AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional — Question 15

A company is using AWS for production and development workloads. Each business unit has its own AWS account for production, and a separate AWS account to develop and deploy its applications. The Information Security department has introduced new security policies that limit access for terminating certain Amazon
EC2 instances in all accounts to a small group of individuals from the Security team.
How can the Solutions Architect meet these requirements?

Answer options

• A. Create a new IAM policy that allows access to those EC2 instances only for the Security team. Apply this policy to the AWS Organizations master account.
• B. Create a new tag-based IAM policy that allows access to these EC2 instances only for the Security team. Tag the instances appropriately, and apply this policy in each account.
• C. Create an organizational unit under AWS Organizations. Move all the accounts into this organizational unit and use SCP to apply a whitelist policy to allow access to these EC2 instances for the Security team only.
• D. Set up SAML federation for all accounts in AWS. Configure SAML so that it checks for the service API call before authenticating the user. Block SAML from authenticating API calls if anyone other than the Security team accesses these instances.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

The correct answer is A because creating a new IAM policy specifically for the Security team and applying it to the master account ensures that only authorized personnel can terminate the EC2 instances. Option B is incorrect as tag-based policies would require tagging the instances in each account, which complicates management. Option C is not suitable since SCPs manage permissions at the organizational level and do not provide the granularity needed for individual instance access. Option D is inappropriate as SAML federation does not restrict API access based on user roles after authentication.