AWS

AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C02) Exam Learning Path

AWS Security - Specialty SCS-C02 Certificate
~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 1 Comment

AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03) Exam Learning Path

🆕 SCS-C03 Update (December 2025)

The AWS Certified Security – Specialty exam was updated to SCS-C03 on December 2, 2025. The previous SCS-C02 version was retired on December 1, 2025.

Key changes in SCS-C03:

  • Domain restructuring — IAM is now the heaviest domain at 20%; Detection and Incident Response are separate domains
  • Generative AI security — Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker AI, and GenAI OWASP Top 10 protections added
  • New question types — Ordering and matching questions alongside traditional multiple-choice
  • New services — Amazon Security Lake (OCSF), Verified Permissions, AWS Verified Access, Resource Control Policies (RCPs), AWS Security Incident Response

This post has been updated to reflect the SCS-C03 exam.

I recently re-certified the updated AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03) certification exam. The format has been restructured with reorganized domains, new question types (ordering and matching), and expanded coverage for Generative AI security, identity management, and modern governance controls.

AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03) Exam Content

  • AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03) exam focuses on the AWS Security and Compliance concepts. It basically validates
    • An understanding of specialized data classifications and AWS data protection mechanisms.
    • An understanding of data-encryption methods and AWS mechanisms to implement them.
    • An understanding of secure Internet protocols and AWS mechanisms to implement them.
    • The ability to make tradeoff decisions with regard to cost, security, and deployment complexity to meet a set of application requirements.
    • An understanding of security operations and risks

Refer to AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03) Exam Guide

AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03) Exam Domains

Domain SCS-C03 Weight Change from SCS-C02
Domain 1: Detection 16% Restructured
Domain 2: Incident Response 14% Restructured
Domain 3: Infrastructure Security 18% ⬇︎ 2%
Domain 4: Identity and Access Management 20% ⬆︎ 4%
Domain 5: Data Protection 18% —
Domain 6: Security Foundations and Governance 14% Renamed

Key domain changes from SCS-C02 to SCS-C03:

  • SCS-C02’s “Threat Detection and Incident Response” (14%) and “Security Logging and Monitoring” (18%) have been restructured into:
    • Domain 1: Detection (16%) — Monitoring, logging, alerting, log analysis
    • Domain 2: Incident Response (14%) — Response plans, forensics, automated remediation
  • Identity and Access Management is now the heaviest domain at 20% (up from 16%), reflecting that identity is the new security perimeter
  • Domain 6 renamed from “Management and Security Governance” to “Security Foundations and Governance” with expanded governance coverage

AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03) Exam Summary

  • Specialty exams are tough, lengthy, and tiresome. Most of the questions and answers options have a lot of prose and a lot of reading that needs to be done, so be sure you are prepared and manage your time well.
  • SCS-C03 exam has 65 questions to be solved in 170 minutes which gives you roughly 2 1/2 minutes to attempt each question.
  • SCS-C03 exam includes four types of questions: multiple-choice, multiple-response, ordering questions (arrange steps in correct sequence), and matching questions (match services to functions).
    • Ordering questions ask you to select 3-5 responses and arrange them in the correct sequence (e.g., incident response steps in order).
    • Matching questions present 3-7 prompts to match with corresponding responses (e.g., match security services to their primary function).
  • SCS-C03 has a scaled score between 100 and 1,000. The scaled score needed to pass the exam is 750.
  • Specialty exams currently cost $300 + tax.
  • You can get an additional 30 minutes if English is your second language by requesting Exam Accommodations. It might not be needed for Associate exams but is helpful for Professional and Specialty ones.
  • As always, mark the questions for review, move on, and come back to them after you are done with all.
  • As always, having a rough architecture or mental picture of the setup helps focus on the areas that you need to improve. Trust me, you will be able to eliminate 2 answers for sure and then need to focus on only the other two. Read the other 2 answers to check the difference area and that would help you reach the right answer or at least have a 50% chance of getting it right.
  • AWS exams can be taken either remotely or online, I prefer to take them online as it provides a lot of flexibility. Just make sure you have a proper place to take the exam with no disturbance and nothing around you.
  • Also, if you are taking the AWS Online exam for the first time try to join at least 30 minutes before the actual time as I have had issues with both PSI and Pearson with long wait times.
  • New question formats mean pure memorization is less effective. You need to understand how services relate to each other and what order operations happen in, not just what each service does in isolation.

AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03) Exam Resources

Online Courses

Practice Tests

AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03) Study Strategy

  • Weight your study time by domain percentage:
    • IAM (20%) + Data Protection (18%) + Infrastructure Security (18%) = 56% of your score. Master these three domains first.
    • Detection (16%) + Incident Response (14%) + Governance (14%) fill the remaining 44%.
  • Master IAM and KMS before anything else — these two services appear across every domain.
  • Build hands-on experience with IAM policies, KMS key policies, GuardDuty, Security Hub, CloudTrail, and Amazon Bedrock guardrails.
  • Aim for 80-85% consistently on practice exams before scheduling your real exam.
  • Typical preparation takes 8-16 weeks at 1-2 hours per day.

AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03) Exam Topics

  • AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C03) exam focuses a lot on Security and compliance concepts involving Data Encryption at rest or in transit, Data protection, Auditing, Compliance and regulatory requirements, automated remediation, and Generative AI security.

Security, Identity & Compliance

  • Identity and Access Management (IAM)
    • IAM Roles to grant the service, users temporary access to AWS services.
      • IAM Role can be used to give cross-account access and usually involves creating a role within the trusting account with a trust and permission policy and granting the user in the trusted account permissions to assume the trusting account role.
    • Identity Providers & Federation to grant external user identity (SAML or Open ID compatible IdPs) permissions to AWS resources without having to be created within the AWS account.
    • IAM Policies help define who has access & what actions can they perform.
    • IAM Access Analyzer
      • identifies resources shared with external entities (external access findings).
      • identifies unused IAM roles, unused access keys, unused console passwords, and unused service/action-level permissions (unused access findings).
      • supports custom policy checks to proactively detect nonconformant updates to policies that grant public access or critical resource access ahead of deployments.
      • generates fine-grained policies based on access activity (policy generation).
    • IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO)
      • provides centralized workforce identity management for multi-account access.
      • supports SAML 2.0, SCIM provisioning, and built-in identity store.
  • Deep dive into Key Management Service (KMS). There would be quite a few questions on this.
    • is a managed encryption service that allows the creation and control of encryption keys to enable data encryption.
    • uses Envelope Encryption which uses a master key to encrypt the data key, which is then used to encrypt the data.
    • Understand how KMS works
    • Understand IAM Policies, Key Policies, Grants to grant access.
      • Key policies are the primary way to control access to KMS keys. Unless the key policy explicitly allows it, you cannot use IAM policies to allow access to a KMS key.
    • are regional, however, supports multi-region keys, which are KMS keys in different AWS Regions that can be used interchangeably – as though you had the same key in multiple Regions.
    • KMS Multi-region keys
      • are AWS KMS keys in different AWS Regions that can be used interchangeably – as though having the same key in multiple Regions.
      • are not global and each multi-region key needs to be replicated and managed independently.
    • Understand the difference between CMK with generated and imported key material esp. in rotating keys. SCS-C03 specifically tests the differences between imported key material and AWS-generated key material.
    • KMS usage with VPC Endpoint which ensures the communication between the VPC and KMS is conducted entirely within the AWS network.
    • KMS ViaService condition
    • KMS External Key Store (XKS) — allows using cryptographic keys stored outside of AWS in an external key manager.
  • Cloud HSM
    • is a cloud-based hardware security module (HSM) that enables you to easily generate and use your own encryption keys on the AWS Cloud
  • AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
    • helps provision, manage, and deploy public and private SSL/TLS certificates for use with AWS services
    • to use an ACM Certificate with CloudFront, the certificate must be imported into the US East (N. Virginia) region.
    • is regional and you need to request certificates in all regions and associate individually in all regions.
    • does not support EC2 instances and private keys cannot be exported.
    • AWS Private Certificate Authority (Private CA) — for creating private certificates for internal resources; SCS-C03 tests managing certificates across single and multiple Regions.
  • AWS Secrets Manager
    • protects secrets needed to access applications, services, etc.
    • enables you to easily rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle
    • supports automatic rotation of credentials for RDS, DocumentDB, etc.
  • Secrets Manager vs. Systems Manager Parameter Store
    • Secrets Manager supports automatic rotation while SSM Parameter Store does not
    • Parameter Store is cost-effective as compared to Secrets Manager.
  • AWS GuardDuty
    • is a threat detection service that continuously monitors the AWS accounts and workloads for malicious activity and delivers detailed security findings for visibility and remediation.
    • supports CloudTrail S3 data events and management event logs, DNS logs, EKS audit logs, and VPC flow logs.
    • Runtime Monitoring — provides runtime threat detection for EKS, ECS (Fargate), and EC2 instances using a security agent for visibility into file access, process execution, and network connections.
    • Extended Threat Detection — uses correlation algorithms to identify multi-stage attack sequences across EC2, ECS, and EKS clusters.
    • Malware Protection — scans EBS volumes for malware when suspicious behavior is detected.
  • AWS Inspector
    • is an automated vulnerability management service that continually scans workloads for software vulnerabilities and unintended network exposure.
    • supports EC2 instances, container images in ECR, and Lambda functions.
  • Amazon Macie
    • is a security service that uses machine learning to automatically discover, classify, and protect sensitive data in S3.
  • Amazon Detective
    • analyzes and visualizes security data to help investigate potential security issues.
    • automatically creates a behavior graph from CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, GuardDuty findings, and EKS audit logs.
    • helps determine the root cause and scope of security findings.
  • Amazon Security Lake
    • automatically centralizes security data from AWS, SaaS providers, on-premises, and cloud sources into a purpose-built data lake.
    • normalizes data to Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) format for interoperable security analytics.
    • SCS-C03 expects understanding of ingesting data in OCSF format and integrating with third-party services.
  • AWS Security Incident Response
    • helps prepare for, respond to, and recover from security events (account takeovers, data breaches, ransomware).
    • provides automated security finding monitoring and triage, AI-powered investigation, and containment capabilities.
    • integrates with GuardDuty and Security Hub findings.
    • provides 24/7 access to the AWS Customer Incident Response Team (CIRT).
  • AWS Artifact is a central resource for compliance-related information that provides on-demand access to AWS’ security and compliance reports and select online agreements
  • AWS Shield & Shield Advanced
    • for DDoS protection and integrates with Route 53, CloudFront, ALB, and Global Accelerator.
  • AWS WAF
    • protects from common attack techniques like SQL injection and XSS, Conditions based include IP addresses, HTTP headers, HTTP body, and URI strings.
    • integrates with CloudFront, ALB, API Gateway, App Runner, and Cognito.
    • supports Web ACLs and can block traffic based on IPs, Rate limits, and specific countries as well
    • allows IP match set rules to allow/deny specific IP addresses and rate-based rules to limit the number of requests.
    • logs can be sent to the CloudWatch Logs log group, an S3 bucket, or Kinesis Data Firehose.
    • SCS-C03 tests configuring integrations with third-party WAF rules.
  • AWS Security Hub is a cloud security posture management service that performs security best practice checks, aggregates alerts, and enables automated remediation.
  • AWS Network Firewall is a stateful, fully managed, network firewall and intrusion detection and prevention service (IDS/IPS) for VPCs.
  • AWS Resource Access Manager helps you securely share your resources across AWS accounts, within your organization or organizational units (OUs), and with IAM roles and users for supported resource types.
  • AWS Signer is a fully managed code-signing service to ensure the trust and integrity of your code.
  • AWS Audit Manager to map your compliance requirements to AWS usage data with prebuilt and custom frameworks and automated evidence collection.
  • AWS Cognito esp. User Pools
  • Firewall Manager helps centrally configure and manage firewall rules across the accounts and applications in AWS Organizations which includes a variety of protections, including WAF, Shield Advanced, VPC security groups, Network Firewall, and Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall.
  • Amazon Verified Permissions
    • provides fine-grained authorization using the Cedar policy language.
    • supports both role-based access control (RBAC) and attribute-based access control (ABAC) models.
    • integrates with Cognito for authentication and API Gateway for authorization decisions.
  • AWS Verified Access
    • provides zero-trust network access to corporate applications without requiring a VPN.
    • evaluates each application request in real time against security policies.

Generative AI Security (New in SCS-C03)

  • Amazon Bedrock
    • Foundation model security — understand access controls, guardrails, and content filtering.
    • IAM controls for who can invoke which models and what resource-based policies govern access.
    • CloudTrail logging of Bedrock API calls.
    • Bedrock Guardrails — content filters, denied topics, word filters, sensitive information filters, and contextual grounding checks.
  • Amazon SageMaker AI
    • Network isolation for training jobs and endpoints.
    • IAM roles for training jobs and endpoint invocation.
    • Inter-node encryption for distributed training (specifically tested in SCS-C03).
    • Encryption at rest for notebooks, training artifacts, and model artifacts.
  • Amazon Q Business — permission scoping and data source access controls.
  • Amazon Q Developer — security scanning in development workflows.
  • Amazon CodeGuru Security — code security scanning within CI/CD pipelines.
  • GenAI OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications — SCS-C03 expects understanding of protections against prompt injection, data poisoning, model denial of service, and other LLM-specific threats.

Networking & Content Delivery

  • Virtual Private Connect – VPC
    • Security Groups, NACLs
      • NACLs are stateless, Security groups are stateful
      • NACLs at the subnet level, Security groups at the instance level
      • NACLs need to open ephemeral ports for response traffic.
    • VPC Gateway Endpoints to provide access to S3 and DynamoDB
    • VPC Interface Endpoints or PrivateLink provide access to a variety of services like SQS, Kinesis, or Private APIs exposed through NLB.
    • VPC Peering
      • to enable communication between VPCs within the same or different regions.
      • Route tables need to be configured on either VPC for them to be able to communicate.
      • does not allow cross-region security group reference.
    • VPC Flow Logs help capture information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in the VPC
    • NAT Gateway provides managed NAT service that provides better availability, higher bandwidth and requires less administrative effort.
  • Virtual Private Network – VPN & Direct Connect to establish connectivity a secured, low latency access between an on-premises data center and VPC.
    • IPSec VPN over Direct Connect to provide secure connectivity.
  • CloudFront
    • integrates with S3 to improve latency and performance.
    • provides multiple security features
    • supports encryption at rest and end-to-end encryption
      • Viewer Protocol Policy and Origin Protocol Policy to enforce HTTPS – can be configured to require that viewers use HTTPS to request the files so that connections are encrypted when CloudFront communicates with viewers.
      • Integrates with ACM and requires certs to be in the us-east-1 region
      • Underlying origin can be applied certs from ACM or issued by a third party.
    • CloudFront Origin Shield
      • helps improve the cache hit ratio and reduce the load on the origin.
      • requests from other regional caches would hit the Origin shield rather than the Origin.
      • should be placed in the regional cache and not in the edge cache
      • should be deployed to the region closer to the origin server
    • CloudFront provides Encryption at Rest
      • uses SSDs which are encrypted for edge location points of presence (POPs), and encrypted EBS volumes for Regional Edge Caches (RECs).
      • Function code and configuration are always stored in an encrypted format on the encrypted SSDs on the edge location POPs, and in other storage locations used by CloudFront.
    • Restricting access to content
      • Configure HTTPS connections
      • Use signed URLs or cookies to restrict access for selected users
      • Restrict access to content in S3 buckets using Origin Access Control (OAC) — the recommended replacement for the legacy Origin Access Identity (OAI), to prevent users from using the direct URL of the file.
      • Restrict direct to load balancer using custom headers, to prevent users from using the direct load balancer URLs.
      • Set up field-level encryption for specific content fields
      • Use AWS WAF web ACLs to create a web access control list (web ACL) to restrict access to your content.
      • Use Geo-restriction, also known as geoblocking, to prevent users in specific geographic locations from accessing content served through a CloudFront distribution.
  • Route 53
    • is a highly available and scalable DNS web service.
    • Resolver Query logging
      • logs the queries that originate in specified VPCs, on-premises resources that use inbound resolver or ones using outbound resolver as well as the responses to those DNS queries.
      • can be logged to CloudWatch logs, S3, and Kinesis Data Firehose
    • Route 53 DNSSEC secures DNS traffic, and helps protect a domain from DNS spoofing man-in-the-middle attacks.
  • Elastic Load Balancer
    • End to End encryption
      • can be done NLB with TCP listener as pass through and terminating SSL on the EC2 instances
      • can be done with ALB with SSL termination and using HTTPS between ALB and EC2 instances
  • Gateway Load Balancer – GWLB
    • helps deploy, scale, and manage virtual appliances, such as firewalls, IDS/IPS systems, and deep packet inspection systems.

