This section of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional learning path introduces the key identity management, security, and encryption services within AWS relevant to the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam. Core to security is AWS Identity & Access Management commonly referred to as IAM. This service manages identities and their permissions that can access your AWS resources, so understanding how this service works and what you can do with it will help you to maintain a secure AWS environment. IAM is an important service in ensuring your resources are secure.
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Learning Objectives
- Learn about identity and access management on AWS, including users, groups & roles, IAM policies, MFA, identity federation, and cross-account access
- Learn the fundamentals of AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF), including what it is, when to use it, how it works, and why use it
- Understand how to configure and monitor AWS WAF
- Learn about AWS Firewall Manager and its components
- Learn how to configure AWS Shield
- Learn the fundamentals of AWS Cognito
AWS Security Hub automatically implements three fundamental standards as defined by the Center for Internet Security, or CIS. CIS is helping make the connected world a safer place by publishing guidelines to safeguard public and private organizations against cyber threats. This includes benchmarks for AWS implementations. The reference URL for the Center for Internet Security is www.cisecurity.org Once enabled, Security Hub begins to monitor CIS benchmarks in order to provide you visibility as to what you're doing right and what needs remediation.
The first standard supported by Security Hub is called the AWS Foundational Security Best Practices Version 1.0. This is a standard defined and curated by AWS security experts and represents the most basic actions you need to take on a new account in order to make sure everything else you build is secure. Details as simple as enabling multifactor authentication for all account users, defining a robust password policy, the use of groups for applying permissions to users and making sure you never have publicly accessible Amazon S3 buckets will ensure a high score on this fundamental benchmark. We will discuss how to get a good score on this set of best practices in the next section.
The second standard supported by AWS Security Hub is the CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark Version 1.2. This is a set of best practices for AWS configuration in terms of security. It includes details related to monitoring and logging, which are essential to identify security issues. AWS Security Hub automatically checks for your compliance with these benchmarks once you enable it.
The third standard supported by Security Hub is the PCI DSS Version 3.2.1. This stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards and it applies to the storing and processing of credit card information in your AWS implementation. AWS Security Hub is your central point of access to verify AWS security and take appropriate action when needed.
AWS Security is to be taken seriously and best practices need to be defined by your organization, implemented and reviewed regularly as the security landscape continues to evolve. The importance of security in your AWS infrastructure cannot be overstated. A fundamental error in your security implementation can potentially compromise and cost your business significant losses in time, effort, and money. Cloud security is complicated to implement. AWS Security Hub helps you manage the complexity of collecting and remediating security issues in your AWS infrastructure.
Danny has over 20 years of IT experience as a software developer, cloud engineer, and technical trainer. After attending a conference on cloud computing in 2009, he knew he wanted to build his career around what was still a very new, emerging technology at the time — and share this transformational knowledge with others. He has spoken to IT professional audiences at local, regional, and national user groups and conferences. He has delivered in-person classroom and virtual training, interactive webinars, and authored video training courses covering many different technologies, including Amazon Web Services. He currently has six active AWS certifications, including certifications at the Professional and Specialty level.