A company detects unusual login attempts in many of its AWS accounts.

The correct answer is C. Configuring AWS CloudTrail to send log data events to an Amazon CloudWatch Logs log group and creating a CloudWatch logs metric filter to match failed ConsoleLogin events is the simplest and most efficient way to monitor and alert on failed login attempts. Creating a CloudWatch alarm that is based on the metric filter and configuring an alarm action to send messages to the SNS topic will ensure that the security team is notified when multiple failed login attempts occur. This solution requires the least operational effort compared to the other options.

Option A is incorrect because it involves configuring AWS CloudTrail to send log management events instead of log data events. Log management events are used to track changes to CloudTrail configuration, such as creating, updating, or deleting a trail. Log data events are used to track API activity in AWS accounts, such as login attempts. Therefore, option A will not capture the failed ConsoleLogin events.

Option B is incorrect because it involves creating an Amazon Athena query and two Amazon EventBridge rules to monitor and alert on failed login attempts. This is a more complex and costly solution than using CloudWatch logs and alarms. Moreover, option B relies on the query returning a failure, which may not happen if the query is executed successfully but does not find any failed logins.

Option D is incorrect because it involves configuring AWS CloudTrail to send log data events to an Amazon S3 bucket and configuring an Amazon S3 event notification for the s3:ObjectCreated event type. This solution will not work because the s3:ObjectCreated event type does not allow filtering by ConsoleLogin failed events. The event notification will be triggered for any object created in the S3 bucket, regardless of the event type. Therefore, option D will generate a lot of false positives and unnecessary notifications.

AWS CloudTrail Log File Examples

Creating CloudWatch Alarms for CloudTrail Events: Examples

Monitoring CloudTrail Log Files with Amazon CloudWatch Logs