Please note that this course has now been replaced with three new courses:
- The Difference Between Authentication, Authorization, and Access Control in AWS
- Authorization Controls in AWS
- AWS Authentication Mechanisms
Cloud Security is a huge topic, mainly because it has so many different areas of focus. This course focuses on three areas that are fundamental: AWS Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting.
These three topics can all be linked together and 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. Once an identity has been authenticated and is authorized to perform specific functions it's then important that this access can be tracked with regards to usage and resource consumption so that it can be audited, accounted, and billed for.
The course will define and discuss each area, and iron out any confusion of meaning between various security terms. Some people are unaware of the differences between authentication, authorization, and access control, this course will clearly explain the differences here allowing you to use the correct terms to describe your security solutions.
From an AWS authentication perspective, a number of different mechanisms are explained, such as Multi-Factor AWS Authentication (MFA), Federated Identity, Access Keys, and Key Pairs. With the help of demonstrations, you can learn how to apply access keys to your AWS CLI for programmatic access and understand the differences between Linux and Windows authentication methods using AWS Key Pairs.
When we dive into understanding authorization we cover IAM Users, Groups, Roles, and Policies, providing examples and demonstrations. Within this section, S3 authorization is also discussed, looking at access control lists (ACLs) and Bucket Policies. Moving on from S3, we look at network- and instance-level authorization with the help of Network Access Control Lists (NACLs) and Security Groups.
Finally, the Accounting section will guide you through the areas of Billing & Cost Management that you can use to help identify potential security threats. In addition to this, we explain how AWS CloudTrail can be used to track API calls to analyze what users are doing and when. This makes CloudTrail a strong tool in tracking, identifying, and monitoring a user's actions within your AWS environment.
Learning Objectives
- Obtain a strong grasp of the difference between authentication, authorization, access control, and accounting
- Understand various authentication mechanisms used in AWS such as MFA, Federated Identity, Access Keys, and Key Pairs
- Learn about IAM Users, Groups, Roles, and Policies and how they tie into authorization in AWS
- Learn about billing and cost management, and how to use it to identify potential security threats
- Understand how AWS CloudTrail can be used to track, identify, and monitor users' actions within AWS
Intended Audience
This course has been created for anyone with an interest in cloud security, and/or who may hold a position of cloud solutions architect, cloud security specialist, or similar.
Prerequisites
To get the most out of this course, you should have a basic understanding of identity and access management (IAM), Amazon EC2, Amazon S3 storage, networking fundamentals, and the virtual private cloud service.
Hello and welcome to this course, where I shall be discussing authentication, authorization and accounting, and the variety of these three mechanisms that are available to you within AWS.
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. Once an identity has been authenticated and is authorized to perform specific functions, then it's important that this access can be tracked with regards to usage and resource consumption, so that it can be audited, accounted, and billed for.
Before we start, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Stuart Scott. I am one of the trainers here at Cloud Academy, and I specialize in AWS, Amazon Web Services. Feel free to connect with me with any questions using the details shown on the screen. Alternatively, you can always get in touch with us here at Cloud Academy, using the community form where one of our cloud experts will reply to your question.
This course has been created for an audience who have an interest in cloud security, and may be in a position of a cloud solutions architect, or cloud security specialist, or similar. This course will cover a range of topics, including authentication, authorization and access control. Here I shall be looking at the differences between these three terms that often get confused. Then we'll look at authentication mechanisms, and in this lecture, I will examine the different authentication mechanisms available within AWS. Following this, we'll take a look at authorization in AWS. There are a variety of methods to authorize an identity in AWS, so in this section I'll cover some of those most common. Finally, we'll take a look at AWS accounting. When looking at accounting, I will define what this is and dive into AWS billing and cost management, along with an overview of the AWS cloud trail service.
As a student of this course, the content will provide you with the following: clarification of the differences between authentication, authorization and access control; an understanding of the different authentication mechanisms used by AWS; an understanding of the different methods of granting authorized access to different AWS resources; how a combination of authentication and authorization mechanisms can be used to create solid security policies; an overview of how AWS billing can be used to help spot security breaches; and then finally, how to track a user within AWS and monitor their actions through audited APR call requests.
The pre-requisites for this course require a basic understanding of: identity and access management, IAM; EC2; S3; some networking fundamentals; and the virtual private cloud service.
Feedback on our courses here at Cloud Academy are valuable to both us as trainers, and any students looking to take the same course in the future. If you have any feedback, positive or negative, it would be greatly appreciated if you could use the comments section found on the landing page of this course.
That brings us to the end of this lecture. Next, I shall explain the differences between authorization, access control, and authentication.
Lectures
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.