AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional SAP-C01 – Question195

An organization has hosted an application on the EC2 instances. There will be multiple users connecting to the instance for setup and configuration of application. The organization is planning to implement certain security best practices.
Which of the below mentioned pointers will not help the organization achieve better security arrangement?

A. Allow only IAM users to connect with the EC2 instances with their own secret access key.
B. Create a procedure to revoke the access rights of the individual user when they are not required to connect to EC2 instance anymore for the purpose of application configuration.
C. Apply the latest patch of OS and always keep it updated.
D. Disable the password based login for all the users. All the users should use their own keys to connect with the instance securely.

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

Explanation: Since AWS is a public cloud any application hosted on EC2 is prone to hacker attacks. It becomes extremely important for a user to setup a proper security mechanism on the EC2 instances. A few of the security measures are listed below: Always keep the OS updated with the latest patch Always create separate users with in OS if they need to connect with the EC2 instances, create their keys and disable their password Create a procedure using which the admin can revoke the access of the user when the business work on the EC2 instance is completed. Lock down unnecessary ports. Audit any proprietary applications that the user may be running on the EC2 instance Provide temporary escalated privileges, such as sudo for users who need to perform occasional privileged tasks The IAM is useful when users are required to work with AWS resources and actions, such as launching an instance. It is not useful to connect (RDP / SSH) with an instance.
Reference:
http://aws.amazon.com/articles/1233/