SOA-C02 Question 214
Single answerYour organization has a web application hosted on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). To comply with security requirements, all traffic between clients and the ALB must be encrypted using HTTPS. Additionally, you want to simplify certificate management. Which solution should you implement?
- A
Use AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) to provision an SSL/TLS certificate and associate it with the ALB.
- B
Manually purchase an SSL/TLS certificate from an external Certificate Authority (CA) and upload it to the ALB.
- C
Use AWS Key Management Service (KMS) to generate an SSL/TLS certificate and associate it with the ALB.
- D
Configure an IPSec VPN between clients and the ALB to encrypt the traffic.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The best solution for enabling HTTPS on an Application Load Balancer while simplifying certificate management is to use AWS Certificate Manager (ACM). ACM allows you to provision and associate SSL/TLS certificates with your ALB without the need for manual certificate management. Other options are either less efficient or not relevant to the scenario.
- A. Correct.
This is the correct solution. AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) simplifies certificate management by allowing you to provision, manage, and deploy SSL/TLS certificates directly through AWS. These certificates can be easily associated with an ALB to enable HTTPS traffic.
- B. Incorrect.
While manually purchasing and uploading a certificate from an external CA is an option, it is not the most efficient solution for managing certificates at scale. It requires manual renewal and management, which can be more error-prone.
- C. Incorrect.
AWS Key Management Service (KMS) is designed for managing encryption keys, not SSL/TLS certificates. It cannot be used to provision or manage certificates for an ALB.
- D. Incorrect.
IPSec VPNs are used to establish secure connections between networks, not for encrypting traffic between clients and an ALB. This option is not applicable to the given scenario.