AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Practice Exam

In the shared responsibility model, customers using Amazon EC2 are responsible for managing the guest operating systems and security groups. This aspect of responsibility involves ensuring that the software running on the virtual machines (VMs) is up-to-date, properly configured, and secured against vulnerabilities. Customers must also manage their security groups, which function as virtual firewalls to control inbound and outbound traffic to their EC2 instances. By configuring security rules, customers determine which traffic is allowed to reach their instances and what traffic is allowed to leave, thereby safeguarding their applications.

The other options pertain to different aspects of the shared responsibility model. For instance, provisioning AWS infrastructure services is primarily the responsibility of AWS; customers are focused more on the configuration and management of those services rather than their provisioning. Ensuring compliance with regulations is an overarching concern for AWS; while customers must maintain their own legal compliance within their use of services, the regulatory compliance of the cloud infrastructure itself is managed by AWS. Creating KMS keys for data encryption involves key management responsibilities that do fall under the customer's purview but does not encompass the full scope and importance of managing guest operating systems and security configurations, which are central to the customer’s responsibility on the EC2 platform.