The course is part of this learning path
In the last decade, the nature and complexity of security attacks have increased tremendously. From simple attacks, which focused on hacking exposed web pages, we have evolved to stealthy attacks, which focus on the hacker staying hidden for years on end inside the victim’s network with the sole purpose of stealing data.
To make matters worse, more and more companies have started to store their data in the cloud, thereby transferring part of the responsibility of securing that data to the cloud service provider. Therefore these days the cloud service is entrusted with the task of providing adequate security to the data and services that it provides to customers. While making a decision to move to the cloud, the two main metrics that enterprises look at tend to be cost and security risk. This Course takes a deep dive into cloud security and how to mitigate the risks facing cloud-based infrastructure.
If you have any feedback relating to this Course, feel free to reach out to us at support@cloudacademy.com.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the basics of cloud security.
- Learn about security techniques such as asset management, access control, physical security, and operations security.
- Understand how to manage the vulnerability of your systems and applications.
- Learn how to monitor and respond to events and security incidents.
Intended Audience
- Solutions architects
- Data engineers
- Security engineers
- Anyone who wants to learn how to secure their cloud infrastructure
Pre-requisites
To get the most out of this Course, you should already have a good understanding of cloud infrastructure and operations. Basic knowledge of IT security would also be beneficial.
The cloud application runs on servers and we spoke about ensuring that these servers are fully patched. However, what about the applications themselves? They are exposed to vulnerabilities that are introduced due to bad coding practices of the programmers. SQL injection, cross site scripting, and exception management are some of the application security bugs the creep into the code.
Let us look at each one of them in detail and then we will talk about what we can do to detect them during the testing phase. The OWASP organization lists the top application vulnerabilities as follows: SQL injection, broken authentication, cross site scripting, insecure direct object reference, security misconfiguration, sensitive data exposure, missing function level access control, cross site request forgery, component with known vulnerabilities, un-validated redirects and forwards. SQL injection happens when untrusted data is sent to an interpretor as part of a command or query. The attacker's hostile data can trick the interpretor into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization. Broken session management happens when application functions related to authentication and session management are often not implemented correctly. This allows attackers to compromise passwords, session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws. Cross site scripting flaws occur whenever an application takes untrusted data and sends it to a web browser without proper validation or escaping. Cross site scripting allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim's browser which can hijack user sessions, deface websites, or redirect the user to malicious sites. Insecure direct object reference happens when a direct object reference occurs when a developer exposes a reference to an internal implementation object such as a file, directory, or database key without an access control check or other protection in place. Attackers can manipulate these references to access and authorize data.
Security misconfiguration requires good security, having a secure configuration defined and deployed for the application, frameworks, application server, web server, database server, and platform. Secure settings should be defined, implemented, and maintained as defaults are often insecure. Additionally, software should be kept up to date. Sensitive data exposure happens when web applications do not properly protect sensitive data such as credit cards, tax IDs, and authentication credentials. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data deserves excellent protection such as encryption at rest or in transit as well as special precautions when exchanged with the browser. Missing function level access control, most web applications verify function level access rights before making that functionality visible in the UI. However, applications need to perform the same access control checks on the server when each function is accessed.
If requests are not verified, attackers will be able to forge requests in order to access functionality without proper authorization. Cross site request forgery happens when an attacker forces a logged-on victim's browser to send a forged HTTP request, including the victim's session cookie and any other automatically included authentication information to a vulnerable web application. This allows the attacker to force the victim's browser to generate requests the vulnerable application thinks are legitimate requests from the victim.
Components such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules almost always run with full privileges. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable a range of possible attacks and impacts. Web applications frequently redirect and forward users to pages and websites and use untrusted data to determine the destination pages. Without proper validation, attackers can redirect victims to phishing or malware sites or use forwards to access unauthorized pages. These bugs are the result of bad coding practices by programmers. OWASP website has a very detailed analysis of how these bugs can be detected and corrected.
That analysis is outside the scope of this course and is a week-long course all by itself. What is critical is that the Software Development Life Cycle or SDLC has to factor in testing the software for these defects and this has to be worked into the rigor of software development. A lot of development groups usually push back on this testing because it adds significant overheads to development timelines. Also, many apps and SaaS websites have close to three software releases a day. To factor in security testing into such tight timelines is extremely difficult. What we need to do in such situations is to work with the development teams and work out the best alternatives so that the code that runs on the cloud is bug-free.
A possible solution is application testing can be done once a week or once every major release. This, once again, is dependent on the risk appetite of the company. The higher the risk appetite, more frequent the testing and longer the development timelines.
Vish Chidambaram is an award-winning enterprise security leader with 18+ years of experience, skilled in areas spanning Automation, Security Operation Analytics and Reporting, Threat Management Life cycle, Agile/DevOps environments, SaaS/Cloud security, Business Development/Consulting, Program Management and more. Most recently Vish was the CISO at Rubicon Project, which is a SaaS based ad marketplace. Here he was responsible for securing a high performance SaaS platform with 40 billion transactions per day. He pioneered the integration of security in DevOps, by using automation, orchestration and machine learning tools. He is passionate about teaching security and believes staying current is particularly relevant in the security industry. He also mentors security professionals and advises them through career transitions. Details can be found at datacoreacademy.com or get in touch by writing to info@datacoreacademy.com. His LinkedIn page can be found at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vish-chidambaram/