Skip to main content

First steps

Updated Aug 30, 2020 ·
NOTES

This is not an exhaustive documentation of all the existing AWS Services. These are summarized notes that I used for the AWS Certifications.

To see the complete documentation, please go to: AWS documentation

Securing your AWS account

  • Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA).
  • Enable Cloudtrail for auditing.
  • Use IAM for every future action.

AWS Own Security Practices

Resources:

Compliance:

  • PCi
  • DSS Compliant
  • ISO 27001
  • HIPAA

AWS Shared Responsibility Model

Security and compliance is a shared responsibility between AWS and the customer.

  • AWS is responsible for the security "of" the cloud.

  • customer is responsible for the security "in" the cloud.

Security of the Cloud

Protection of infrastructure that run all the offered services:

  • Hardware, software, networking, and facilities.
  • Software services provided by AWS (Managed services).

Security in the Cloud

Responsibility and management of:

  • Guest OS of EC2 compute instances.
  • Other application software.
  • Configuration of the AWS provided security group firewall.

AWS categorized their services into three:

Shared responsibility chart:

AWS Config

Records and evaluate configurations of your AWS resources.

  • Assess, audiit, and evaluate configurations.
  • Continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations.
  • Allows to automate evaluation of recorded configurations against their desired configurations.

AWS CloudTrail

Track user activity and API usage:

  • Enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, adn risk auditing og your AWS account.
  • Log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure.
  • Provides event history of your AWS account activity.

Data Control

How data is being encrypted.

  • AWS KMS

    • Multi-tenant
    • Shared service
  • AWS CloudHSM

    • Dedicated cluster where you can store encrytion keys
    • Isolation up to the physical layer
    • Strong compliance requirement