AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional SAP-C01 – Question303

An organization hosts an app on EC2 instances which multiple developers need access to in order to perform updates. The organization plans to implement some security best practices related to instance access.
Which one of the following recommendations will not help improve its security in this way?

A. Disable the password based login for all the users. All the users should use their own keys to connect with the instance securely.
B. Create an IAM policy allowing only IAM users to connect to the EC2 instances with their own SSH key.
C. 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.
D. Apply the latest patch of OS and always keep it updated.

Correct Answer: B

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 IAM is useful when users are required to work with AWS resources and actions, such as launching an instance. It is not useful in this case because it does not manage who can connect via RDP or SSH with an instance.
Reference:
http://aws.amazon.com/articles/1233/