Management & Governance Tools

  • CloudWatch
    • CloudWatch logs
    • CloudWatch Subscription Filters and their integration with other services.
    • EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) for real-time alerts and automated response workflows.
    • CloudWatch Logs data protection policies — for masking sensitive data in log groups (tested in SCS-C03).
  • CloudTrail for audit and governance
    • CloudTrail can be enabled for all regions at one go and supports log file integrity validation
    • With Organizations, the trail can be configured to log CloudTrail from all accounts to a central account.
    • CloudTrail Lake — enables advanced SQL-based querying of CloudTrail events for security investigations.
  • AWS Config
    • AWS Config rules can be used to alert for any changes and Config can be used to check the history of changes. AWS Config can also help check approved AMIs compliance
    • allows you to remediate noncompliant resources using AWS Systems Manager Automation documents.
    • AWS Config -> EventBridge -> Lambda/SNS
  • CloudTrail vs Config
    • CloudTrail provides the WHO and Config provides the WHAT.
  • Systems Manager
    • Parameter Store provides secure, scalable, centralized, hierarchical storage for configuration data and secret management. Does not support secrets rotation. Use Secrets Manager instead
    • Systems Manager Patch Manager helps select and deploy the operating system and software patches automatically across large groups of EC2 or on-premises instances
    • Systems Manager Run Command provides safe, secure remote management of your instances at scale without logging into the servers, replacing the need for bastion hosts, SSH, or remote PowerShell
    • Session Manager provides secure and auditable instance management without the need to open inbound ports, maintain bastion hosts, or manage SSH keys.
  • AWS Organizations
    • is an account management service that enables consolidating multiple AWS accounts into an organization that can be managed centrally.
    • can configure Organization Trail to centrally log all CloudTrail logs.
    • Service Control Policies (SCPs)
      • acts as guardrails and specifies the services and actions that users and roles can use in the accounts that the SCP affects.
      • are similar to IAM permission policies except that they don’t grant any permissions.
    • Resource Control Policies (RCPs) — New in 2024
      • offer central control over the maximum available permissions for resources in your organization.
      • complement SCPs: while SCPs control what principals can do, RCPs control what can be done to resources.
      • help enforce consistent access controls and restrict external access to resources across multiple accounts.
      • do not affect resources in the management account — only member accounts.
    • Declarative Policies — New in 2024
      • newer organizational policy types that complement SCPs and RCPs.
      • define desired-state configurations that are automatically enforced.
    • AI Service Opt-Out Policies — control whether AWS AI services can use your content for service improvement.
  • AWS Trusted Advisor
    • inspects the AWS environment to make recommendations for system performance, saving money, availability, and closing security gaps
  • CloudFormation
    • Deletion Policy to prevent, retain, or backup RDS, EBS Volumes
    • Stack policy can prevent stack resources from being unintentionally updated or deleted during a stack update. Stack Policy only applies for Stack updates and not stack deletion.
    • CloudFormation Guard provides an open-source, general-purpose, policy-as-code evaluation tool.
  • Control Tower
    • to setup, govern, and secure a multi-account environment
    • strongly recommended guardrails cover EBS encryption

Storage & Databases

  • Simple Storage Service – S3
    • Understand S3 Security in detail
    • S3 Encryption supports both data at rest and data in transit encryption.
      • Data in transit encryption can be provided by enabling communication via SSL or using client-side encryption
      • Data at rest encryption can be provided using Server Side or Client Side encryption
      • Enforce S3 Encryption at Rest using default encryption of bucket policies
      • Enforce S3 encryption in transit using secureTransport in the S3 bucket policy
    • S3 permissions can be handled using
    • S3 Object Lock helps to store objects using a WORM model and can help prevent objects from being deleted or overwritten for a fixed amount of time or indefinitely.
    • S3 Block Public Access provides controls across an entire AWS Account or at the individual S3 bucket level to ensure that objects never have public access, now and in the future.
    • S3 Access Points simplify data access for any AWS service or customer application that stores data in S3.
    • S3 Versioning with MFA Delete can be enabled on a bucket to ensure that data in the bucket cannot be accidentally overwritten or deleted.
    • S3 Access Analyzer monitors the access policies, ensuring that the policies provide only the intended access to your S3 resources.
  • Glacier Vault Lock helps deploy and enforce compliance controls for individual S3 Glacier vaults with a vault lock policy.
  • EBS Encryption
  • Relational Database Services – RDS
    • is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud.
    • supports the same encryption at rest methods as EBS
    • does not support enabling encryption after creation. Need to create a snapshot, copy the snapshot to an encrypted snapshot, and restore it as an encrypted DB.

Compute

  • EC2 access using an IAM Role, Lambda using the Execution role & ECS using the Task role.
  • EC2 Instance Metadata Service version 2 (IMDSv2) and enforcement of the same.
    • IMDSv2 uses session-oriented requests with a token to mitigate SSRF attacks.
    • Can enforce IMDSv2-only at launch or for running instances.
  • Inter-resource encryption in-transit — SCS-C03 specifically tests inter-node encryption for Amazon EMR, EKS, SageMaker AI, and Nitro encryption.

Data Protection (New Additions for SCS-C03)

  • Data masking — CloudWatch Logs data protection policies and Amazon SNS message data protection for masking sensitive data.
  • Inter-resource encryption in-transit — understanding how different services implement encryption between nodes/components.
  • Certificate management across Regions — creating and managing encryption keys and certificates across single or multiple AWS Regions using KMS and Private CA.

Integration Tools

  • Know how CloudWatch integration with SNS and Lambda can help in notification and automated remediation
  • EventBridge for event-driven security automation (GuardDuty → EventBridge → Lambda/Step Functions)

Whitepapers and Articles

On the Exam Day

  • Make sure you are relaxed and get some good night’s sleep. The exam is not tough if you are well-prepared.
  • If you are taking the AWS Online exam
    • Try to join at least 30 minutes before the actual time as I have had issues with both PSI and Pearson with long wait times.
    • The online verification process does take some time and usually, there are glitches.
    • Remember, you would not be allowed to take the exam if you are late by more than 30 minutes.
    • Make sure you have your desk clear, no hand-watches, or external monitors, keep your phones away, and nobody can enter the room.

Finally, All the Best 🙂

AWS DynamoDB Accelerator – DAX

DynamoDB Accelerator - DAX
~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 2 Comments

AWS DynamoDB Accelerator DAX

  • DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is a fully managed, highly available, in-memory cache for DynamoDB that delivers up to a 10x performance improvement – from ms to µs – even at millions of requests per second.
  • DAX as a managed service handles the cache invalidation, data population, or cluster management.
  • DAX provides API compatibility with DynamoDB. Therefore, it requires only minimal functional changes to use with an existing application.
  • DAX saves costs by reducing the read load (RCU) on DynamoDB.
  • DAX helps prevent hot partitions.
  • DAX is intended for high-performance read applications. As a write-through cache, DAX writes directly so that the writes are immediately reflected in the item cache.
  • DAX only supports eventual consistency and strong consistency requests are passed through to DynamoDB.
  • DAX is fault-tolerant and scalable.
  • DAX cluster has a primary node and zero or more read-replica nodes. Upon a failure for a primary node, DAX will automatically failover and elect a new primary. For scaling, add or remove read replicas.
  • DAX supports server-side encryption.
  • DAX supports encryption in transit, ensuring that all requests and responses between the application and the cluster are encrypted by TLS, and connections to the cluster can be authenticated by verification of a cluster x509 certificate.
  • DAX supports AWS PrivateLink for management APIs (e.g., CreateCluster, DescribeClusters, DeleteCluster), enabling secure private access from within a VPC without requiring public endpoints. (Added Oct 2025)

DynamoDB Accelerator - DAX

DAX Cluster

  • DAX cluster is a logical grouping of one or more nodes that DAX manages as a unit.
  • One of the nodes in the cluster is designated as the primary node, and the other nodes (if any) are read replicas.
  • Primary Node is responsible for
    • Fulfilling application requests for cached data.
    • Handling write operations to DynamoDB.
    • Evicting data from the cache according to the cluster’s eviction policy.
  • Read replicas are responsible for
    • Fulfilling application requests for cached data.
    • Evicting data from the cache according to the cluster’s eviction policy.
  • Only the primary node writes to DynamoDB, read replicas don’t write to DynamoDB.
  • For production, it is recommended to have DAX with at least three nodes with each node placed in different Availability Zones.
  • Three nodes are required for a DAX cluster to be fault-tolerant.
  • A DAX cluster can support up to 11 nodes per cluster (the primary node plus a maximum of 10 read replicas).
  • A DAX cluster in an AWS Region can only interact with DynamoDB tables that are in the same Region.
  • DAX does not currently support auto scaling; clusters must be sized for peak operations.

DAX Instance Types

  • DAX supports R-type (memory-optimized) and T-type (burstable) instance families.
  • R7i instances (launched Apr 2025) — powered by custom 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors with DDR5 memory.
    • Available up to 24xlarge with an 8:1 ratio of memory to vCPU.
    • Available in US East (N. Virginia, Ohio), US West (N. California, Oregon), Asia Pacific (Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Paris, Spain, Stockholm), and South America (São Paulo).
  • R5 instances — general-purpose memory-optimized nodes for production workloads.
  • T3 instances — burstable instances for development/test workloads. Not recommended for production workloads requiring consistently high CPU capacity.
  • DAX server instances can handle up to 40,000 concurrent connections.

DynamoDB Accelerator Operations

  • Eventual Read operations
    • If DAX has the item available (a cache hit), DAX returns the item without accessing DynamoDB.
    • If DAX does not have the item available (a cache miss), DAX passes the request through to DynamoDB. When it receives the response from DynamoDB, DAX returns the results to the application. But it also writes the results to the cache on the primary node.
  • Strongly Consistent Read operations
    • DAX passes the request through to DynamoDB. The results from DynamoDB are not cached in DAX. but simply returned.
    • DAX is not ideal for applications that require strongly consistent reads (or that cannot tolerate eventually consistent reads).
  • For Write operations
    • Data is first written to the DynamoDB table, and then to the DAX cluster.
    • Operation is successful only if the data is successfully written to both the table and to DAX.
    • Is not ideal for applications that are write-intensive, or that do not perform much read activity.

DynamoDB Accelerator Caches

  • DAX cluster has two distinct caches – Item cache and Query cache
  • Item cache
    • item cache to store the results from GetItem and BatchGetItem operations.
    • Item remains in the DAX item cache, subject to the Time to Live (TTL) setting and the least recently used (LRU) algorithm for the cache
    • DAX provides a write-through cache, keeping the DAX item cache consistent with the underlying DynamoDB tables.
  • Query cache
    • DAX caches the results from Query and Scan requests in its query cache.
    • Query and Scan results don’t affect the item cache at all, as the result set is saved in the query cache – not in the item cache.
    • Writes to the Item cache don’t affect the Query cache
  • Item and Query cache has a default 5 minutes TTL setting.
  • DAX assigns a timestamp to every entry it writes to the cache. The entry expires if it has remained in the cache for longer than the TTL setting
  • DAX maintains an LRU list for both Item and Query cache. LRU list tracks the item addition and last read time. If the cache becomes full, DAX evicts older items (even if they haven’t expired yet) to make room for new entries
  • LRU algorithm is always enabled for both the item and query cache and is not user-configurable.
  • For read-heavy workloads with infrequent updates, a longer TTL minimizes cache misses. The right TTL depends on the balance between performance and data consistency needs.

DynamoDB Accelerator Write Strategies

Write-Through

  • DAX item cache implements a write-through policy
  • For write operations, DAX ensures that the cached item is synchronized with the item as it exists in DynamoDB.

Write-Around

  • Write-around strategy reduces write latency
  • Ideal for bulk uploads or writing large quantities of data
  • Item cache doesn’t remain in sync with the data in DynamoDB.

DAX Security

  • Encryption at rest — DAX supports server-side encryption using AWS KMS.
  • Encryption in transit — All requests and responses between application and cluster are encrypted by TLS with cluster x509 certificate authentication.
  • IAM policies — DAX uses IAM service-linked roles and supports fine-grained access control.
  • VPC-only deployment — DAX clusters run inside a VPC; data plane operations (GetItem, Query) are handled privately within the VPC.
  • AWS PrivateLink (Oct 2025) — Management APIs (CreateCluster, DescribeClusters, DeleteCluster) can now be accessed over private IP addresses within a VPC without connecting to the public regional endpoint. Eliminates the need for public IP addresses, firewall rules, or internet gateways.
  • SOC compliance — DAX is in scope for SOC reports (added Spring 2024).

DynamoDB Accelerator Scenarios

  • As an in-memory cache, DAX increases performance and reduces the response times of eventually consistent read workloads by an order of magnitude from single-digit milliseconds to microseconds.
  • DAX reduces operational and application complexity by providing a managed service that is API-compatible with DynamoDB. It requires only minimal functional changes to use with an existing application.
  • For read-heavy or bursty workloads, DAX provides increased throughput and potential operational cost savings by reducing the need to overprovision read capacity units.
  • Examples of ideal use cases: ecommerce websites, social media applications, news media websites, and gaming leaderboards.
  • DAX can reduce RCU consumption by over 99% for workloads with high cache hit ratios, significantly reducing costs for both on-demand and provisioned capacity modes.

DAX SDK Support

  • DAX client SDKs are available for Java, Node.js, .NET, Python, and Go.
  • DAX SDK for JavaScript v3 (Mar 2025) — modular architecture with improved developer productivity; compatible with AWS SDK for JavaScript v3. Simply provision a DAX cluster, update the client to use the new DAX SDK v3, and direct existing DynamoDB calls to the DAX endpoint.
  • The AWS SDK for Go v1 (aws-sdk-go) is deprecated; use aws-sdk-go-v2 for new applications.

DAX Regional Availability

  • DAX is available in 16 AWS Regions: US East (N. Virginia, Ohio), US West (N. California, Oregon), Asia Pacific (Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Paris, Spain, Stockholm), and South America (São Paulo).
  • Aug 2024: Expanded to Europe (Spain) and Europe (Stockholm).

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. A company has setup an application in AWS that interacts with DynamoDB. DynamoDB is currently responding in milliseconds, but the application response guidelines require it to respond within microseconds. How can the performance of DynamoDB be further improved?
    1. Use ElastiCache in front of DynamoDB
    2. Use DynamoDB inbuilt caching
    3. Use DynamoDB Accelerator
    4. Use RDS with ElastiCache instead
  2. A company runs a read-heavy ecommerce application on DynamoDB in on-demand capacity mode, processing 10,000 read requests per second. The team wants to reduce read latency and costs. Which solution best addresses both requirements?
    1. Enable DynamoDB Streams and use Lambda to pre-warm the cache
    2. Deploy a DAX cluster with R5 or R7i instances sized for peak operations
    3. Switch to provisioned capacity mode with auto scaling
    4. Use ElastiCache Redis as a side-cache with application-level cache invalidation
  3. A security team requires that all DynamoDB management API calls, including DAX cluster operations, be made over private connections without traversing the public internet. Which feature enables this?
    1. VPC Endpoints (Gateway type) for DynamoDB
    2. DAX cluster subnet groups
    3. AWS PrivateLink for DAX management APIs
    4. Security groups with restricted ingress rules
  4. An application uses DAX for caching DynamoDB reads. The development team notices that query results become stale within 30 seconds of data updates. What is the most likely cause?
    1. The item cache TTL is too long
    2. The query cache does not get invalidated by writes to the item cache
    3. DAX only caches GetItem operations
    4. The application is using strongly consistent reads

References

AWS Service Catalog

AWS Service Catalog
~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 1 Comment

AWS Service Catalog

  • AWS Service Catalog helps centrally manage cloud resources to achieve governance at scale of the infrastructure as code (IaC) templates, written in CloudFormation, Terraform, or other IaC tools via External Engines.
  • allows IT administrators to create, manage, and distribute catalogs of approved products to end users, who can then access the products they need in a personalized portal.
  • can help control which users have access to each product to enforce compliance with organizational business policies while making sure the customers can quickly deploy the cloud resources they need.
  • increases agility and reduces costs as end users can find and launch only the products they need from a controlled catalog.
  • is a regional service and Portfolios and products are a regional construct that will need to be created per region and are only visible/usable on the regions in which they were created.
  • supports VPC Endpoints to privately access Service Catalog APIs from VPC without the need for an Internet gateway, NAT gateway, or VPN connection.
  • integrates with AWS Organizations for portfolio sharing across accounts, supporting delegated administrator capabilities.

