AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional — Question 910

A large company experienced a drastic increase in its monthly AWS spend. This is after Developers accidentally launched Amazon EC2 instances in unexpected regions. The company has established practices around least privileges for Developers and controls access to on-premises resources using Active Directory groups. The company now want to control costs by restricting the level of access that Developers have to the AWS Management Console without impacting their productivity. The company would also like to allow Developers to launch Amazon EC2 in only one region, without limiting access to other services in any region.
How can this company achieve these new security requirements while minimizing the administrative burden on the Operations team?

Answer options

• A. Set up SAML-based authentication tied to an IAM role that has an AdministrativeAccess managed policy attached to it. Attach a customer managed policy that denies access to Amazon EC2 in each region except for the one required.
• B. Create an IAM user for each Developer and add them to the developer IAM group that has the PowerUserAccess managed policy attached to it. Attach a customer managed policy that allows the Developers access to Amazon EC2 only in the required region.
• C. Set up SAML-based authentication tied to an IAM role that has a PowerUserAccess managed policy and a customer managed policy that deny all the Developers access to any AWS services except AWS Service Catalog. Within AWS Service Catalog, create a product containing only the EC2 resources in the approved region.
• D. Set up SAML-based authentication tied to an IAM role that has the PowerUserAccess managed policy attached to it. Attach a customer managed policy that denies access to Amazon EC2 in each region except for the one required.

Correct answer: D

Explanation

Option D is correct because utilizing SAML-based federation aligned with existing Active Directory groups minimizes administrative overhead compared to managing individual IAM users. The PowerUserAccess policy provides developers with the necessary permissions to remain productive, while a customer-managed policy with an explicit deny restricts EC2 operations to only the approved region without impacting access to other services. Option A is incorrect because AdministrativeAccess violates the least-privilege principle, Option B introduces high operational overhead, and Option C is overly restrictive and complex.