Security Introduction
How IAM is used to securely manage access
Managing user identities with long term credentials in IAM
Managing access using IAM user groups & roles
Using IAM policies to define and manage permissions
Cross-account access
AWS Web Application Firewall
AWS Firewall Manager
AWS Shield
Amazon Cognito
Identity Federation
SAA-C02- Exam Prep
Please note that this course has been replaced with a new version that can be found here: https://cloudacademy.com/course/security-saa-c03/security-saa-c03-introduction/
This course looks at the key Security services within AWS relevant to the Solution Architect associate exam. Core to security is Identity & Access Management, commonly referred to as IAM. This service manages identities and their permissions that are able to access your AWS resources and 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.
Want more? Try a lab playground or do a Lab Challenge!
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
Hello and welcome to this lecture where I shall provide an overview of what the Identity & Access Management service is, and what IAM actually means.
Firstly I want to define what is meant by Identity & Access Management and I shall break this down into two parts, starting with Identity Management.
Identities, such as AWS usernames are required to authenticate you to your AWS account, and this authentication process is managed in 2 stages.
- The first part of this process is to define who you are, effectively presenting your identity, so for example your AWS username. This identification is a unique value within IAM for your account, so this means IAM would prevent you from having 2 identical user accounts with the same name within the same AWS account.
- The second part of the authentication process is to verify that you are who you say you are. This is achieved by supplying additional data, and when using our AWS usernames we can verify this by supplying a password
Now, Access Management relates to authorization and access control. Authorization determines what an identity can access within your AWS account once it’s been authenticated to it. An example of this authorization would be the user’s list of permissions to access specific AWS resources, for example, they might have Full Access to EC2 or Read Only to RDS.
Access Control can be classed as the mechanism of accessing a secured resource. For example, using the following:
- Username and password (Authentication and Verification)
- Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA, used as an additional verification step following a valid password)
- Or Federated Access, which allows users external to AWS to access resources securely without having to supply AWS user credentials from a valid IAM user account. Instead, these credentials are supplied from identity providers. For more information on Identity Federation, please see our existing course here: https://cloudacademy.com/course/using-aws-identity-federation-simplify-access-scale-1549/
So essentially IAM can be defined by its ability to manage, control, and govern authentication, authorization, and access control mechanisms of identities to your resources within your AWS Account.
Having an understanding of the different security controls from an authentication and authorization perspective can help you design the correct level of security for your infrastructure.
Stuart has been working within the IT industry for two decades covering a huge range of topic areas and technologies, from data center and network infrastructure design, to cloud architecture and implementation.
To date, Stuart has created 150+ courses relating to Cloud reaching over 180,000 students, mostly within the AWS category and with a heavy focus on security and compliance.
Stuart is a member of the AWS Community Builders Program for his contributions towards AWS.
He is AWS certified and accredited in addition to being a published author covering topics across the AWS landscape.
In January 2016 Stuart was awarded ‘Expert of the Year Award 2015’ from Experts Exchange for his knowledge share within cloud services to the community.
Stuart enjoys writing about cloud technologies and you will find many of his articles within our blog pages.