AWS Service Catalog
Source: AWS

Service Catalog Portfolios and Products

  • Service Catalog portfolio is a collection of products, with configuration information that determines who can use those products and how they can use them.
  • Each Service Catalog product is based on an infrastructure-as-code (IaC) template using CloudFormation, Terraform, or External Engines.
  • Service Catalog supports three product types:
    • AWS CloudFormation – native support for CloudFormation templates
    • Terraform Cloud – integration with HashiCorp Terraform Cloud managed service
    • External – supports Terraform Community Edition (formerly Terraform Open Source) and other third-party IaC tools via self-managed provisioning engines
  • Customized portfolios can be created for each type of user in an organization and selectively granted access to the appropriate portfolio.
  • When an administrator adds a new version of a product to a portfolio, that version is automatically available to all current portfolio users.
  • Same product can be included in multiple portfolios.
  • Portfolios can be shared with other AWS accounts and extended by applying additional constraints.
  • Portfolio sharing supports account-to-account sharing, AWS Organizations sharing (to OUs or the entire organization), and deployment via CloudFormation StackSets.

Service Catalog Git-Synced Products

  • Service Catalog supports syncing products with IaC template files from external Git repositories including GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, and Bitbucket.
  • Git-synced products automatically update when changes are pushed to the connected repository, keeping products in sync with source control.
  • Uses AWS CodeConnections (formerly AWS CodeStar Connections, renamed March 2024) to establish and manage the connection between AWS and the external Git provider.
  • Enables Platform Engineers to streamline DevOps processes by keeping IaC templates in source control while automatically reflecting changes in Service Catalog.
  • Service Catalog uses the AWSServiceCatalogSyncServiceRolePolicy managed policy and the AWSServiceRoleForServiceCatalogSync service-linked role for sync operations.

Service Catalog External Engines

  • External Engines extend Service Catalog capabilities beyond native CloudFormation templates, enabling the use of other IaC tools.
  • The EXTERNAL product type replaced the previous “Terraform Open Source” product type (October 2023).
    • AWS Service Catalog no longer supports Terraform Open Source as a valid product type for any new products or provisioned products.
    • Existing Terraform Open Source products must be migrated to the External product type.
  • External engines require installing and configuring a provisioning engine in the Service Catalog administrator account (hub account).
  • Supports self-managed engines for governance, allowing organizations to use Terraform Community Edition, Pulumi, or other IaC tools with Service Catalog’s governance framework.

Service Catalog Access Control

  • Launch Constraint
    • provide AWS Service Catalog with the capability to perform actions on behalf of users even when those users do not have the necessary IAM permissions to perform those actions directly.
    • is an IAM Role that AWS Service Catalog assumes when an end user launches a product.
    • Service Catalog products without a launch constraint will launch and manage products using the end user’s IAM credentials; if the end user credentials are not sufficient for those activities, errors will result either in provisioning or in management activities.
    • supported for CloudFormation, Terraform Open Source (External), and Terraform Cloud product types.
  • Template Constraint
    • define rules that limit the parameter values that a user enters when launching a product
    • is applied when provisioning a new product or updating a product that is already in use.
    • applies the most restrictive constraint among all constraints applied to the portfolio and the product.
    • are not supported for Terraform/External or Terraform Cloud product types
  • Stack Set Constraint
    • allows configuring product deployment options using CloudFormation StackSets.
    • enables launching products as stack sets across multiple accounts and Regions.
    • a product can have either a launch constraint or a stack set constraint, but not both.
    • not supported for Terraform/External product types.
  • Notification Constraint
    • allows specifying an Amazon SNS topic to receive notifications about stack events.
    • not supported for Terraform Open Source or Terraform Cloud products.
  • TagOptions
    • TagOption library provides a centralized way to manage tags on provisioned resources.
    • allows administrators to define a set of key-value pairs that are applied to provisioned products.
    • resource tagging varies by account, so TagOptions are managed separately from portfolio product configurations.

Service Catalog Service Actions

  • Service actions enable end users to perform operational tasks, troubleshoot issues, run approved commands, or request permissions on provisioned products.
  • Eliminates the need to grant end users full access to AWS services.
  • Uses AWS Systems Manager (SSM) documents to define service actions.
  • Provides access to pre-defined actions that implement AWS best practices (e.g., EC2 stop and reboot) and custom actions.
  • Service actions are not available for Terraform/External or Terraform Cloud product types.

Service Catalog AppRegistry

  • Service Catalog AppRegistry allows organizations to understand the application context of their AWS resources.
  • AppRegistry provides a repository for the information that describes the applications and associated resources that you use within your enterprise.
  • AppRegistry provides a single, up-to-date definition of applications within their AWS environment.
  • Applications are defined with a name, description, associations to attribute groups (metadata), and associations to CloudFormation stacks (resources).
  • Attribute Groups support an open JSON schema, providing flexibility to capture enterprise metadata such as security classification, organizational ownership, cost center, and support information.
  • AppRegistry integrates with the myApplications dashboard in the AWS Management Console (launched November 2023), providing an application-centric view of key metrics including cost, health, security findings, and performance.
  • The awsApplication tag is automatically applied to associated resources, enabling application-level tracking across AWS services.
  • Supports Terraform-managed applications through the myApplications integration.

Service Catalog Integration with ITSM

  • AWS Service Management Connector previously provided integration with ServiceNow and Jira Service Management for provisioning Service Catalog products from ITSM tools.
  • Note: AWS Service Management Connector is no longer available to new customers as of March 31, 2026, and will reach end of support on March 31, 2027. Existing customers can continue using it until the end of support date.

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. A company has several business units that want to use Amazon EC2. The company wants to require all business units to provision their EC2 instances by using only approved EC2 instance configurations. What should a SysOps administrator do to implement this requirement?
    1. Create an EC2 instance launch configuration. Allow the business units to launch EC2 instances by specifying this launch configuration in the AWS Management Console.
    2. Develop an IAM policy that limits the business units to provision EC2 instances only. Instruct the business units to launch instances by using an AWS CloudFormation template.
    3. Publish a product and launch constraint role for EC2 instances by using AWS Service Catalog. Allow the business units to perform actions in AWS Service Catalog only.
    4. Share an AWS CloudFormation template with the business units. Instruct the business units to pass a role to AWS CloudFormation to allow the service to manage EC2 instances.
  2. A platform engineering team wants to ensure that all infrastructure deployments across the organization use approved Terraform configurations. The team wants developers to self-provision infrastructure without needing direct access to AWS services. Which approach meets these requirements?
    1. Store Terraform configurations in an S3 bucket and grant developers read access to download and run them locally.
    2. Create products using the External product type in AWS Service Catalog with a Terraform provisioning engine and grant developers access to the portfolio.
    3. Create an IAM policy that allows developers to run terraform apply only with pre-approved configurations.
    4. Use AWS CloudFormation to deploy Terraform configurations using custom resources.
  3. A company wants to maintain a catalog of approved AWS resources that automatically stays in sync with their GitHub repository whenever templates are updated. Which Service Catalog feature should they use?
    1. Create a Lambda function that triggers on GitHub webhooks to update Service Catalog products.
    2. Use AWS CodePipeline to deploy updated templates to Service Catalog on each commit.
    3. Use Service Catalog Git-synced products with AWS CodeConnections to sync products from the GitHub repository.
    4. Manually upload new template versions to Service Catalog after each repository update.
  4. An organization needs to track the cost, health, and security posture of their cloud applications from a single dashboard. They use Service Catalog AppRegistry to define their applications. Which AWS feature provides this consolidated application-level view?
    1. AWS CloudWatch Application Insights
    2. AWS Systems Manager Application Manager
    3. myApplications dashboard in the AWS Management Console
    4. AWS Resource Groups console

AWS CloudFormation – Infrastructure as Code

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 35 Comments

AWS CloudFormation

  • AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators an easy way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provision and update them in an orderly and predictable fashion.
  • CloudFormation consists of
    • Template
      • is an architectural diagram and provides logical resources
      • a JSON or YAML-format, text-based file that describes all the AWS resources needed to deploy and run the application.
    • Stack
      • is the end result of that diagram and provisions physical resources mapped to the logical resources.
      • is the set of AWS resources that are created and managed as a single unit when CloudFormation instantiates a template.
  • CloudFormation template can be used to set up the resources consistently and repeatedly over and over across multiple regions.
  • Resources can be updated, deleted, and modified in a controlled and predictable way, in effect applying version control to the infrastructure as done for software code
  • AWS CloudFormation Template consists of elements:-
    • List of AWS resources and their configuration values
    • An optional template file format version number
    • An optional list of template parameters (input values supplied at stack creation time)
    • An optional list of output values like public IP address using the Fn:GetAtt function
    • An optional list of data tables used to lookup static configuration values for e.g., AMI names per AZ
  • CloudFormation supports Chef & Puppet Integration to deploy and configure right down the application layer
  • CloudFormation provides a set of application bootstrapping scripts that enable you to install packages, files, and services on the EC2 instances by simply describing them in the CloudFormation template
  • By default, automatic rollback on error feature is enabled, which will cause all the AWS resources that CloudFormation created successfully for a stack up to the point where an error occurred to be deleted.
  • CloudFormation supports Optimistic Stabilization (2024) delivering up to 40% faster stack creation times by beginning parallel creation of dependent resources once a dependency reaches CONFIGURATION_COMPLETE state.
  • CloudFormation supports Early Validation that validates templates during change set creation, catching invalid property syntax and resource name conflicts before resource provisioning begins.
  • In case of automatic rollback, charges would still be applied for the resources, the time they were up and running
  • CloudFormation provides a WaitCondition resource that acts as a barrier, blocking the creation of other resources until a completion signal is received from an external source e.g. application or management system
  • CloudFormation allows deletion policies to be defined for resources in the template for e.g. resources to be retained or snapshots can be created before deletion useful for preserving S3 buckets when the stack is deleted

AWS CloudFormation Concepts

AWS CloudFormation, you work with templates and stacks

Templates

  • act as blueprints for building AWS resources.
  • is a JSON or YAML formatted text file, saved with any extension, such as .json, .yaml, .template, or .txt.
  • have additional capabilities to build complex sets of resources and reuse those templates in multiple contexts for e.g. using input parameters to create generic and reusable templates
  • Name used for a resource within the template is a logical name but when CloudFormation creates the resource, it generates a physical name that is based on the combination of the logical name, the stack name, and a unique ID

Stacks

  • Stacks manage related resources as a single unit,
  • Collection of resources can be created, updated, and deleted by creating, updating, and deleting stacks.
  • All the resources in a stack are defined by the stack’s AWS CloudFormation template
  • CloudFormation makes underlying service calls to AWS to provision and configure the resources in the stack and can perform only actions that the users have permission to do.

Change Sets

  • Change Sets presents a summary or preview of the proposed changes that CloudFormation will make when a stack is updated.
  • Change Sets help check how the changes might impact running resources, especially critical resources, before implementing them.
  • CloudFormation makes the changes to the stack only when the change set is executed, allowing you to decide whether to proceed with the proposed changes or explore other changes by creating another change set.
  • Change sets don’t indicate whether AWS CloudFormation will successfully update a stack for e.g. if account limits are hit or the user does not have permission.

CloudFormation Change Sets

Custom Resources

  • Custom resources help write custom provisioning logic in templates that CloudFormation runs anytime the stacks are created, updated, or deleted.
  • Custom resources help include resources that aren’t available as AWS CloudFormation resource types and can still be managed in a single stack.
  • Custom resources support a ServiceTimeout property (2024) allowing custom timeout values instead of the fixed one-hour timeout, accelerating development feedback loops.
  • AWS recommends using CloudFormation Registry instead.

Nested Stacks

  • Nested stacks are stacks created as part of other stacks.
  • A nested stack can be created within another stack by using the AWS::CloudFormation::Stack resource.
  • Nested stacks can be used to define common, repeated patterns and components and create dedicated templates which then can be called from other stacks.
  • Root stack is the top-level stack to which all the nested stacks ultimately belong. Nested stacks can themselves contain other nested stacks, resulting in a hierarchy of stacks.
  • In addition, each nested stack has an immediate parent stack. For the first level of nested stacks, the root stack is also the parent stack.
  • Certain stack operations, such as stack updates, should be initiated from the root stack rather than performed directly on nested stacks themselves.

Drift Detection

  • Drift detection enables you to detect whether a stack’s actual configuration differs, or has drifted, from its expected configuration.
  • Drift detection help identify stack resources to which configuration changes have been made outside of CloudFormation management
  • Drift detection can detect drift on an entire stack or individual resources
  • Corrective action can be taken to make sure the stack resources are again in sync with the definitions in the stack template, such as updating the drifted resources directly so that they agree with their template definition
  • Resolving drift helps to ensure configuration consistency and successful stack operations.
  • CloudFormation detects drift on those AWS resources that support drift detection. Resources that don’t support drift detection are assigned a drift status of NOT_CHECKED.
  • Drift detection can be performed on stacks with the following statuses: CREATE_COMPLETE, UPDATE_COMPLETE, UPDATE_ROLLBACK_COMPLETE, and UPDATE_ROLLBACK_FAILED.
  • CloudFormation does not detect drift on any nested stacks that belong to that stack. Instead, you can initiate a drift detection operation directly on the nested stack.

CloudFormation Template Anatomy

  • Resources (required)
    • Specifies the stack resources and their properties, such as an EC2 instance or an S3 bucket that would be created.
    • Resources can be referred to in the Resources and Outputs sections
  • Parameters (optional)
    • Pass values to the template at runtime (during stack creation or update)
    • Parameters can be referred from the Resources and Outputs sections
    • Can be referred using Fn::Ref or !Ref
  • Mappings (optional)
    • A mapping of keys and associated values that used to specify conditional parameter values, similar to a lookup table.
    • Can be referred using Fn::FindInMap or !FindInMap
  • Outputs (optional)
    • Describes the values that are returned whenever you view your stack’s properties.
  • Format Version (optional)
    • AWS CloudFormation template version that the template conforms to.
  • Description (optional)
    • A text string that describes the template. This section must always follow the template format version section.
  • Metadata (optional)
    • Objects that provide additional information about the template.
  • Rules (optional)
    • Validates a parameter or a combination of parameters passed to a template during stack creation or stack update.
  • Conditions (optional)
    • Conditions control whether certain resources are created or whether certain resource properties are assigned a value during stack creation or update.
  • Transform (optional)
    • For serverless applications (also referred to as Lambda-based applications), specifies the version of the AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM) to use.
    • When you specify a transform, you can use AWS SAM syntax to declare resources in the template. The model defines the syntax that you can use and how it’s processed.

CloudFormation Template Sample

CloudFormation Access Control

  • IAM
    • IAM can be applied with CloudFormation to access control for users whether they can view stack templates, create stacks, or delete stacks
    • IAM permissions need to be provided for the user to the AWS services and resources provisioned when the stack is created
    • Before a stack is created, AWS CloudFormation validates the template to check for IAM resources that it might create
  • Service Role
    • A service role is an AWS IAM role that allows AWS CloudFormation to make calls to resources in a stack on the user’s behalf
    • By default, AWS CloudFormation uses a temporary session that it generates from the user credentials for stack operations.
    • For a service role, AWS CloudFormation uses the role’s credentials.
    • When a service role is specified, AWS CloudFormation always uses that role for all operations that are performed on that stack.

Template Resource Attributes

  • CreationPolicy Attribute
    • is invoked during the associated resource creation.
    • can be associated with a resource to prevent its status from reaching create complete until CloudFormation receives a specified number of success signals or the timeout period is exceeded.
    • helps to wait on resource configuration actions before stack creation proceeds for e.g. software installation on an EC2 instance
  • DeletionPolicy Attribute
    • preserve or (in some cases) backup a resource when its stack is deleted
    • CloudFormation deletes the resource if a resource has no DeletionPolicy attribute, by default.
    • To keep a resource when its stack is deleted,
      • default, Delete where the resources would be deleted.
      • specify Retain for that resource, to prevent deletion.
      • specify Snapshot to create a snapshot before deleting the resource, if the snapshot capability is supported e.g. RDS, EC2 volume, etc.
  • DependsOn Attribute
    • helps determine dependency order and specify that the creation of a specific resource follows another.
    • the resource is created only after the creation of the resource specified in the DependsOn attribute.
  • Metadata Attribute
    • enables association of structured data with a resource
  • UpdatePolicy Attribute
    • Defines how AWS CloudFormation handles updates to the resources
    • For AWS::AutoScaling::AutoScalingGroup resources, CloudFormation invokes one of three update policies depending on the type of change or whether a scheduled action is associated with the Auto Scaling group.
      • The AutoScalingReplacingUpdate and AutoScalingRollingUpdate policies apply only when you do one or more of the following:
        • Change the Auto Scaling group’s AWS::AutoScaling::LaunchConfiguration
        • Change the Auto Scaling group’s VPCZoneIdentifier property
        • Change the Auto Scaling group’s LaunchTemplate property
        • Update an Auto Scaling group that contains instances that don’t match the current LaunchConfiguration.
      • The AutoScalingScheduledAction policy applies when you update a stack that includes an Auto Scaling group with an associated scheduled action.
    • For AWS::Lambda::Alias resources, CloudFormation performs a CodeDeploy deployment when the version changes on the alias.

