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The correct service to mitigate Distributed Denial of Service attacks is AWS Shield. It provides automatic protection that safeguards web applications without necessitating any modifications to the existing setup. AWS Shield Standard is automatically included with certain AWS services such as Amazon CloudFront and provides protection against the most common attacks at no additional cost. For higher levels of protection, AWS Shield Advanced offers more comprehensive defenses against larger and more complex attacks, including access to the 24/7 AWS DDoS Response Team. AWS WAF primarily protects web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, security, and compliance, but is not directly aimed at DDoS protection. AWS Firewall Manager is a service that allows you to centrally manage firewall rules across your accounts and applications in AWS Organizations, but it does not directly mitigate DDoS attacks. Amazon Inspector is used to perform security assessments and find vulnerabilities, not for real-time attack mitigation.

Storage Optimized instances such as I3, I4i and D2 families are ideal for workloads that require high, sequential read and write access to large datasets in local instance storage. They provide low-latency, high-throughput access to massive amounts of data, making them suitable for applications like data warehousing and Hadoop distributed computing workloads. Compute Optimized instances are designed for compute-intensive workloads that benefit from high-performance processors, but they do not focus on enhanced storage performance. Memory Optimized instances are best for workloads that require large amounts of memory, offering high memory-to-CPU ratios, which is beneficial for real-time big data analytics and in-memory databases. Accelerated Computing instances use hardware accelerators, such as GPUs or FPGAs, to perform functions like graphics processing or parallel computations more efficiently, but they are not specifically optimized for high-performance local storage access.

The correct service to use in this case is AWS Cost Explorer because it allows users to create detailed and customizable reports that include both historical and forecasted data regarding cloud expenses. It can help the financial team understand future costs associated with new and existing cloud resources. While AWS Budgets assists in setting budget thresholds and alerts, it doesn't offer predictive reporting features. AWS Cost and Usage Report delivers comprehensive usage and cost data but lacks forecasting capabilities. Lastly, the AWS Pricing Calculator is designed to estimate costs prior to committing to services and does not produce past usage reports or future spend predictions.

Organizing users into groups based on their access requirements and attaching appropriate policies to these groups is the most effective approach. This method implements a role based access control (RBAC) which allows for centralized permission management, making it easier to assign or revoke access as team members join or leave. It also reduces the complexity of managing individual permissions for each user and minimizes the risk of granting unnecessary privileges. Attaching permissions directly to individual user accounts is not scalable as the team grows. Using roles for each permission set is more suitable for temporary or cross-account access rather than managing team permissions. Granting all users full access goes against the principle of least privilege and poses security risks.

The correct service, Key Management Service, provides a centralized control point for managing cryptographic keys. It integrates with various storage and database services to enable the encryption of data at rest. The service also allows for the implementation of automatic key rotation, helping maintain security compliance. Elastic Compute Cloud deals with compute capacity and utilizes encryption keys but does not manage them. Identity and Access Management is focused on managing identities and permissions, not encryption keys. Simple Storage Service offers data storage and also supports encryption but by itself does not manage the keys used for encrypting data.

Using Amazon ElastiCache for Redis as a caching layer in front of the database can greatly enhance read performance by storing frequently accessed data in-memory. This reduces database load, leading to potentially lower costs by avoiding the need for scaling the database to meet sporadic read traffic spikes. Amazon ElastiCache supports complex data types and atomic operations, which makes it highly suitable for read-heavy database workloads. On the other hand, placing compute instances with ephemeral storage as a cache or using Amazon S3 Select would not offer the same level of latency optimization for database read operations. Amazon S3 Select is specifically designed for retrieving subsets of data from objects in S3 and would not serve as an effective front-end cache for a database.

File gateway mode of a certain hybrid storage service provides a seamless way to integrate on-premises file systems with cloud storage like Amazon S3, ensuring low-latency access via local caching. It also offers automatic tiering capabilities to transition data to cost-saving storage classes after set periods of inactivity. This makes it a suitable solution for the financial institution's requirements. The alternatives mentioned do not offer the same combined functionality regarding local caching, seamless integration with cloud storage, and automatic tiering based on inactivity, thus, they would not present the most efficient solution for the given scenario.

