE-S3
SSE-KMS
Client-side encryption keys
SSE-C
C. Client-side encryption allows the customer to manage keys and encrypt data themselves, then store the data on S3 already encrypted. There’s a lot of overhead with this approach, but it’s ideal for the use case described.
- You want to begin encrypting your S3 data, but your organization is new to encryption. Which option is a low-cost approach that still offloads most of the work to AWS rather than the organization new to encryption?
SSE-S3
SSE-KMS
Client-side encryption keys
SSE-C
A. In general, SSE-S3 is the “starter” option for encryption. It’s by no means a simple or amateur approach to security, but it is low cost compared to KMS and has much less overhead than client-side or SSE-C encryption keys.
- Which of the following options could be used to provide availability-zone-resilient fault-tolerant storage that complies with EU privacy laws? (Choose two.)
S3 buckets in US West 1
S3 buckets in EU West 2
S3-IA buckets in EU Central 1
S3 One Zone-IA buckets in EU-West-1
B, C. Option A isn’t valid because US-West isn’t an EU region. Options B and C are valid as they both provide EU regions, and S3 and S3-IA both can survive the loss of an availability zone; option D would not survive the loss of an AZ.
- What is AWS Trusted Advisor?
An online resource to help you improve performance
An online resource to help you reduce cost
An online resource to help you improve security
All of the above
D. AWS Trusted Advisor does all three of the above: improve performance, reduce cost, and improve security.
- On which of the following does AWS Trusted Advisor not provide recommendations?
Reducing cost
Improving fault tolerance
Improving security
Organizing accounts
D. AWS Trusted Advisor provides advice on cost, fault tolerance, performance, and security but does not address account organization.
- Which of the following are included in the core AWS Trusted Advisor checks? (Choose two.)
S3 bucket permissions
MFA on root account
Quantity of CloudWatch alarms
Use of VPC endpoints
A, B. Here, it’s not reasonable to memorize the seven core AWS Trusted Advisor checks. Instead, consider which of these are valid improvements that Trusted Advisor might make. A and B relate to security and permissions, while both C and D are pretty far afield of cost, security, or performance suggestions.
- Which of the following is not possible using IAM policies?
Requiring MFA for the root account
Denying the root account access to EC2 instances
Disabling S3 access for users in a group
Restricting SSH access to EC2 instances to a specific user
B. The only one of these that’s not possible with IAM is denying the root account access to EC2 instances. That’s not possible—with IAM or any other mechanism.