CloudFormation Termination Protection

  • Termination protection helps prevent a stack from being accidentally deleted.
  • Termination protection on stacks is disabled by default.
  • Termination protection can be enabled on a stack creation
  • Termination protection can be set on a stack with any status except DELETE_IN_PROGRESS or DELETE_COMPLETE
  • Enabling or disabling termination protection on a stack sets it for any nested stacks belonging to that stack as well. You can’t enable or disable termination protection directly on a nested stack.
  • If a user attempts to directly delete a nested stack belonging to a stack that has termination protection enabled, the operation fails and the nested stack remains unchanged.
  • If a user performs a stack update that would delete the nested stack, AWS CloudFormation deletes the nested stack accordingly.

CloudFormation Stack Policy

  • Stack policy can prevent stack resources from being unintentionally updated or deleted during a stack update.
  • By default, all update actions are allowed on all resources and anyone with stack update permissions can update all of the resources in the stack.
  • During an update, some resources might require an interruption or be completely replaced, resulting in new physical IDs or completely new storage and hence need to be prevented.
  • A stack policy is a JSON document that defines the update actions that can be performed on designated resources.
  • After you set a stack policy, all of the resources in the stack are protected by default.
  • Updates on specific resources can be added using an explicit Allow statement for those resources in the stack policy.
  • Only one stack policy can be defined per stack, but multiple resources can be protected within a single policy.
  • A stack policy applies to all CloudFormation users who attempt to update the stack. You can’t associate different stack policies with different users
  • A stack policy applies only during stack updates. It doesn’t provide access controls like an IAM policy.

CloudFormation StackSets

  • CloudFormation StackSets extends the functionality of stacks by enabling you to create, update, or delete stacks across multiple accounts and Regions with a single operation.
  • Using an administrator account, an AWS CloudFormation template can be defined, managed, and used as the basis for provisioning stacks into selected target accounts across specified AWS Regions.

CloudFormation StackSets

CloudFormation Registry

  • CloudFormation registry helps manage extensions, both public and private, such as resources, modules, and hooks that are available for use in your AWS account.
  • CloudFormation registry offers several advantages over custom resources
    • Supports the modeling, provisioning, and managing of third-party application resources
    • Supports the Create, Read, Update, Delete, and List (CRUDL) operations
    • Supports drift detection on private and third-party resource types

CloudFormation IaC Generator

  • IaC Generator (launched Feb 2024) helps generate CloudFormation templates for existing AWS resources that were created outside of CloudFormation.
  • Supports over 600 AWS resource types and provides recommendations for related resources.
  • Works in three steps: scan resources in your account, select resources for template generation, and generate a CloudFormation template.
  • Generated templates can be used to import resources into CloudFormation stacks, download for deployment, or convert to CDK apps.
  • Supports targeted resource scans (March 2025) to scan specific resources rather than entire accounts.
  • Integrates with AWS Infrastructure Composer for visual architecture review before stack creation.

CloudFormation Stack Refactoring

  • Stack Refactoring (Feb 2025) enables reorganization of CloudFormation resources across stacks without disrupting deployed resources.
  • Allows moving resources from one stack to another, splitting monolithic stacks into smaller components, and renaming logical IDs.
  • Maintains resource stability and operational state during reorganization.
  • Available via AWS CLI, Console, and CDK.

CloudFormation Drift-Aware Change Sets

  • Drift-Aware Change Sets (Nov 2025) provide a three-way comparison between the new template, last-deployed template, and actual infrastructure state.
  • Helps prevent unexpected overwrites of configuration drift made via Console, SDK, or CLI.
  • During execution, CloudFormation matches resource properties with template values and recreates resources deleted outside of CloudFormation.
  • Enables systematic drift reversion to keep infrastructure in sync with templates.

CloudFormation Hooks

  • CloudFormation Hooks enable proactive validation of resource configurations before provisioning.
  • Hooks can be authored using:
    • CloudFormation Guard DSL – Write rules using Guard domain-specific language stored as S3 objects
    • AWS Lambda functions – Implement custom validation logic in Lambda
    • Managed Proactive Controls – Select controls from AWS Control Tower Controls Catalog
  • Support stack and change set target invocation points for validating entire templates and resource relationships.
  • Extended to support AWS Cloud Control API (CCAPI) resource configurations for tool-agnostic control evaluation.
  • Can run in warn mode to test controls without blocking deployments.

CloudFormation Git Sync

  • Git Sync enables automatic stack deployments triggered by changes to templates in a Git repository.
  • Supports pull request workflows (Sept 2024) – CloudFormation posts change set information as PR comments for review.
  • Publishes sync status changes as events to Amazon EventBridge for event-driven automation.
  • Uses AWS CodeConnections to connect Git providers to CloudFormation.

AWS Infrastructure Composer

  • AWS Infrastructure Composer (previously known as AWS Application Composer, renamed Oct 2024) helps visually compose and configure applications backed by IaC.
  • Integrated into the CloudFormation console for visual stack architecture review.
  • Allows drag-and-drop resource composition with automatic IaC template generation.

CloudFormation Language Extensions

  • The AWS::LanguageExtensions transform enhances the core CloudFormation language with additional intrinsic functions:
    • Fn::ForEach – Loop over collections to create multiple resources or outputs from a single definition
    • Fn::ToJsonString – Convert an object or array to its corresponding JSON string
    • Fn::Length – Return the number of elements in an array
  • Must include AWS::LanguageExtensions in the Transform section to use these functions.

CloudFormation Helper Scripts

Refer blog Post @ CloudFormation Helper Scripts

CloudFormation Best Practices

Refer blog Post @ CloudFormation Best Practices

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. What does Amazon CloudFormation provide?
    1. The ability to setup Autoscaling for Amazon EC2 instances.
    2. A templated resource creation for Amazon Web Services.
    3. A template to map network resources for Amazon Web Services
    4. None of these
  2. A user is planning to use AWS CloudFormation for his automatic deployment requirements. Which of the below mentioned components are required as a part of the template?
    1. Parameters
    2. Outputs
    3. Template version
    4. Resources
  3. In regard to AWS CloudFormation, what is a stack?
    1. Set of AWS templates that are created and managed as a template
    2. Set of AWS resources that are created and managed as a template
    3. Set of AWS resources that are created and managed as a single unit
    4. Set of AWS templates that are created and managed as a single unit
  4. A large enterprise wants to adopt CloudFormation to automate administrative tasks and implement the security principles of least privilege and separation of duties. They have identified the following roles with the corresponding tasks in the company: (i) network administrators: create, modify and delete VPCs, subnets, NACLs, routing tables, and security groups (ii) application operators: deploy complete application stacks (ELB, Auto -Scaling groups, RDS) whereas all resources must be deployed in the VPCs managed by the network administrators (iii) Both groups must maintain their own CloudFormation templates and should be able to create, update and delete only their own CloudFormation stacks. The company has followed your advice to create two IAM groups, one for applications and one for networks. Both IAM groups are attached to IAM policies that grant rights to perform the necessary task of each group as well as the creation, update and deletion of CloudFormation stacks. Given setup and requirements, which statements represent valid design considerations? Choose 2 answers [PROFESSIONAL]
    1. Network stack updates will fail upon attempts to delete a subnet with EC2 instances (Subnets cannot be deleted with instances in them)
    2. Unless resource level permissions are used on the CloudFormation: DeleteStack action, network administrators could tear down application stacks (Network administrators themselves need permission to delete resources within the application stack & CloudFormation makes calls to create, modify, and delete those resources on their behalf)
    3. The application stack cannot be deleted before all network stacks are deleted (Application stack can be deleted before network stack)
    4. Restricting the launch of EC2 instances into VPCs requires resource level permissions in the IAM policy of the application group (IAM permissions need to be given explicitly to launch instances )
    5. Nesting network stacks within application stacks simplifies management and debugging, but requires resource level permissions in the IAM policy of the network group (Although stacks can be nested, Network group will need to have all the application group permissions)
  5. Your team is excited about the use of AWS because now they have access to programmable infrastructure. You have been asked to manage your AWS infrastructure in a manner similar to the way you might manage application code. You want to be able to deploy exact copies of different versions of your infrastructure, stage changes into different environments, revert back to previous versions, and identify what versions are running at any particular time (development, test, QA, production). Which approach addresses this requirement?
    1. Use cost allocation reports and AWS Opsworks to deploy and manage your infrastructure.
    2. Use AWS CloudWatch metrics and alerts along with resource tagging to deploy and manage your infrastructure.
    3. Use AWS Beanstalk and a version control system like GIT to deploy and manage your infrastructure.
    4. Use AWS CloudFormation and a version control system like GIT to deploy and manage your infrastructure.
  6. A user is usingCloudFormation to launch an EC2 instance and then configure an application after the instance is launched. The user wants the stack creation of ELB and AutoScaling to wait until the EC2 instance is launched and configured properly. How can the user configure this?
    1. It is not possible that the stack creation will wait until one service is created and launched
    2. The user can use the HoldCondition resource to wait for the creation of the other dependent resources
    3. The user can use the DependentCondition resource to hold the creation of the other dependent resources
    4. The user can use the WaitCondition resource to hold the creation of the other dependent resources
  7. A user has created a CloudFormation stack. The stack creates AWS services, such as EC2 instances, ELB, AutoScaling, and RDS. While creating the stack it created EC2, ELB and AutoScaling but failed to create RDS. What will CloudFormation do in this scenario?
    1. CloudFormation can never throw an error after launching a few services since it verifies all the steps before launching
    2. It will warn the user about the error and ask the user to manually create RDS
    3. Rollback all the changes and terminate all the created services
    4. It will wait for the user’s input about the error and correct the mistake after the input
  8. A user is planning to use AWS CloudFormation. Which of the below mentioned functionalities does not help him to correctly understand CloudFormation?
    1. CloudFormation follows the DevOps model for the creation of Dev & Test
    2. AWS CloudFormation does not charge the user for its service but only charges for the AWS resources created with it
    3. CloudFormation works with a wide variety of AWS services, such as EC2, EBS, VPC, IAM, S3, RDS, ELB, etc
    4. CloudFormation provides a set of application bootstrapping scripts which enables the user to install Software
  9. A customer is using AWS for Dev and Test. The customer wants to setup the Dev environment with CloudFormation. Which of the below mentioned steps are not required while using CloudFormation?
    1. Create a stack
    2. Configure a service
    3. Create and upload the template
    4. Provide the parameters configured as part of the template
  10. A marketing research company has developed a tracking system that collects user behavior during web marketing campaigns on behalf of their customers all over the world. The tracking system consists of an auto-scaled group of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances behind an elastic load balancer (ELB), and the collected data is stored in Amazon DynamoDB. After the campaign is terminated, the tracking system is torn down and the data is moved to Amazon Redshift, where it is aggregated, analyzed and used to generate detailed reports. The company wants to be able to instantiate new tracking systems in any region without any manual intervention and therefore adopted AWS CloudFormation. What needs to be done to make sure that the AWS CloudFormation template works in every AWS region? Choose 2 answers [PROFESSIONAL]
    1. IAM users with the right to start AWS CloudFormation stacks must be defined for every target region. (IAM users are global)
    2. The names of the Amazon DynamoDB tables must be different in every target region. (DynamoDB names should be unique only within a region)
    3. Use the built-in function of AWS CloudFormation to set the AvailabilityZone attribute of the ELB resource.
    4. Avoid using DeletionPolicies for EBS snapshots. (Don’t want the data to be retained)
    5. Use the built-in Mappings and FindInMap functions of AWS CloudFormation to refer to the AMI ID set in the ImageId attribute of the Auto Scaling::LaunchConfiguration resource.
  11. A gaming company adopted AWS CloudFormation to automate load -testing of their games. They have created an AWS CloudFormation template for each gaming environment and one for the load -testing stack. The load – testing stack creates an Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Postgres database and two web servers running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) that send HTTP requests, measure response times, and write the results into the database. A test run usually takes between 15 and 30 minutes. Once the tests are done, the AWS CloudFormation stacks are torn down immediately. The test results written to the Amazon RDS database must remain accessible for visualization and analysis. Select possible solutions that allow access to the test results after the AWS CloudFormation load -testing stack is deleted. Choose 2 answers. [PROFESSIONAL]
    1. Define a deletion policy of type Retain for the Amazon QDS resource to assure that the RDS database is not deleted with the AWS CloudFormation stack.
    2. Define a deletion policy of type Snapshot for the Amazon RDS resource to assure that the RDS database can be restored after the AWS CloudFormation stack is deleted.
    3. Define automated backups with a backup retention period of 30 days for the Amazon RDS database and perform point -in -time recovery of the database after the AWS CloudFormation stack is deleted. (as the environment is required for limited time the automated backup will not serve the purpose)
    4. Define an Amazon RDS Read-Replica in the load-testing AWS CloudFormation stack and define a dependency relation between master and replica via the DependsOn attribute. (read replica not needed and will be deleted when the stack is deleted)
    5. Define an update policy to prevent deletion of the Amazon RDS database after the AWS CloudFormation stack is deleted. (UpdatePolicy does not apply to RDS)
  12. When working with AWS CloudFormation Templates what is the maximum number of stacks that you can create?
    1. 5000
    2. 500
    3. 2000 (Refer link – The limit keeps on changing to check for the latest)
    4. 100
  13. What happens, by default, when one of the resources in a CloudFormation stack cannot be created?
    1. Previously created resources are kept but the stack creation terminates
    2. Previously created resources are deleted and the stack creation terminates
    3. Stack creation continues, and the final results indicate which steps failed
    4. CloudFormation templates are parsed in advance so stack creation is guaranteed to succeed.
  14. You need to deploy an AWS stack in a repeatable manner across multiple environments. You have selected CloudFormation as the right tool to accomplish this, but have found that there is a resource type you need to create and model, but is unsupported by CloudFormation. How should you overcome this challenge? [PROFESSIONAL]
    1. Use a CloudFormation Custom Resource Template by selecting an API call to proxy for create, update, and delete actions. CloudFormation will use the AWS SDK, CLI, or API method of your choosing as the state transition function for the resource type you are modeling.
    2. Submit a ticket to the AWS Forums. AWS extends CloudFormation Resource Types by releasing tooling to the AWS Labs organization on GitHub. Their response time is usually 1 day, and they complete requests within a week or two.
    3. Instead of depending on CloudFormation, use Chef, Puppet, or Ansible to author Heat templates, which are declarative stack resource definitions that operate over the OpenStack hypervisor and cloud environment.
    4. Create a CloudFormation Custom Resource Type by implementing create, update, and delete functionality, either by subscribing a Custom Resource Provider to an SNS topic, or by implementing the logic in AWS Lambda. (Refer link)
  15. What is a circular dependency in AWS CloudFormation?
    1. When a Template references an earlier version of itself.
    2. When Nested Stacks depend on each other.
    3. When Resources form a DependOn loop. (Refer link, to resolve a dependency error, add a DependsOn attribute to resources that depend on other resources in the template. Some cases for e.g. EIP and VPC with IGW where EIP depends on IGW need explicitly declaration for the resources to be created in correct order)
    4. When a Template references a region, which references the original Template.
  16. You need to run a very large batch data processing job one time per day. The source data exists entirely in S3, and the output of the processing job should also be written to S3 when finished. If you need to version control this processing job and all setup and teardown logic for the system, what approach should you use?
    1. Model an AWS EMR job in AWS Elastic Beanstalk. (cannot directly model EMR Clusters)
    2. Model an AWS EMR job in AWS CloudFormation. (EMR cluster can be modeled using CloudFormation. Refer link)
    3. Model an AWS EMR job in AWS OpsWorks. (cannot directly model EMR Clusters)
    4. Model an AWS EMR job in AWS CLI Composer. (does not exist)
  17. Your company needs to automate 3 layers of a large cloud deployment. You want to be able to track this deployment’s evolution as it changes over time, and carefully control any alterations. What is a good way to automate a stack to meet these requirements? [PROFESSIONAL]
    1. Use OpsWorks Stacks with three layers to model the layering in your stack.
    2. Use CloudFormation Nested Stack Templates, with three child stacks to represent the three logical layers of your cloud. (CloudFormation allows source controlled, declarative templates as the basis for stack automation and Nested Stacks help achieve clean separation of layers while simultaneously providing a method to control all layers at once when needed)
    3. Use AWS Config to declare a configuration set that AWS should roll out to your cloud.
    4. Use Elastic Beanstalk Linked Applications, passing the important DNS entries between layers using the metadata interface.
  18. You have been asked to de-risk deployments at your company. Specifically, the CEO is concerned about outages that occur because of accidental inconsistencies between Staging and Production, which sometimes cause unexpected behaviors in Production even when Staging tests pass. You already use Docker to get high consistency between Staging and Production for the application environment on your EC2 instances. How do you further de-risk the rest of the execution environment, since in AWS, there are many service components you may use beyond EC2 virtual machines? [PROFESSIONAL]
    1. Develop models of your entire cloud system in CloudFormation. Use this model in Staging and Production to achieve greater parity. (Only CloudFormation’s JSON Templates allow declarative version control of repeatedly deployable models of entire AWS clouds. Refer link)
    2. Use AWS Config to force the Staging and Production stacks to have configuration parity. Any differences will be detected for you so you are aware of risks.
    3. Use AMIs to ensure the whole machine, including the kernel of the virual machines, is consistent, since Docker uses Linux Container (LXC) technology, and we need to make sure the container environment is consistent.
    4. Use AWS ECS and Docker clustering. This will make sure that the AMIs and machine sizes are the same across both environments.
  19. Which code snippet below returns the URL of a load balanced web site created in CloudFormation with an AWS::ElasticLoadBalancing::LoadBalancer resource name “ElasticLoad Balancer”? [Developer]
    1. “Fn::Join” : [“”, [ “http://”, {“Fn::GetAtt” : [ “ElasticLoadBalancer”,”DNSName”]}]] (Refer link)
    2. “Fn::Join” : [“”,[ “http://”, {“Fn::GetAtt” : [ “ElasticLoadBalancer”,”Url”]}]]
    3. “Fn::Join” : [“”, [ “http://”, {“Ref” : “ElasticLoadBalancerUrl”}]]
    4. “Fn::Join” : [“”, [ “http://”, {“Ref” : “ElasticLoadBalancerDNSName”}]]
  20. For AWS CloudFormation, which stack state refuses UpdateStack calls? [Developer]
    1. <code>UPDATE_ROLLBACK_FAILED</code> (Refer link)
    2. <code>UPDATE_ROLLBACK_COMPLETE</code>
    3. <code>UPDATE_COMPLETE</code>
    4. <code>CREATE_COMPLETE</code>
  21. Which of these is not a Pseudo Parameter in AWS CloudFormation? [Developer]
    1. AWS::StackName
    2. AWS::AccountId
    3. AWS::StackArn (Refer link)
    4. AWS::NotificationARNs
  22. Which of these is not an intrinsic function in AWS CloudFormation? [Developer]
    1. Fn::SplitValue (Refer link)
    2. Fn::FindInMap
    3. Fn::Select
    4. Fn::GetAZs
  23. Which of these is not a CloudFormation Helper Script? [Developer]
    1. cfn-signal
    2. cfn-hup
    3. cfn-request (Refer link)
    4. cfn-get-metadata
  24. What method should I use to author automation if I want to wait for a CloudFormation stack to finish completing in a script? [Developer]
    1. Event subscription using SQS.
    2. Event subscription using SNS.
    3. Poll using <code>ListStacks</code> / <code>list-stacks</code>. (Only polling will make a script wait to complete. ListStacks / list-stacks is a real method. Refer link)
    4. Poll using <code>GetStackStatus</code> / <code>get-stack-status</code>. (GetStackStatus / get-stack-status does not exist)
  25. Which status represents a failure state in AWS CloudFormation? [Developer]
    1. <code>UPDATE_COMPLETE_CLEANUP_IN_PROGRESS</code> (UPDATE_COMPLETE_CLEANUP_IN_PROGRESS means an update was successful, and CloudFormation is deleting any replaced, no longer used resources)
    2. <code>DELETE_COMPLETE_WITH_ARTIFACTS</code> (DELETE_COMPLETE_WITH_ARTIFACTS does not exist)
    3. <code>ROLLBACK_IN_PROGRESS</code> (ROLLBACK_IN_PROGRESS means an UpdateStack operation failed and the stack is in the process of trying to return to the valid, pre-update state Refer link)
    4. <code>ROLLBACK_FAILED</code> (ROLLBACK_FAILED is not a CloudFormation state but UPDATE_ROLLBACK_FAILED is)
  26. Which of these is not an intrinsic function in AWS CloudFormation? [Developer]
    1. Fn::Equals
    2. Fn::If
    3. Fn::Not
    4. Fn::Parse (Complete list of Intrinsic Functions: Fn::Base64, Fn::And, Fn::Equals, Fn::If, Fn::Not, Fn::Or, Fn::FindInMap, Fn::GetAtt, Fn::GetAZs, Fn::Join, Fn::Select, Refer link)
  27. You need to create a Route53 record automatically in CloudFormation when not running in production during all launches of a Template. How should you implement this? [Developer]
    1. Use a <code>Parameter</code> for <code>environment</code>, and add a <code>Condition</code> on the Route53 <code>Resource</code> in the template to create the record only when <code>environment</code> is not <code>production</code>. (Best way to do this is with one template, and a Condition on the resource. Route53 does not allow null strings for Refer link)
    2. Create two templates, one with the Route53 record value and one with a null value for the record. Use the one without it when deploying to production.
    3. Use a <code>Parameter</code> for <code>environment</code>, and add a <code>Condition</code> on the Route53 <code>Resource</code> in the template to create the record with a null string when <code>environment</code> is <code>production</code>.
    4. Create two templates, one with the Route53 record and one without it. Use the one without it when deploying to production.
  28. A company has hundreds of existing AWS resources created manually via the console. They want to bring these under CloudFormation management without recreating them. What is the most efficient approach?
    1. Manually write CloudFormation templates for each resource and use resource import
    2. Use CloudFormation IaC Generator to scan the account, select resources, and generate templates for import into stacks
    3. Use AWS Config to export resource configurations as CloudFormation templates
    4. Recreate all resources using CloudFormation and delete the originals
  29. A team needs to reorganize their monolithic CloudFormation stack into multiple smaller stacks without downtime or resource recreation. Which feature should they use?
    1. Delete the stack with Retain deletion policy and create new stacks with resource import
    2. Use nested stacks to logically separate resources
    3. Use CloudFormation Stack Refactoring to move resources between stacks
    4. Export stack outputs and create new stacks referencing them
  30. An organization wants to enforce that all S3 buckets created via CloudFormation have encryption enabled, without relying on post-deployment checks. What should they use?
    1. AWS Config rules to detect non-compliant resources
    2. CloudFormation stack policies to prevent unencrypted buckets
    3. CloudFormation Hooks with Guard rules to validate resource properties before provisioning
    4. IAM policies to deny CreateBucket without encryption parameters
  31. A developer notices that an EC2 instance managed by CloudFormation had its security group changed via the console. They want to detect and restore the template-defined configuration in the next deployment. Which feature addresses this?
    1. Standard Change Sets
    2. Drift-Aware Change Sets
    3. Stack Policies
    4. CloudFormation Guard
  32. A team wants to automatically deploy CloudFormation stack updates when they push template changes to GitHub, with pull request review. Which feature should they use?
    1. AWS CodePipeline with a CloudFormation deploy action
    2. GitHub Actions with AWS CLI commands
    3. CloudFormation Git Sync with pull request workflow support
    4. AWS CodeDeploy with CloudFormation hooks
  33. Which intrinsic function requires the AWS::LanguageExtensions transform in the template?
    1. Fn::Select
    2. Fn::Sub
    3. Fn::ForEach
    4. Fn::GetAZs
  34. A DevOps engineer wants to deploy a networking stack before an application stack across 50 accounts using StackSets with auto-deployment. Which feature enables this ordering?
    1. Use nested stacks with DependsOn attributes
    2. Use StackSets deployment ordering with the DependsOn parameter in AutoDeployment configuration
    3. Create separate StackSets and deploy them sequentially via a script
    4. Use stack policies to control deployment sequence

