Question

Difficulty: HardAutomating Deployment and Configuration Management

An enterprise manages a multi-account environment using AWS Organizations. The security team uses AWS CloudFormation StackSets to deploy baseline IAM roles and security groups to all member accounts from a central administrator account. Recently, security audits revealed that local administrators in member accounts have manually modified these baseline resources, creating configuration drift and security vulnerabilities. A solutions architect must implement an automated governance solution that detects configuration drift on these baseline resources and automatically remediates it. The solution must prevent local administrators from disabling or bypassing the remediation controls.

Which two actions should the solutions architect take to meet these requirements? (Select two.)

  1. Deploy an AWS Config organizational rule using the cloudformation-stack-drift-detection-check managed rule to identify drifted stacks. Associate the rule with an AWS Systems Manager Automation document that executes a remediation script using a custom execution role to update the drifted resources back to their defined template states.Answer
  2. Create a Service Control Policy (SCP) at the Organization root that denies member account principals the ability to delete or modify AWS Config configurations, Systems Manager associations, and the deployed baseline resources, unless the action is performed by the StackSet execution role.Answer
  3. C
    Enable the native auto-remediation property on the CloudFormation StackSet to automatically trigger a StackSet update using the RollbackConfiguration parameter when drift is detected by the StackSet administration agent.
  4. D
    Apply a Service Control Policy (SCP) to the organizational units (OUs) that explicitly grants permission for baseline resource updates to the local administrators while denying all other CloudFormation actions, assuming the SCP will override any restrictive local IAM policies.
  5. E
    Store AWS Config history files in a centralized Amazon S3 bucket located in a logging account. Encrypt the bucket using the AWS managed key aws/s3 and update its key policy to grant cross-account KMS decrypt and encrypt permissions to the member account execution roles.

Answer

Deploy an AWS Config organizational rule with Systems Manager Automation for remediation, and create a Service Control Policy at the Organization root to deny member account modifications to the configuration tools and baseline resources unless performed by the StackSet execution role.
The correct solution involves using AWS Config organizational rules to detect drift via the cloudformation-stack-drift-detection-check rule and remediation via Systems Manager Automation. This provides the continuous compliance check and remediation action. Additionally, attaching an SCP at the Organization root prevents local administrators from disabling AWS Config, Systems Manager, or deleting the baseline resources, while permitting the StackSet execution role to update them.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Configure AWS Config organizational rules to detect drift.
Uses the cloudformation-stack-drift-detection-check managed rule to identify drifted resources across all member accounts automatically.
Ensures that manual modifications to CloudFormation-managed resources are flagged continuously.
2
Set up automated remediation using AWS Systems Manager.
Triggers an SSM Automation document to remediate the drifted configuration.
Allows automatic alignment of the resources back to their baseline template configurations without manual intervention.
3
Establish permission guards using Service Control Policies (SCPs).
Denies unauthorized deletion or modification of governance tools and baseline resources, allowing updates only by the StackSet execution role.
Prevents local administrators from disabling the monitoring and remediation configuration, ensuring compliance enforcement.

Key Concept

Multi-account configuration management, drift detection, and automated remediation using CloudFormation, AWS Config, Systems Manager, and Service Control Policies.
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