A company runs a web application backed by Amazon RDS. A database administrator accidentally edited and lost data. The company wants the ability to restore the database to its state from 5 minutes before any change within the last 30 days. Which feature should the solutions architect include to meet this requirement?

Automated backups are the correct choice because they enable point-in-time recovery for an Amazon RDS instance. This feature automatically backs up your database and transaction logs, allowing you to restore the database to any specific second within your retention period (up to 35 days). This directly addresses the requirement to restore data from 5 minutes before a change within the last 30 days. Read replicas are for improving read performance and offloading read traffic, not for data recovery from accidental loss. Manual snapshots are a valid backup method but require manual initiation and do not offer the granular point-in-time recovery that automated backups provide. Multi-AZ deployments enhance availability and durability by creating a standby instance in another Availability Zone, but they do not protect against accidental data loss within the primary database; the standby instance would replicate the accidental change.