References

AWS Organizations Service Control Policies – SCPs

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 2 Comments

AWS Organizations Service Control Policies

  • AWS Organizations Service control policies – SCPs offer central control over the maximum available permissions for all of the accounts in the organization, ensuring member accounts stay within the organization’s access control guidelines.
  • are one type of policy that help manage the organization.
  • are available only in an organization that has all features enabled, and aren’t available if the organization has enabled only the consolidated billing features.
  • are NOT sufficient for granting access to the accounts in the organization.
  • defines a guardrail for what actions accounts within the organization root or OU can do, but IAM policies need to be attached to the users and roles in the organization’s accounts to grant permissions to them.
  • Effective permissions are the logical intersection between what is allowed by the SCP and what is allowed by the IAM and resource-based policies.
  • with an SCP attached to member accounts, identity-based and resource-based policies grant permissions to entities only if those policies and the SCP allow the action.
  • don’t affect users or roles in the management account. They affect only the member accounts in your organization.
  • SCPs also apply to member accounts that are designated as delegated administrators.
  • work alongside Resource Control Policies (RCPs) and Declarative Policies to provide comprehensive preventive controls across an organization.

SCPs Effects on Permissions

  • never grant permissions but define the maximum permissions for the affected accounts.
  • Users and roles must still be granted permissions with appropriate IAM permission policies. A user without any IAM permission policies has no access at all, even if the applicable SCPs allow all services and all actions.
  • limits permissions for entities in member accounts, including each AWS account root user.
  • does not limit actions performed by the management account.
  • does not affect any service-linked role. Service-linked roles enable other AWS services to integrate with AWS Organizations and can’t be restricted by SCPs.
  • affect only IAM users or roles that are managed by accounts that are part of the organization. They don’t affect users or roles from accounts outside the organization.
  • don’t affect resource-based policies directly.
  • SCPs focus on identity-based (principal) permissions, while RCPs focus on resource-based permissions. Together they establish a comprehensive data perimeter.

SCPs Strategies

  • By default, an SCP named FullAWSAccess is attached to every root, OU, and account, which allows all actions and all services.
  • Blacklist or Deny Strategy
    • actions are allowed by default and services and actions to be prohibited need to be specified.
    • blacklist permissions using deny statements can be assigned in combination with the default FullAWSAccess SCP.
    • using deny statements in SCPs require less maintenance because they don’t need to be updated when AWS adds new services.
    • deny statements usually use less space, thus making it easier to stay within SCP size limits.
  • Whitelist or Allow Strategy
    • actions are prohibited by default, and you specify what services and actions are allowed.
    • whitelist permissions can be assigned, by removing the default FullAWSAccess SCP.
    • allows SCP that explicitly permits only those allowed services and actions

SCP Full IAM Policy Language Support

  • As of September 2025, SCPs now support the full IAM policy language, removing previous limitations.
  • Newly supported capabilities include:
    • Condition element in Allow statements – enables contextual boundaries like restricting by Region or account.
    • NotAction in Allow statements – allows specifying exempt actions.
    • Resource with specific ARNs in Allow statements – enables scoped resource access.
    • NotResource in both Allow and Deny statements – simplifies exceptions for service-owned resources.
    • Wildcards (*, ?) anywhere in Action/NotAction elements (e.g., "servicename:*action", "servicename:some*action").
  • These enhancements enable more precise, concise, and scalable policies without complex workarounds.
  • AWS recommends using explicit Deny statements as best practice and avoiding overlapping Allow statements.
  • Use IAM Access Analyzer to validate SCPs before applying them.

SCP Quotas (Updated May 2026)

  • Maximum SCP size: 10,240 characters (doubled from previous 5,120 limit in May 2026).
  • Maximum SCPs per node (root, OU, or account): 10 (increased from previous limit of 5).
  • Maximum SCPs in an organization: 2,000.
  • Maximum nesting depth of OUs: 5 levels.
  • These increased quotas are automatically available across all commercial, GovCloud, and China Regions with no request needed.

SCPs Testing Effects

  • don’t attach SCPs to the root of the organization without thoroughly testing the impact that the policy has on accounts.
  • Create an OU that the accounts can be moved into one at a time, or at least in small numbers, to ensure that users are not inadvertently locked out of key services.
  • Use IAM Access Analyzer policy validation and custom policy checks to verify SCP correctness before deployment.

Resource Control Policies (RCPs)

  • Resource Control Policies (RCPs), launched in November 2024, are a new authorization policy type in AWS Organizations.
  • RCPs set the maximum available permissions on resources within your organization, complementing SCPs which set maximum permissions on principals.
  • Help centrally establish a data perimeter by restricting external access to resources at scale.
  • RCPs are evaluated when resources are accessed, irrespective of who is making the API request.
  • Use Deny statements to restrict access (similar to SCPs).
  • A default RCPFullAWSAccess policy is automatically attached to every entity when RCPs are enabled.
  • RCPs don’t affect resources in the management account.
  • Supported services (expanding): Amazon S3, AWS STS, AWS KMS, Amazon SQS, AWS Secrets Manager, Amazon ECR, Amazon OpenSearch Serverless, Amazon Cognito, Amazon CloudWatch Logs, and more being added.
  • SCPs and RCPs have independent quotas — each RCP can have up to 5,120 characters, with up to 5 RCPs per node and 1,000 RCPs per organization.
  • Neither SCPs nor RCPs grant permissions — they only restrict the maximum available permissions.

SCP vs RCP Comparison

FeatureSCP (Service Control Policy)RCP (Resource Control Policy)
ControlsMaximum permissions for principals (IAM users/roles)Maximum permissions on resources
ScopeWhat principals can doWho can access resources
EvaluationEvaluated based on who is making the requestEvaluated when resources are accessed, regardless of requester
Management accountNot affectedNot affected
Default policyFullAWSAccessRCPFullAWSAccess
Max size10,240 characters5,120 characters
Max per node105

Declarative Policies

  • Declarative Policies, launched in December 2024, are a new management policy type in AWS Organizations.
  • Allow you to declare and enforce desired configuration for AWS services at scale across the organization.
  • Unlike SCPs/RCPs (which restrict API actions), declarative policies enforce the desired state of service attributes.
  • Once set, the configuration is maintained even as new features or APIs are added — no policy maintenance overhead.
  • Enforcement applies regardless of whether the action was invoked by an IAM role or a service-linked role.
  • Support custom error messages so end users see actionable guidance when actions are restricted.
  • Provide an account status report to assess current state before applying policies.
  • Supported service attributes (at launch — EC2, VPC, EBS):
    • Enforce IMDSv2 for EC2 instances
    • Block public access for Amazon EBS snapshots
    • Block public access for Amazon EC2 AMIs
    • Block public access for Amazon VPC (internet gateway control)
    • Allowed AMI image settings (restrict to trusted providers)
    • Serial console access control
  • Can be applied at organization, OU, or account level.
  • Manageable via AWS Organizations console, CLI, CloudFormation, or AWS Control Tower.

