• Online, Self-Paced
  • Classroom
Course Description

As more organizations move data and infrastructure to the cloud, security is becoming a major priority. Operations and development teams are finding new uses for cloud services, and executives are eager to save money and gain new capabilities and operational efficiency by using these services. But, will information security prove to be an Achilles' heel? Many cloud providers do not provide detailed control information about their internal environments, and quite a few common security controls used internally may not translate directly to the public cloud.

The SEC545 course, Cloud Security Architecture and Operations, will tackle these issues one by one. We'll start with a brief introduction to cloud security fundamentals, and then cover the critical concepts of cloud policy and governance for security professionals. For the rest of day one and all of day two, we'll move into technical security principles and controls for all major cloud types (SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS). We'll learn about the Cloud Security Alliance framework for cloud control areas, then delve into assessing risk for cloud services, looking specifically at technical areas that need to be addressed.

The course then moves into cloud architecture and security design, both for building new architectures and for adapting tried-and-true security tools and processes to the cloud. This will be a comprehensive discussion that encompasses network security (firewalls and network access controls, intrusion detection, and more), as well as all the other layers of the cloud security stack. We'll visit each layer and the components therein, including building secure instances, data security, identity and account security, and much more. We'll devote an entire day to adapting our offense and defense focal areas to cloud. This will involve looking at vulnerability management and pen testing, as well as covering the latest and greatest cloud security research. On the defense side, we'll delve into incident handling, forensics, event management, and application security.

We wrap up the course by taking a deep dive into SecDevOps and automation, investigating methods of embedding security into orchestration and every facet of the cloud life cycle. We'll explore tools and tactics that work, and even walk through several cutting-edge use cases where security can be automated entirely in both deployment and incident detection-and-response scenarios using APIs and scripting.

Learning Objectives

  • Revise and build internal policies to ensure cloud security is properly addressed
  • Understand all major facets of cloud risk, including threats, vulnerabilities, and impact
  • Articulate the key security topics and risks associated with SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS cloud deployment models
  • Evaluate Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs) to better protect and monitor SaaS deployments
  • Build security for all layers of a hybrid cloud environment, starting with hypervisors and working to application layer controls
  • Evaluate basic virtualization hypervisor security controls
  • Design and implement network security access controls and monitoring capabilities in a public cloud environment
  • Design a hybrid cloud network architecture that includes IPSec tunnels
  • Integrate cloud identity and access management (IAM) into security architecture
  • Evaluate and implement various cloud encryption types and formats
  • Develop multi-tier cloud architectures in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), using subnets, availability zones, gateways, and NAT
  • Integrate security into DevOps teams, effectively creating a DevSecOps team structure
  • Build automated deployment workflows using AWS and native tools
  • Incorporate vulnerability management, scanning, and penetration testing into cloud environments
  • Build automated and flexible detection and response programs using tools like AWS-IR, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and AWS Lambda
  • Leverage the AWS CLI to automate and easily execute operational tasks
  • Set up and use an enterprise automation platform, Ansible, to automate configuration and orchestration tasks
  • Use CloudWatch, CloudFormation, and other automation tools to integrate automated security controls into your cloud security program

Framework Connections