The correct answer is B. Configure CloudTrail to send events to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Create a metric filter for the relevant log group. Create a filter pattern with eventName matching ConsoleLogin and errorMessage matching “Failed authentication”. Create a CloudWatch alarm with a threshold of 3 and a period of 5 minutes.
This answer is correct because it meets the requirements of sending an alert when three or more failed sign-in attempts to the AWS Management Console occur during a 5-minute period. By configuring CloudTrail to send events to CloudWatch Logs, the securityengineer can create a metric filter that matches the desired pattern of failed sign-in events.Then, by creating a CloudWatch alarm based on the metric filter, the security engineer can set a threshold of 3 and a period of 5 minutes, and choose an action such as sending an email or an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) message when the alarm is triggered12.
The other options are incorrect because:
A. Turning on Insights events on the trail and configuring an alarm on the insight is not a solution, because Insights events are used to analyze unusual activity in management events, such as spikes in API call volume or error rates.Insights events do not capturefailed sign-in attempts to the AWS Management Console3.
C. Creating an Amazon Athena table from the CloudTrail events and running a query for failed sign-in events is not a solution, because it does not provide a mechanism to send an alert based on the query results.Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that allows analyzing data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL, but it does not support creating notifications or alarms from queries4.
D. Creating an analyzer in AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer and configuring it to send an Amazon SNS notification when a failed sign-in event occurs 3 times for any IAM user within a period of 5 minutes is not a solution, because IAM Access Analyzer is not a service that monitors sign-in events, but a service that helps identify resources that are shared with external entities.IAM Access Analyzer does not generate findings for failed sign-in attempts to the AWS Management Console5.
[References:, 1: Sending CloudTrail Events to CloudWatch Logs - AWS CloudTrail2: Creating Alarms Based on Metric Filters - Amazon CloudWatch3:Analyzing unusual activity in management events - AWS CloudTrail4:What is Amazon Athena? - Amazon Athena5:Using AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer - AWS Identity and Access Management, , , , ]