AWS Organizations Policy Types Summary

Policy TypePurposeMechanism
SCPsRestrict maximum permissions for principalsAllow/Deny API actions for IAM users and roles
RCPsRestrict maximum permissions on resourcesDeny external access to resources
Declarative PoliciesEnforce desired service configurationSet desired state for service attributes

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. Your company is planning on setting up multiple accounts in AWS. The IT Security department has a requirement to ensure that certain services and actions are not allowed across all accounts. How would the system admin achieve this in the most EFFECTIVE way possible?
    1. Create a common IAM policy that can be applied across all accounts
    2. Create an IAM policy per account and apply them accordingly​
    3. Deny the services to be used across accounts by contacting AWS​ support
    4. Use AWS Organizations and Service Control Policies
  2. You are in the process of implementing AWS Organizations for your company. At your previous company, you saw an Organizations implementation go bad when an SCP (Service Control Policy) was applied at the root of the organization before being thoroughly tested. In what way can an SCP be properly tested and implemented?
    1. Back up your entire Organization to S3 and restore rollback and restore if something goes wrong
    2. The SCP must be verified with AWS before it is implemented to avoid any problems.
    3. Mirror your Organizational Unit in another region. Apply the SCP and test it. Once testing is complete, attach the SCP to the root of your organization.
    4. Create an Organizational Unit (OU). Attach the SCP to this new OU. Move your accounts in one at a time to ensure that you don’t inadvertently lock users out of key services.
  3. A security team wants to prevent any external AWS accounts from accessing their organization’s S3 buckets, regardless of what resource-based policies individual developers might configure. Which approach should they use?
    1. Apply an SCP to deny all S3 actions from external principals
    2. Use AWS Config rules to detect non-compliant bucket policies
    3. Apply a Resource Control Policy (RCP) that restricts S3 access to principals within the organization
    4. Configure S3 Block Public Access at the account level
  4. An organization needs to ensure that all EC2 instances launched across hundreds of accounts use IMDSv2, even if new APIs or features are added in the future. They also want end users to see a custom error message explaining why their configuration was blocked. What is the BEST solution?
    1. Create an SCP denying ec2:RunInstances without the IMDSv2 metadata condition
    2. Use AWS Config with auto-remediation to terminate non-compliant instances
    3. Apply a Declarative Policy for EC2 that enforces IMDSv2 with a custom error message
    4. Create a Lambda function triggered by CloudTrail to stop non-compliant instances
  5. A company wants to implement a data perimeter strategy that controls both which principals can perform actions AND who can access their AWS resources. Which combination of AWS Organizations policies provides the most comprehensive data perimeter?
    1. SCPs and AWS Config rules
    2. SCPs and Resource Control Policies (RCPs)
    3. SCPs and VPC endpoint policies only
    4. IAM permission boundaries and SCPs
  6. An administrator needs to restrict EC2 actions to only 3 specific AWS Regions for all accounts. Previously this required both an Allow and a separate Deny statement. With recent SCP enhancements, what is the simplified approach?
    1. Use a Deny statement with StringNotEquals condition on aws:RequestedRegion
    2. Use an Allow statement with a Condition element specifying aws:RequestedRegion
    3. Create separate SCPs per region and attach them to respective OUs
    4. Use declarative policies to block EC2 access outside specific regions

AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty (DAS-C01) Exam Learning Path

AWS Data Analytics - Specialty DAS-C01 Certificate
~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 25 Comments

⚠️ CERTIFICATION RETIRED

AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty (DAS-C01) was retired on April 9, 2024.

AWS retired the DAS-C01 exam along with two other specialty certifications (Database – Specialty and SAP on AWS – Specialty) in April 2024.

This content is maintained for historical reference and for learning AWS analytics services.

Replacement Certification:

  • AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate (DEA-C01) – Launched March 2024, validates ability to implement data pipelines, monitor and troubleshoot issues, and optimize cost and performance. Covers data ingestion, transformation, storage, operations, security, and governance. 65 questions, 130 minutes, $150, passing score 720.

Key Differences (DEA-C01 vs DAS-C01):

  • Associate-level (vs. Specialty-level) – broader accessibility
  • Stronger focus on data pipeline orchestration (Step Functions, MWAA, EventBridge)
  • Includes newer services: AWS Lake Formation, Amazon MSK, Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink, Amazon AppFlow, S3 Tables
  • Reduced emphasis on legacy services like EMR Hadoop ecosystem
  • Programming concepts and Git source control knowledge expected

AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty (DAS-C01) Exam Learning Path

  • Recertified with the AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty (DAS-C01) which tends to cover a lot of big data topics focused on AWS services.
  • Data Analytics – Specialty (DAS-C01) has replaced the previous Big Data – Specialty (BDS-C01).
  • Note: DAS-C01 was retired on April 9, 2024. The replacement certification is AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate (DEA-C01).

AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty (DAS-C01) exam basically validates

  • Define AWS data analytics services and understand how they integrate with each other.
  • Explain how AWS data analytics services fit in the data lifecycle of collection, storage, processing, and visualization.

Refer AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty Exam Guide for details

AWS Certified Data Analytics - Specialty DAS-C01 Domains

AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty (DAS-C01) Exam Resources

AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty (DAS-C01) Exam Summary

  • Specialty exams are tough, lengthy, and tiresome. Most of the questions and answers options have a lot of prose and a lot of reading that needs to be done, so be sure you are prepared and manage your time well.
  • DAS-C01 exam has 65 questions to be solved in 170 minutes which gives you roughly 2 1/2 minutes to attempt each question.
  • DAS-C01 exam includes two types of questions, multiple-choice and multiple-response.
  • DAS-C01 has a scaled score between 100 and 1,000. The scaled score needed to pass the exam is 750.
  • Specialty exams currently cost $ 300 + tax.
  • You can get an additional 30 minutes if English is your second language by requesting Exam Accommodations. It might not be needed for Associate exams but is helpful for Professional and Specialty ones.
  • As always, mark the questions for review and move on and come back to them after you are done with all.
  • As always, having a rough architecture or mental picture of the setup helps focus on the areas that you need to improve. Trust me, you will be able to eliminate 2 answers for sure and then need to focus on only the other two. Read the other 2 answers to check the difference area and that would help you reach the right answer or at least have a 50% chance of getting it right.
  • AWS exams can be taken either remotely or online, I prefer to take them online as it provides a lot of flexibility. Just make sure you have a proper place to take the exam with no disturbance and nothing around you.
  • Also, if you are taking the AWS Online exam for the first time try to join at least 30 minutes before the actual time as I have had issues with both PSI and Pearson with long wait times.

AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty (DAS-C01) Exam Topics

  • AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty exam, as its name suggests, covers a lot of Big Data concepts right from data collection, ingestion, transfer, storage, pre and post-processing, analytics, and visualization with the added concepts for data security at each layer.

Analytics

  • Make sure you know and cover all the services in-depth, as 80% of the exam is focused on topics like Glue, Kinesis, and Redshift.
  • AWS Analytics Services Cheat Sheet
  • Glue
    • DAS-C01 covers Glue in great detail.
    • AWS Glue is a fully managed, ETL service that automates the time-consuming steps of data preparation for analytics.
    • supports server-side encryption for data at rest and SSL for data in motion.
    • Glue ETL engine to Extract, Transform, and Load data that can automatically generate Scala or Python code.
    • Glue Data Catalog is a central repository and persistent metadata store to store structural and operational metadata for all the data assets. It works with Apache Hive as its metastore.
    • Glue Crawlers scan various data stores to automatically infer schemas and partition structures to populate the Data Catalog with corresponding table definitions and statistics.
    • Glue Job Bookmark tracks data that has already been processed during a previous run of an ETL job by persisting state information from the job run.
    • Glue Streaming ETL enables performing ETL operations on streaming data using continuously-running jobs.
    • Glue provides flexible scheduler that handles dependency resolution, job monitoring, and retries.
    • Glue Studio offers a graphical interface for authoring AWS Glue jobs to process data allowing you to define the flow of the data sources, transformations, and targets in the visual interface and generating Apache Spark code on your behalf.
    • Glue Data Quality helps reduces manual data quality efforts by automatically measuring and monitoring the quality of data in data lakes and pipelines.
    • Glue DataBrew helps prepare, visualize, clean, and normalize data directly from the data lake, data warehouses, and databases, including S3, Redshift, Aurora, and RDS.
  • Redshift
    • Redshift is also covered in depth.
    • Cover Redshift Advanced topics
      • Redshift Distribution Style determines how data is distributed across compute nodes and helps minimize the impact of the redistribution step by locating the data where it needs to be before the query is executed.
      • Redshift Enhanced VPC routing forces all COPY and UNLOAD traffic between the cluster and the data repositories through the VPC.
      • Workload management (WLM) enables users to flexibly manage priorities within workloads so that short, fast-running queries won’t get stuck in queues behind long-running queries.
      • Redshift Spectrum helps query and retrieve structured and semistructured data from files in S3 without having to load the data into Redshift tables.
      • Federated Query feature allows querying and analyzing data across operational databases, data warehouses, and data lakes.
      • Short query acceleration (SQA) prioritizes selected short-running queries ahead of longer-running queries.
      • Redshift Serverless is a serverless option of Redshift that makes it more efficient to run and scale analytics in seconds without the need to set up and manage data warehouse infrastructure.
    • Redshift Best Practices w.r.t selection of Distribution style, Sort key, importing/exporting data
      • COPY command which allows parallelism, and performs better than multiple COPY commands
      • COPY command can use manifest files to load data
      • COPY command handles encrypted data
    • Redshift Resizing cluster options (elastic resize did not support node type changes before, but does now)
    • Redshift supports encryption at rest and in transit
    • Redshift supports encrypting an unencrypted cluster using KMS. However, you can’t enable hardware security module (HSM) encryption by modifying the cluster. Instead, create a new, HSM-encrypted cluster and migrate your data to the new cluster.
    • Know Redshift views to control access to data.
  • Elastic Map Reduce
    • Understand EMRFS
      • Use Consistent view to make sure S3 objects referred by different applications are in sync. Although, it is not needed now.
    • Know EMR Best Practices (hint: start with many small nodes instead of few large nodes)
    • Know EMR Encryption options
      • supports SSE-S3, SS3-KMS, CSE-KMS, and CSE-Custom encryption for EMRFS
      • supports LUKS encryption for local disks
      • supports TLS for data in transit encryption
      • supports EBS encryption
    • Hive metastore can be externally hosted using RDS, Aurora, and AWS Glue Data Catalog
    • Know also different technologies
      • Presto is a fast SQL query engine designed for interactive analytic queries over large datasets from multiple sources
      • Spark is a distributed processing framework and programming model that helps do machine learning, stream processing, or graph analytics using Amazon EMR clusters
      • Zeppelin/Jupyter as a notebook for interactive data exploration and provides open-source web application that can be used to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations, and narrative text
      • Phoenix is used for OLTP and operational analytics, allowing you to use standard SQL queries and JDBC APIs to work with an Apache HBase backing store
  • Kinesis
    • Understand Kinesis Data Streams and Amazon Data Firehose (formerly Kinesis Data Firehose) in depth
    • Know Kinesis Data Streams vs Data Firehose
      • Know Kinesis Data Streams is open-ended for both producer and consumer. It supports KCL and works with Spark.
      • Know Amazon Data Firehose is open-ended for producers only. Data is stored in S3, Redshift, and OpenSearch.
      • Data Firehose works in batches with minimum 60secs intervals and in near-real time.
      • Data Firehose supports out-of-the-box transformation and custom transformation using Lambda
    • Kinesis supports encryption at rest using server-side encryption
    • Kinesis Producer Library supports batching
    • Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink (formerly Kinesis Data Analytics)
      • helps transform and analyze streaming data in real time using Apache Flink.
      • supports anomaly detection using Random Cut Forest ML
      • supports reference data stored in S3.
      • Note: Kinesis Data Analytics for SQL applications was discontinued effective January 27, 2026. Migrate to Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink or Apache Flink Studio.
  • OpenSearch
    • OpenSearch is a search service that supports indexing, full-text search, faceting, etc.
    • OpenSearch can be used for analysis and supports visualization using OpenSearch Dashboards which can be real-time.
    • OpenSearch Service Storage tiers support Hot, UltraWarm, and Cold and the data can be transitioned using Index State management.
  • QuickSight
    • Know Visual Types (hint: esp. word clouds, plotting line, bar, and story based visualizations)
    • Know Supported Data Sources
    • QuickSight provides IP addresses that need to be whitelisted for QuickSight to access the data store.
    • QuickSight provides direct integration with Microsoft AD
    • QuickSight supports Row level security using dataset rules to control access to data at row granularity based on permissions associated with the user interacting with the data.
    • QuickSight supports ML insights as well
    • QuickSight supports users defined via IAM or email signup.
  • Athena
    • is a serverless, interactive analytics service built on open-source frameworks, supporting open-table and file formats.
    • provides a simplified, flexible way to analyze data in an S3 data lake and 30 data sources, including on-premises data sources or other cloud systems using SQL or Python without loading the data.
    • integrates with QuickSight for visualizing the data or creating dashboards.
    • uses a managed Glue Data Catalog to store information and schemas about the databases and tables that you create for the data stored in S3
    • Workgroups can be used to separate users, teams, applications, or workloads, to set limits on the amount of data each query or the entire workgroup can process, and to track costs.
    • Athena best practices recommended partitioning the data, partition projection, and using the Columnar file format like ORC or Parquet as they support compression and are splittable.
  • Know Data Pipeline for data transfer
    • Note: AWS Data Pipeline was closed to new customers effective July 25, 2024. The service is in maintenance mode. Consider AWS Glue, Amazon MWAA, or AWS Step Functions as alternatives.

Security, Identity & Compliance

Management & Governance Tools

  • Understand AWS CloudWatch for Logs and Metrics.
  • CloudWatch Subscription Filters can be used to route data to Kinesis Data Streams, Amazon Data Firehose, and Lambda.

Whitepapers and articles

On the Exam Day

  • Make sure you are relaxed and get some good night’s sleep. The exam is not tough if you are well-prepared.
  • If you are taking the AWS Online exam
    • Try to join at least 30 minutes before the actual time as I have had issues with both PSI and Pearson with long wait times.
    • The online verification process does take some time and usually, there are glitches.
    • Remember, you would not be allowed to take the take if you are late by more than 30 minutes.
    • Make sure you have your desk clear, no hand-watches, or external monitors, keep your phones away, and nobody can enter the room.

Finally, All the Best 🙂

Related Posts

AWS Directory Services – AD Connector & Managed AD

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 3 Comments

AWS Directory Services

  • AWS Directory Services is a managed service offering, providing directories that contain information about the organization, including users, groups, computers, and other resources.
  • AWS Directory Services provides multiple ways including
    • Simple AD – a standalone directory service powered by Samba 4
    • AD Connector – acts as a proxy to use On-Premise Microsoft Active Directory with other AWS services.
    • AWS Managed Microsoft AD (Standard Edition) – fully managed Microsoft Active Directory for up to 30,000 objects
    • AWS Managed Microsoft AD (Enterprise Edition) – fully managed Microsoft Active Directory for up to 500,000 objects with multi-region support
    • AWS Managed Microsoft AD (Hybrid Edition) – extends an existing self-managed AD domain to AWS (launched August 2025)
  • AWS Managed Microsoft AD is powered by Windows Server 2019 and creates a highly available pair of domain controllers across different Availability Zones.

What’s New in AWS Directory Service (2024-2026)

  • Hybrid Edition (Aug 2025) – New edition that extends existing on-premises or multi-cloud AD domain to AWS Managed Microsoft AD, automatically handling replication and maintenance between environments.
  • Directory Service Data APIs (2025) – Perform CRUD operations on users and groups directly through AWS CLI, APIs, and the AWS Management Console without deploying dedicated management instances.
  • IPv6 Support (Oct 2025) – Dual-stack (IPv4 and IPv6) configurations for Managed Microsoft AD, AD Connector, and Simple AD. Existing IPv4-only directories can be upgraded to dual-stack.
  • API-Driven Edition Upgrades (Oct 2025) – Upgrade Managed Microsoft AD from Standard to Enterprise Edition programmatically via the UpdateDirectorySetup API without support tickets.
  • Increased Directory Sharing Limits (Aug 2025) – Standard Edition: 5 → 25 accounts; Enterprise Edition: 125 → 500 accounts.
  • Multi-Region Replication for Opt-In Regions (Apr 2026) – Multi-region replication now supports Opt-In regions in addition to default regions.
  • Amazon Cloud Directory – No longer open to new customers as of November 7, 2025. Alternatives include Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Neptune.

