• Classroom
  • Online, Self-Paced
Course Description

SEC540 provides development, operations, and security professionals with a methodology to build and deliver secure infrastructure and software using DevOps and cloud services. Students will explore how the principles, practices, and tools of DevOps can improve the reliability, integrity, and security of on-premise and cloud-hosted applications.

Starting with on-premise deployments, the first two days of the course examine the Secure DevOps methodology and its implementation using lessons from successful DevOps security programs. Students will gain hands-on experience using popular open-source tools such as Puppet, Jenkins, GitLab, Vault, Grafana, and Docker to automate Configuration Management ("infrastructure as Code"), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), containerization, micro-segmentation, automated compliance ("Compliance as Code"), and Continuous Monitoring. The lab environment starts with a CI/CD pipeline that automatically builds, tests, and deploys infrastructure and applications. Leveraging the Secure DevOps toolchain, students perform a series of labs injecting security into the CI/CD pipeline using a variety of security tools, patterns, and techniques.

After laying the DevSecOps foundation, the final three days move DevOps workloads to the cloud, build secure cloud infrastructure, and deliver secure software. SEC540 provides in-depth analysis of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) toolchain, while lightly covering comparable services in Microsoft Azure. Using the CI/CD toolchain, students build a cloud infrastructure that can host containerized applications and microservices. Hands-on exercises analyze and fix cloud infrastructure and application vulnerabilities using security services and tools such as API Gateway, Identity and Access Management (IAM), CloudFront Signing, Security Token Service (STS), Key Management Service (KMS), managed WAF services, serverless functions, CloudFormation, AWS Security Benchmark, and much more.

Learning Objectives

  • Build a Secure DevOps workflow in your organization
  • Create automated security tasks in Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) systems
  • Configure and run scanners from the Secure DevOps Toolchain
  • Perform cloud infrastructure security audits for common misconfiguration vulnerabilities
  • Wire cloud application security scans in cloud-hosted (CI/CD) systems
  • Review and identify cloud encryption services for data storage vulnerabilities
  • Perform secure secrets management using on-premise and cloud-hosted secrets management tools
  • Audit microservice architectures for security vulnerabilities in containers, serverless, and API gateway appliances
  • Leverage cloud automation to automate patching and software deployments without downtime
  • Build serverless functions to monitor, detect, and actively defend cloud services and configurations

Framework Connections

The materials within this course focus on the Knowledge Skills and Abilities (KSAs) identified within the Specialty Areas listed below. Click to view Specialty Area details within the interactive National Cybersecurity Workforce Framework.