The Application Load Balancer (ALB) is designed to work at the application layer (Layer 7) of the OSI model and supports content-based routing. It can terminate SSL connections, thus offloading SSL processing from the backend servers, and route traffic based on HTTP headers, which fits the specified requirements. Additionally, ALB has support for WebSocket, which is a protocol providing full-duplex communication channels over a single TCP connection. The Network Load Balancer (NLB) operates at Layer 4 and does not support SSL termination or content-based routing. While Amazon CloudFront supports SSL termination, WebSocket, and can route based on headers, it is primarily a content delivery network, not a load balancer designed to manage application traffic across server resources. Lastly, AWS Global Accelerator improves global application availability and performance but lacks the specified application layer routing capabilities.

This statement is true. Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) service. It supports health checks and DNS failover which routes users to alternative resources when the primary resource becomes unhealthy based on a pre-defined threshold. By configuring Route 53 with health checks and failover routing policy, you can automatically redirect traffic to standby resources in case of an application failure, thus mitigating single points of failure.

The most secure and common practice for network architecture within a VPC is to place resources with different security levels into separate subnets. Public web servers should be placed in a public subnet with an Internet Gateway to allow traffic from the internet. Database servers should be placed in a private subnet without direct access to the internet, enhancing their security. NAT gateways are used to allow instances in a private subnet to initiate outbound internet traffic (for updates, patches, etc.) without being directly accessible from the internet.

The process of federation involves the integration of an external directory service with IAM roles. By setting up federation, users authenticate with their local credentials on their existing directory system and then receive temporary security credentials to operate on the console or interact with services via APIs or CLI. This method honors the principle of least privilege and simplifies credential management while providing secure access. Manually creating IAM users is redundant and insecure for large enterprise environments. Assigning long-term credentials goes against security best practices, making them a poor choice. Lastly, developing a bespoke authentication portal partial to the corporation's internal system does not use AWS built-in mechanisms for secure access management and is less efficient and potentially less secure.

The EC2 Spot Instances are an appropriate solution as they can provide the necessary compute power for the batch processing jobs at a significantly reduced cost compared to On-Demand instances. However, because batch jobs can withstand interruptions, Spot Instances are ideal for this scenario - enabling the client to take advantage of the unused EC2 capacity in the AWS cloud at a potentially lower price. Using Reserved Instances may not be cost-effective due to their long-term commitment and potential underutilization during idle periods. On-Demand Instances would provide the required resources but without cost optimization for sporadic use. Finally, Dedicated Hosts are physical servers with EC2 instance capacity fully dedicated to a user's use case and are generally used for specific compliance requirements, not for handling sporadic demand efficiently.

The correct service handles the full lifecycle of SSL/TLS certificates, allowing secure data transmission over the internet. This service integrates with various other services to automate the use of these certificates with resources such as load balancers and content delivery networks without manual intervention from administrators.

The correct service for analyzing and managing cloud expenditure with detailed reports and forecasts is Cost Explorer. It is designed to help users visualize spending patterns and make informed decisions. Cost Explorer offers a set of default reports along with capabilities for users to create custom reports, analyze data, and forecast future costs. In contrast, Budgets primarily provides the ability to set custom budget thresholds and receive alerts, but lacks advanced analytical features. The Cost and Usage Report delivers billing data files perfect for complex post-processing and auditing, rather than interactive analysis and visualization. Trusted Advisor checks configurations and gives recommendations across various categories, including cost optimization, but does not provide direct cost analysis and forecast tools.

False. For data that is infrequently accessed but requires immediate retrieval when needed, Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) is the appropriate storage class. It offers lower storage costs compared to Amazon S3 Standard while providing the same low latency and high throughput required for immediate access. Storage classes designed for long-term archival, such as Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval or Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive, have retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours, making them unsuitable when immediate retrieval is necessary.