Simple AD

  • is a Microsoft Active Directory compatible directory from AWS Directory Service that is powered by Samba 4.
  • is the least expensive option and the best choice if there are 5,000 or fewer users & don’t need the more advanced Microsoft Active Directory features.
  • supports commonly used Active Directory features such as user accounts, group memberships, domain-joining EC2 instances running Linux and Windows, Kerberos-based single sign-on (SSO), and group policies.
  • does not support features like DNS dynamic update, schema extensions, multi-factor authentication, communication over LDAPS, PowerShell AD cmdlets, and the transfer of FSMO roles
  • provides daily automated snapshots to enable point-in-time recovery
  • Trust relationships between Simple AD and other Active Directory domains cannot be set up.
  • does not support MFA, RDS SQL Server, or AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO).
  • supports dual-stack (IPv4 and IPv6) network configurations (Oct 2025)
  • Available in two sizes:
    • Small – supports up to 500 users (approximately 2,000 objects)
    • Large – supports up to 5,000 users (approximately 20,000 objects)

AD Connector

  • helps connect to an existing on-premises Active Directory to AWS
  • is the best choice to leverage an existing on-premises directory with AWS services
  • requires VPN or Direct Connect connection
  • is a proxy service for connecting on-premises Microsoft Active Directory to AWS without requiring complex directory synchronization technologies or the cost and complexity of hosting a federation infrastructure
  • forwards sign-in requests to the Active Directory domain controllers for authentication and provides the ability for applications to query the directory for data
  • enables consistent enforcement of existing security policies, such as password expiration, password history, and account lockouts, whether users are accessing resources on-premises or in the AWS cloud
  • supports AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO) integration for centralized access management
  • supports dual-stack (IPv4 and IPv6) network configurations (Oct 2025)
  • can be upgraded from Small to Large, but cannot be downgraded

Microsoft Active Directory (Standard & Enterprise Editions)

  • is a feature-rich managed Microsoft Active Directory hosted on AWS, powered by Windows Server 2019
  • Standard Edition – supports up to 30,000 AD objects, up to 25 account shares
  • Enterprise Edition – supports up to 500,000 AD objects, up to 500 account shares, and multi-region replication
  • supports trust relationship (forest trust) set up between an AWS-hosted directory and on-premises directories providing users and groups with access to resources in either domain, using single sign-on (SSO) without the need to synchronize or replicate the users, groups, or passwords.
  • requires a VPN or Direct Connect connection for trust relationships with on-premises AD.
  • provides much of the functionality offered by Microsoft Active Directory plus integration with AWS applications.
  • provides a highly available pair of domain controllers running in different AZs connected to the VPC in a Region of your choice.
  • supports MFA by integrating with an existing RADIUS-based MFA infrastructure to provide an additional layer of security when users access AWS applications.
  • automatically configures and manages host monitoring and recovery, data replication, snapshots, and software updates.
  • supports RDS for SQL Server, AWS Workspaces, Quicksight, WorkDocs, Amazon Connect, etc.
  • integrates with AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO) for centralized multi-account access management.
  • supports Multi-Region Replication (Enterprise Edition only) – automatically replicates directory data including users, groups, Group Policy Objects, and schema across multiple AWS Regions.
  • supports API-driven edition upgrades – upgrade from Standard to Enterprise Edition via the UpdateDirectorySetup API without support tickets (Oct 2025).
  • supports dual-stack (IPv4 and IPv6) network configurations (Oct 2025)

AWS Managed Microsoft AD (Hybrid Edition)

  • Launched in August 2025 as a new edition of AWS Managed Microsoft AD.
  • Extends an existing self-managed Active Directory domain to AWS, whether hosted on-premises, on AWS, or in a multi-cloud environment.
  • Automatically handles replication and maintenance between your existing AD environments and AWS.
  • Creates an integrated identity environment that spans on-premises, AWS, and multi-cloud infrastructure while maintaining a single source of identity.
  • Provides a simpler way to migrate AD-dependent workloads to the cloud while preserving existing AD data, identity, and access infrastructure.
  • Supports native Active Directory schema extensions (e.g., for deploying Microsoft Exchange Server).
  • Unlike trust-based approaches, Hybrid Edition provides a unified AD deployment rather than separate forests with trust relationships.
  • Best suited when you want to extend (not replicate) your existing domain to AWS with full schema and data preservation.

Directory Service Data (User & Group Management APIs)

  • AWS Directory Service Data enables CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations on users and groups directly through AWS CLI, APIs, and the AWS Management Console.
  • Eliminates the need to deploy dedicated management EC2 instances to manage directory users and groups.
  • Supports operations including CreateUser, CreateGroup, UpdateUser, DeleteUser, ListUsers, ListGroups, and membership management.
  • Enables automation of identity lifecycle management and enhances security in AWS environments.
  • Available at no additional cost for AWS Managed Microsoft AD customers.
  • Write operations are limited to the organizational unit (OU) of your AWS Managed Microsoft AD.

AWS Directory Services - Microsoft AD Use Cases

AWS Directory Services Comparison

Feature Simple AD AD Connector Managed Microsoft AD (Standard/Enterprise) Managed Microsoft AD (Hybrid)
Type Standalone (Samba 4) Proxy to on-premises AD Fully managed AD in AWS Extends existing AD to AWS
Trust Relationships Not supported N/A (proxy) Supported (forest trust) Not needed (same domain)
MFA Not supported Supported (RADIUS) Supported (RADIUS) Supported (RADIUS)
IAM Identity Center Not supported Supported Supported Supported
Multi-Region Replication Not supported Not supported Enterprise Edition only Not supported
IPv6 (Dual-stack) Supported Supported Supported Supported
Schema Extensions Not supported N/A (proxy) Supported Supported (native)
VPN/DX Required No Yes Yes (for trust to on-premises) Yes
Best For Small orgs, ≤5,000 users, basic AD Leveraging existing on-premises AD Full AD features in AWS, >5,000 users Extending existing AD domain to AWS

Microsoft AD Connectivity Options

  • If the VGW is used to connect to the On-Premise AD is not stable or has connectivity issues, the following options can be explored
    • Simple AD
      • lower cost, low scale, basic AD compatible, or LDAP compatibility
      • provides a standalone instance for the Microsoft AD in AWS
      • No single point of Authentication or Authorization, as a separate copy is maintained
      • trust relationships cannot be set up between Simple AD and other Active Directory domains
    • AWS Managed Microsoft AD (Hybrid Edition) (New – 2025)
      • extends existing on-premises AD domain directly to AWS
      • automatically handles replication between environments
      • maintains a single source of identity across on-premises and AWS
      • requires VPN or Direct Connect for connectivity to on-premises
    • Read-only Domain Controllers (RODCs)
      • works out as a Read-only Active Directory
      • holds a copy of the Active Directory Domain Service (AD DS) database and responds to authentication requests.
      • are typically deployed in locations where physical security cannot be guaranteed.
      • they cannot be written to by applications or other servers.
      • helps maintain a single point to authentication & authorization controls, however, needs to be synced.
    • Writable Domain Controllers
      • are expensive to setup
      • operate in a multi-master model; changes can be made on any writable server in the forest, and those changes are replicated to servers throughout the entire forest

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. The majority of your Infrastructure is on-premises and you have a small footprint on AWS. Your company has decided to roll out a new application that is heavily dependent on low latency connectivity to LDAP for authentication. Your security policy requires minimal changes to the company’s existing application user management processes. What option would you implement to successfully launch this application?
    1. Create a second, independent LDAP server in AWS for your application to use for authentication (independent would not work for authentication as its a separate copy)
    2. Establish a VPN connection so your applications can authenticate against your existing on-premises LDAP servers (not a low latency solution)
    3. Establish a VPN connection between your data center and AWS create an LDAP replica on AWS and configure your application to use the LDAP replica for authentication (RODCs low latency and minimal setup)
    4. Create a second LDAP domain on AWS establish a VPN connection to establish a trust relationship between your new and existing domains and use the new domain for authentication (Not minimal effort)
  2. A company is preparing to give AWS Management Console access to developers Company policy mandates identity federation and role-based access control. Roles are currently assigned using groups in the corporate Active Directory. What combination of the following will give developers access to the AWS console? (Select 2) Choose 2 answers
    1. AWS Directory Service AD Connector (for Corporate Active directory)
    2. AWS Directory Service Simple AD
    3. AWS Identity and Access Management groups
    4. AWS Identity and Access Management roles
    5. AWS Identity and Access Management users
  3. An Enterprise customer is starting their migration to the cloud, their main reason for migrating is agility, and they want to make their internal Microsoft Active Directory available to any applications running on AWS; this is so internal users only have to remember one set of credentials and as a central point of user control for leavers and joiners. How could they make their Active Directory secure, and highly available, with minimal on-premises infrastructure changes, in the most cost and time-efficient way? Choose the most appropriate
    1. Using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), they would create a DMZ using a security group; within the security group they could provision two smaller Amazon EC2 instances that are running Openswan for resilient IPSEC tunnels, and two larger instances that are domain controllers; they would use multiple Availability Zones (Whats Openswan? Refer Implementation)
    2. Using VPC, they could create an extension to their data center and make use of resilient hardware IPSEC tunnels; they could then have two domain controller instances that are joined to their existing domain and reside within different subnets, in different Availability Zones (highly available with 2 AZ’s, secure with VPN connection and minimal changes)
    3. Within the customer’s existing infrastructure, they could provision new hardware to run Active Directory Federation Services; this would present Active Directory as a SAML2 endpoint on the internet; any new application on AWS could be written to authenticate using SAML2 (not minimal on-premises hardware changes)
    4. The customer could create a stand-alone VPC with its own Active Directory Domain Controllers; two domain controller instances could be configured, one in each Availability Zone; new applications would authenticate with those domain controllers (not a central location, but a copy)
  4. A company needs to deploy virtual desktops to its customers in a virtual private cloud, leveraging existing security controls. Which set of AWS services and features will meet the company’s requirements?
    1. Virtual Private Network connection. AWS Directory Services, and ClassicLink (ClassicLink allows you to link an EC2-Classic instance to a VPC in your account, within the same region)
    2. Virtual Private Network connection. AWS Directory Services, and Amazon Workspaces (WorkSpaces for Virtual desktops, and AWS Directory Services to authenticate to an existing on-premises AD through VPN)
    3. AWS Directory Service, Amazon Workspaces, and AWS Identity and Access Management (AD service needs a VPN connection to interact with an On-premise AD directory)
    4. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, and AWS Identity and Access Management (Need WorkSpaces for virtual desktops)
  5. An Enterprise customer is starting their migration to the cloud, their main reason for migrating is agility and they want to make their internal Microsoft active directory available to any applications running on AWS, this is so internal users only have to remember one set of credentials and as a central point of user control for leavers and joiners. How could they make their active directory secure and highly available with minimal on-premises infrastructure changes in the most cost and time-efficient way? Choose the most appropriate:
    1. Using Amazon EC2, they could create a DMZ using a security group, within the security group they could provision two smaller Amazon EC2 instances that are running Openswan for resilient IPSEC tunnels and two larger instances that are domain controllers, they would use multiple availability zones.
    2. Using VPC, they could create an extension to their data center and make use of resilient hardware IPSEC tunnels, they could then have two domain controller instances that are joined to their existing domain and reside within different subnets in different availability zones.
    3. Within the customer’s existing infrastructure, they could provision new hardware to run active directory federation services, this would present active directory as a SAML2 endpoint on the internet and any new application on AWS could be written to authenticate using SAML2 (not a minimal change to the existing infrastructure)
    4. The customer could create a stand alone VPC with its own active directory domain controllers, two domain controller instances could be configured, one in each availability zone, new applications would authenticate with those domain controllers. (Standalone cannot use the same security)
  6. You run a 2000-engineer organization. You are about to begin using AWS at a large scale for the first time. You want to integrate with your existing identity management system running on Microsoft Active Directory because your organization is a power-user of Active Directory. How should you manage your AWS identities in the simplest manner?
    1. Use a large AWS Directory Service Simple AD.
    2. Use a large AWS Directory Service AD Connector. (AD Connector can be used as power-user of Microsoft Active Directory. Simple AD only works with a subset of AD functionality)
    3. Use a Sync Domain running on AWS Directory Service.
    4. Use an AWS Directory Sync Domain running on AWS Lambda.
  7. A company wants to extend its on-premises Active Directory to AWS with minimal changes to its existing identity infrastructure while maintaining a unified directory across both environments. They need full schema support and automatic replication. Which solution best meets these requirements?
    1. Set up AWS Managed Microsoft AD with a forest trust to the on-premises AD (Trust creates separate forests, not a unified directory)
    2. Use AD Connector to proxy authentication to on-premises AD (Proxy only, no directory extension or replication)
    3. Use AWS Managed Microsoft AD (Hybrid Edition) to extend the existing domain to AWS (Hybrid Edition extends the existing domain with automatic replication and full schema support)
    4. Deploy self-managed domain controllers on EC2 instances (Not a managed solution, requires manual maintenance)
  8. A company uses AWS Managed Microsoft AD and wants to automate user provisioning and deprovisioning without deploying management EC2 instances. Which approach should they use?
    1. Use PowerShell AD cmdlets on a Windows bastion host
    2. Configure LDAP tools on an EC2 instance connected to the directory
    3. Use AWS Directory Service Data APIs to perform CRUD operations on users and groups (Directory Service Data APIs enable user/group management via CLI, APIs, and Console without additional infrastructure)
    4. Use AWS Lambda with custom LDAP libraries to manage users
  9. An organization needs a managed Active Directory in AWS that supports multi-region replication for global workloads. Which configuration meets this requirement?
    1. AWS Managed Microsoft AD Standard Edition with multi-region enabled
    2. AWS Managed Microsoft AD Enterprise Edition with multi-region replication (Multi-region replication is only supported in Enterprise Edition)
    3. Simple AD deployed in multiple regions with cross-region VPC peering
    4. AD Connector in each region pointing to the same on-premises AD

References

AWS Security Hub

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil

AWS Security Hub

🔄 Major Service Evolution (Dec 2025 – 2026)

AWS Security Hub has been significantly reimagined. The original Security Hub is now called AWS Security Hub CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management), while the new AWS Security Hub is a unified cloud security operations solution that correlates findings across multiple AWS security services. Both services complement each other and are recommended to be used together.

  • AWS Security Hub is a unified cloud security operations solution that prioritizes critical security issues and helps respond at scale by correlating and enriching signals across multiple AWS security services.
  • provides near real-time risk analytics, trends, unified enablement, streamlined pricing, and automated correlation that transforms security signals into actionable insights.
  • automatically aggregates and correlates signals from Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, AWS Security Hub CSPM, and Amazon Macie, organizing them by threats, exposures, resources, and security coverage.
  • AWS Security Hub CSPM (previously known as Security Hub) performs security best practice checks, aggregates alerts, and enables automated remediation.
  • collects security data from across AWS accounts, services, and supported third-party partner products and helps analyze the security trends and identify the highest priority security issues.
  • is Regional and only receives and processes findings from the Region where it is enabled. However, it supports cross-Region aggregation of findings, resources, and trends from multiple AWS Regions into a single home Region.
  • must be enabled in each region to view findings in that region.
  • Security Hub CSPM automatically runs continuous, account-level configuration and security checks based on AWS best practices and industry standards which include
    • CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark (supports versions 5.0.0, 3.0.0, 1.4.0, and 1.2.0)
    • Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
    • AWS Foundational Security Best Practices
    • NIST SP 800-53 Revision 5
  • can consume, aggregate, organize, and prioritize findings from
  • consolidates the security findings across accounts and provider products and displays results on the Security Hub console.
  • supports integration with Amazon EventBridge. Custom actions can be defined when a finding is received.
  • supports integration with Jira and ServiceNow for incident management workflows, including automated ticket creation based on finding criteria.
  • only detects and consolidates findings that are generated after the Security Hub is enabled.
  • has multi-account management through AWS Organizations integration, which allows delegating an administrator account for the organization.
  • uses service-linked AWS Config rules to perform most of its security checks for controls. AWS Config must be enabled on all accounts – both the administrator account and member accounts – in each Region where Security Hub is enabled.
  • works with a service-linked role named AWSServiceRoleForSecurityHub which includes the permissions and trust policy to do the following:
    • Detect and aggregate findings from Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, and Amazon Macie
    • Configure the requisite AWS Config infrastructure to run security checks for the supported standards
  • findings use the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) format for partner integrations, enabling seamless data sharing across security tools. Security Hub CSPM uses the AWS Security Finding Format (ASFF) for control findings.

Security Hub Plans

  • Security Hub uses a streamlined, resource-based pricing model with the following plans:

Essentials Plan (Default)

  • The Essentials plan is the default level of coverage included with Security Hub.
  • Consolidates Security Hub, Amazon Inspector, and Security Hub CSPM into a single per-resource price with unlimited scans.
  • Provides risk analytics, vulnerability management, security posture management, and workflow automation.
  • Includes:
    • Risk and exposure analytics
    • Resource inventory
    • Workflow automation and automation rules
    • Finding ingestion events
    • EC2 vulnerability scanning (agent-based and agentless)
    • ECR container image vulnerability scanning
    • Lambda function vulnerability scanning
    • EC2 CIS Benchmark assessments
    • Posture management (CSPM)
  • Resource unit ratios: 1 EC2 = 1 unit | 12 Lambda = 1 unit | 18 ECR images = 1 unit | 125 IAM users/roles = 1 unit
  • Includes a 30-day free trial for all customers.

Threat Analytics (Add-on)

  • Adds automated threat detection powered by Amazon GuardDuty across CloudTrail, VPC, DNS, S3, EKS, and Lambda.
  • Usage-based pricing on events and log volume.
  • Requires the Essentials plan.
  • Includes EC2/EBS malware protection at no additional charge.

