A company wants to securely store Amazon RDS database credentials and automatically rotate user passwords periodically. Which AWS service or capability will meet these requirements?

Question

Options

• AAmazon S3
• BAWS Systems Manager Parameter Store
• CAWS Secrets Manager
• DAWS CloudTrail

• A
  2% (1)
• B
  7% (4)
• C
  89% (54)
• D
  3% (2)

Explanation

AWS Secrets Manager (C) is purpose-built for storing, managing, and automatically rotating sensitive credentials like database passwords - it has native integration with Amazon RDS to handle rotation seamlessly without any custom code.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A (Amazon S3) is object storage for files/data, not a secrets management service - it has no rotation capability and is not designed for credentials.
• B (Systems Manager Parameter Store) can store secrets securely, but automatic rotation is not a built-in feature; it requires Lambda functions and manual setup, making it the "close but not quite" distractor.
• D (AWS CloudTrail) is an audit/logging service that records API calls - it has nothing to do with storing or rotating credentials.

Memory tip: Think of Secrets Manager as a "secret janitor" - it not only locks up your secrets but also changes the locks (rotates passwords) on a schedule automatically. If the question mentions automatic rotation, Secrets Manager is almost always the answer over Parameter Store.

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