AWS Certified Security – Specialty — Question 200
A company is running an application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. The application stores logs locally. A security engineer noticed that logs were lost after a scale-in event. The security engineer needs to recommend a solution to ensure the durability and availability of log data. All logs must be kept for a minimum of 1 year for auditing purposes.
What should the security engineer recommend?
Answer options
- A. Within the Auto Scaling lifecycle, add a hook to create an attach an Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) log volume each time an EC2 instance is created. When the instance is terminated, the EBS volume can be reattached to another instance for log review.
- B. Create an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system and add a command in the user data section of the Auto Scaling launch template to mount the EFS file system during EC2 instance creation. Configure a process on the instance to copy the logs once a day from an instance Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume to a directory in the EFS file system.
- C. Build the Amazon CloudWatch agent into the AMI used in the Auto Scaling group. Configure the CloudWatch agent to send the logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs for review.
- D. Within the Auto Scaling lifecycle, add a lifecycle hook at the terminating state transition and alert the engineering team by using a lifecycle notification to Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). Configure the hook to remain in the Terminating:Wait state for 1 hour to allow manual review of the security logs prior to instance termination.
Correct answer: C
Explanation
The correct answer is C, as using the Amazon CloudWatch agent allows for centralized logging and ensures that logs are sent to Amazon CloudWatch Logs, which retains data durability and availability. Options A and B involve additional complexity and do not guarantee logs are retained for long-term auditing. Option D does not solve the problem of lost logs, as it only delays termination without preserving log data.