Extended Plan (Add-on)

  • Adds curated enterprise partner solutions across 9 security categories: endpoint, identity, email, network, data, browser, cloud, AI, and security operations.
  • Pay-as-you-go pricing with no upfront commitment.
  • Includes 21 curated partner solutions from providers such as CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Okta, CyberArk, Proofpoint, Splunk, Zscaler, Varonis, and others.
  • Simplifies procurement with consolidated billing through AWS.
  • Extends protection beyond AWS to multicloud and on-premises environments.
  • Eligible for Enterprise Discount Program (EDP) credits.

Security Hub Key Features

Near Real-Time Risk Analytics and Exposure Correlation

  • Security Hub calculates exposures in near real-time by correlating findings from Security Hub CSPM, Amazon Inspector, Amazon Macie, and Amazon GuardDuty.
  • Automatically correlates findings to identify when multiple security issues combine to create critical risk (e.g., public EC2 instance with vulnerabilities and misconfigurations).
  • Provides potential attack path visualization showing how attackers could access and control resources.
  • Enriches security signals with context by analyzing resource associations, potential impact, and relationships.
  • Exposure findings include contributing traits categorized as Reachability, Vulnerability, Sensitive data, Misconfiguration, and Assumability.
  • Provides prioritized remediation guidance with links to documentation.

Summary Dashboard and Historical Trends

  • Provides a Summary dashboard with customizable widgets showing exposures, threats, resources, and security coverage.
  • Trends feature provides up to 1 year of historical data for findings and resources across the organization.
  • Includes period-over-period analysis: day-over-day, week-over-week, and month-over-month comparisons.
  • Security coverage widget tracks which accounts and Regions have security services enabled, identifying visibility gaps.
  • Supports shared filters, finding filters, and resource filters with saved filter sets using and/or operators.

Automation Rules

  • Automation rules automatically update finding fields, suppress findings, and send findings to ticketing tools in near real-time.
  • Can automatically create tickets in Jira Service Management and ServiceNow based on criteria such as severity, resource type, or finding type.
  • Can be created from scratch or using pre-populated rule templates.
  • Supports automated response workflows through Amazon EventBridge to route findings to Lambda functions or AWS Systems Manager Automation runbooks.

Central Configuration

  • Allows centralized management of Security Hub across multiple accounts from a delegated administrator account.
  • Enables setting policies that specify whether Security Hub should be enabled and which standards and controls should be activated.
  • Policies can be applied to specific accounts, organizational units (OUs), or the entire organization.

Cross-Region Aggregation

  • Aggregates findings, finding updates, insights, control compliance statuses, security scores, and trends from multiple AWS Regions into a single home Region.
  • Can automatically link future Regions as they become available.
  • Supports GovCloud (US) regions.
  • Delegated administrator accounts see data for both administrator and member accounts.

Consolidated Controls and Findings

  • Provides a consolidated controls view showing compliance status across all enabled standards.
  • Generates a single finding per security check per resource, reducing duplicate findings across standards.
  • Controls are organized by unique control IDs rather than by standard.

Multicloud Security Operations (2026)

  • AWS Security Hub is expanding to unify security operations across multicloud environments.
  • Extended plan enables protection across AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, and on-premises environments through curated partner solutions.
  • Provides unified procurement, billing, and operations across security vendors.

Security Hub Integrations

  • AWS Services: Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, Amazon Macie, AWS IAM Access Analyzer, AWS Firewall Manager, AWS Config, Amazon Detective, AWS Systems Manager, AWS Audit Manager
  • Ticketing: Jira Service Management, ServiceNow
  • SIEM/SOAR: Splunk, CrowdStrike, Datadog, Dynatrace, Securonix, SentinelOne, Sumo Logic
  • Automation: Amazon EventBridge, AWS Lambda, AWS Systems Manager Automation, Tines
  • Data/Schema: OCSF format for partner integrations; ASFF for Security Hub CSPM control findings
  • Partner Ecosystem (Extended Plan): 21+ partners across endpoint, identity, email, network, data, browser, cloud, AI, and security operations categories

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. A security engineer has been asked to continuously monitor the company’s AWS account using automated compliance checks based on AWS best practices and Center for Internet Security (CIS) AWS Foundations Benchmarks. How can the security engineer accomplish this using AWS services?
    1. AWS Config + AWS Security Hub
    2. Amazon Inspector + AWS GuardDuty
    3. Amazon Inspector + AWS Shield
    4. AWS Config + Amazon Inspector
  2. A company wants to unify its security operations across multiple AWS accounts and automatically correlate findings from threat detection, vulnerability management, and security posture services. Which AWS service provides this unified security operations experience?
    1. Amazon GuardDuty
    2. Amazon Inspector
    3. AWS Security Hub
    4. AWS Config
  3. A security team needs to identify their most critical security risks by understanding when multiple security issues (vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and threats) combine to create exploitable exposures. Which Security Hub feature provides this capability?
    1. Security standards
    2. Automation rules
    3. Near real-time risk analytics and exposure correlation
    4. Cross-Region aggregation
  4. An organization wants to consolidate billing for Amazon Inspector vulnerability scanning, Security Hub CSPM posture management, and risk analytics into a single predictable pricing model. Which Security Hub plan should they use?
    1. Extended plan
    2. Threat Analytics add-on
    3. Essentials plan
    4. Standard plan
  5. A multinational company operates across 10 AWS Regions and wants to view all security findings from a single location without manually checking each region. Which Security Hub feature should they enable?
    1. Central configuration
    2. Automation rules
    3. Cross-Region aggregation
    4. Delegated administrator
  6. A company wants to extend its AWS Security Hub protection to cover endpoint security, identity management, and email security across both AWS and other cloud providers. Which Security Hub offering should they use?
    1. Security Hub Essentials plan
    2. Security Hub CSPM
    3. Security Hub Threat Analytics
    4. Security Hub Extended plan
  7. Which of the following accurately describes the relationship between AWS Security Hub and AWS Security Hub CSPM?
    1. They are the same service with different names
    2. Security Hub CSPM is a newer replacement for Security Hub
    3. Security Hub CSPM focuses on posture management and best practice checks, while Security Hub provides unified security operations with risk correlation
    4. Security Hub is only for threat detection while CSPM handles all other security functions

References

Amazon GuardDuty

Amazon GuardDuty
~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil

Amazon GuardDuty

  • Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that continuously monitors the AWS accounts and workloads for malicious activity and delivers detailed security findings for visibility and remediation.
  • is a continuous security monitoring service that analyzes and processes the following foundational data sources:
    • CloudTrail management event logs,
    • CloudTrail S3 data event logs,
    • DNS logs,
    • EKS audit logs,
    • VPC flow logs,
    • Amazon EBS volume data, and
    • Runtime activity from container workloads (Amazon EKS, Amazon ECS including Fargate, and Amazon EC2 instances).
  • uses threat intelligence feeds, such as lists of malicious IP addresses and domains, and machine learning to identify unexpected and potentially unauthorized and malicious activity within the AWS environment.
  • combines machine learning, anomaly detection, network monitoring, and malicious file discovery, utilizing both AWS-developed and industry-leading third-party sources to help protect workloads and data on AWS.
  • uses artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and anomaly detection using both AWS and industry-leading threat intelligence to help protect AWS accounts, workloads, and data.
  • is a Regional service and is recommended to be enabled in all supported AWS Regions. This helps generate findings of unauthorized or unusual activity even in Regions not actively used.
  • does not look at historical data, it monitors only the activity that starts after it is enabled.
  • operates completely independent of the AWS resources and therefore has no impact on the performance or availability of the accounts or workloads.
  • GuardDuty supports
    • Suppression rules, allow the creation of very specific combinations of attributes to suppress findings. Supports wildcards (* and ?) and filtering on any finding field.
    • Trusted Entity Lists (previously Trusted IP Lists) for highly secure communication with the AWS environment. Now supports both IP addresses and domain names. Findings are not generated based on trusted entity lists.
    • Threat Entity Lists (previously Threat Lists) for known malicious IP addresses and domain names. Findings are generated based on threat entity lists.
  • Security findings are retained and made available through the GuardDuty console and APIs for 90 days, after which they are discarded.
  • Findings are assigned a severity (Critical, High, Medium, Low), and actions can be automated by integrating with Security Hub, EventBridge, Lambda, and Step Functions.
  • Amazon Detective is also tightly integrated with GuardDuty which helps perform deeper forensic and root cause investigations.
  • GuardDuty supports AWS PrivateLink (VPC endpoints) for private connectivity without traversing the public internet.
  • offers a 30-day free trial. After the free trial ends, cost is based on the volume of data analyzed.

Amazon GuardDuty

GuardDuty Protection Plans

  • GuardDuty offers multiple protection plans that can be independently enabled or disabled:
    1. Foundational GuardDuty – Core threat detection that cannot be disabled. Monitors CloudTrail management events, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs.
    2. S3 Protection – Monitors Amazon S3 data events for potential threats to data, such as data exfiltration and destruction.
    3. Runtime Monitoring – Monitors operating system-level events for EKS, ECS, and EC2 workloads using a GuardDuty security agent.
    4. EKS Audit Logs – Monitors Amazon EKS audit logs for potential threats to Kubernetes clusters.
    5. RDS Protection – Monitors RDS login activity for potential threats to databases. Supports Aurora MySQL, Aurora PostgreSQL (including Limitless Database), and RDS for PostgreSQL.
    6. Lambda Protection – Monitors Lambda function network activity for potential threats.
  • Each protection plan can be auto-enabled for new AWS Organizations accounts.
  • GuardDuty offers the flexibility to customize how new accounts inherit protection plans.

GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection

  • Introduced at AWS re:Invent 2024, Extended Threat Detection automatically detects multi-stage attacks that span data sources, multiple types of AWS resources, and time within an AWS account.
  • Uses sophisticated AI/ML algorithms trained at AWS scale to automatically correlate security signals and detect critical threats.
  • Enabled automatically for all GuardDuty accounts at no additional cost.
  • Correlates multiple events (called “Signals”) including API activities and GuardDuty findings to identify attack sequences.
  • Can detect weak signals that individually don’t present as clear threats but when combined reveal suspicious activity patterns.
  • Operates within a 24-hour rolling time window to detect in-progress or recent attacks.
  • All attack sequence findings are assigned Critical severity.
  • Attack sequence finding types include:
    • AttackSequence:S3/CompromisedData – Detects credential misuse leading to S3 data compromise.
    • AttackSequence:IAM/CompromisedCredentials – Detects multi-stage attacks using compromised IAM credentials.
    • AttackSequence:EKS/CompromisedCluster – Detects compromised EKS clusters (June 2025).
    • AttackSequence:EC2/CompromisedInstanceGroup – Detects compromised EC2 instance groups (December 2025).
    • AttackSequence:ECS/CompromisedCluster – Detects compromised ECS clusters (December 2025).
  • Enabling additional protection plans (S3 Protection, EKS Protection, Runtime Monitoring) widens the range of event sources and enables more comprehensive attack sequence detection.

GuardDuty Runtime Monitoring

  • Runtime Monitoring uses a lightweight GuardDuty security agent that adds visibility into runtime behavior including file access, process execution, command line arguments, and network connections.
  • Supports three resource types:
    • Amazon EKS – Uses an EKS add-on (aws-guardduty-agent) deployed on EKS clusters.
    • Amazon ECS (Fargate) – Monitors ECS workloads running on Fargate.
    • Amazon EC2 – Monitors EC2 instances using SSM-based agent deployment (GA March 2024).
  • Supports automated agent configuration that permits GuardDuty to install and manage the security agent automatically.
  • Supports inclusion/exclusion tags to control which resources get the security agent.
  • Detects threats such as crypto-mining, malicious file execution, suspicious shell creation, privilege escalation, reverse shells, and defense evasion techniques.
  • Supports Amazon EKS Auto Mode.

GuardDuty with Multiple Accounts

  • GuardDuty has multi-account management through AWS Organizations integration, which allows delegating an administrator account for the organization.
  • The delegated administrator (DA) account is a centralized account that consolidates all findings and can configure all member accounts.
  • Supports up to 50,000 member accounts through AWS Organizations (including up to 5,000 by invitation).
  • All security findings are aggregated to the administrator account for review and remediation.
  • EventBridge events are also aggregated to the administrator account.
  • Organization configuration allows auto-enabling GuardDuty and protection plans for ALL accounts, new accounts only, or no auto-enable.

GuardDuty Automated Remediation

  • GuardDuty security findings can be remediated automatically using EventBridge and AWS Lambda.
  • For example, a Lambda function can be created to modify the AWS security group rules based on security findings. For a GuardDuty finding indicating one of your EC2 instances is being probed by a known malicious IP, the address can be added through an EventBridge rule, initiating a Lambda function to automatically modify the security group rules and restrict access on that port.
  • Findings are exported to Amazon S3 for long-term storage and analysis.
  • Integrates with AWS Security Incident Response for automated triage and investigation.

GuardDuty Malware Protection

  • GuardDuty Malware Protection includes three capabilities:

Malware Protection for EC2

  • Scans EBS volumes attached to EC2 instances and container workloads for malware.
  • Creates a replica EBS volume from a snapshot and scans it for trojans, worms, crypto miners, rootkits, bots, and more.
  • Supports two scan types:
    • GuardDuty-initiated – Automatically triggered when certain GuardDuty findings are generated.
    • On-demand – Manually initiated by providing the EC2 instance ARN.
  • Supports scanning EBS volumes up to 2048 GB.
  • Supports scanning EBS volumes encrypted with AWS managed keys.
  • Supports Amazon EKS Auto Mode managed instances.

Malware Protection for S3

  • Launched June 2024, provides built-in malware scanning for objects uploaded to designated S3 buckets.
  • Automatically scans newly uploaded objects using multiple AWS-developed and industry-leading third-party malware scanning engines.
  • Supports on-demand scanning of existing S3 objects via the SendObjectMalwareScan API (November 2025).
  • Supports scanning objects up to 100 GB (increased from 5 GB in July 2025).
  • Publishes scan results to EventBridge for downstream workflows (e.g., quarantine to a separate bucket).
  • Can add tags to scanned objects indicating scan status.
  • GuardDuty automatically updates malware signatures every 15 minutes.

Malware Protection for AWS Backup

  • Launched November 2025, detects the potential presence of malware in backup resources.
  • Scans AWS Backup-protected resources including Amazon EBS snapshots, EC2 AMIs, and Amazon S3 Recovery Points.
  • Supports full and incremental scans.
  • Helps identify the last known clean backup for recovery.
  • Can automate malware scanning across the entire organization.

GuardDuty AI Workload Protection

  • Launched August 2024, GuardDuty foundational threat detection and Lambda Protection help detect threats to AI workloads built on AWS.
  • Detects when Amazon Bedrock model invocation logging is disabled (DefenseEvasion:IAMUser/BedrockLoggingDisabled finding type, November 2025).
  • Monitors for unauthorized access to AI/ML resources and data exfiltration attempts.

GuardDuty Custom Threat Detection

  • GuardDuty introduced custom Entity Lists (August 2025) that support both IP addresses and domain names for custom threat detection.
  • Replaces the legacy IP-only threat lists with more comprehensive entity-based lists.
  • Supports:
    • Trusted Entity Lists – IP addresses and domain names to suppress findings.
    • Threat Entity Lists – Known malicious IP addresses and domain names to generate findings.
  • Only the GuardDuty administrator account can manage entity lists; settings apply automatically to member accounts.
  • GuardDuty recommends using entity lists over the legacy IP address lists.

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. Which AWS service makes detecting and reporting unexpected and potentially malicious activity in your AWS environment easy?
    1. AWS Shield
    2. AWS Inspector
    3. AWS GuardDuty
    4. AWS WAF
  2. A company needs to detect multi-stage attacks that span multiple AWS services and resources over time. Which GuardDuty capability should they rely on?
    1. GuardDuty Malware Protection
    2. GuardDuty Runtime Monitoring
    3. GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection
    4. GuardDuty RDS Protection
  3. Which GuardDuty protection plan monitors operating system-level events on container and EC2 workloads? (Select TWO)
    1. Runtime Monitoring
    2. S3 Protection
    3. Lambda Protection
    4. EKS Audit Logs
    5. Malware Protection for EC2
  4. A company wants to scan S3 objects for malware when they are uploaded to a bucket. Which GuardDuty feature should they enable?
    1. GuardDuty Malware Protection for EC2
    2. GuardDuty Malware Protection for S3
    3. GuardDuty S3 Protection
    4. GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection
  5. What severity level do GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection attack sequence findings receive?
    1. High
    2. Critical
    3. Medium
    4. Varies based on the attack type
  6. A security team wants to add their own threat intelligence containing both malicious domains and IP addresses to GuardDuty. What should they use?
    1. Trusted IP Lists
    2. Threat Entity Lists
    3. Suppression Rules
    4. Custom Finding Types

References