A cloud solutions architect has an environment that must only be accessed during work hours. Which of the following processes should be automated to best reduce cost?

Scaling reduces resource capacity but the environment remains running, so costs continue to accrue at a lower rate rather than being eliminated.

Implementing access control prevents logins after hours but leaves all underlying infrastructure running and billable.

Cloud providers bill for running resources regardless of utilization, so automating a full shutdown after work hours stops all compute, memory, and associated charges from accruing. Unlike scaling, a shutdown eliminates the resource cost entirely. This is the standard cloud cost-optimization pattern for workloads with predictable idle windows.

Blocking external access is a network security measure and has no effect on the compute or resource costs charged by the cloud provider.