Security

Question 1

AWS Shared Responsibility Model

Answer 1

The shared responsibility model divides into customer responsibilities (commonly referred to as “security in the cloud”) and AWS responsibilities (commonly referred to as “security of the cloud”).

Question 2

Who is ultimately responsible for the security? Is it A: You, the customer? or B: AWS?

Answer 2

And the correct answer is: yes. Both. Both are ultimately responsible for making sure that you are secure.

Question 3

Customers: Security in the cloud

Answer 3

Customers are responsible for the security of everything that they create and put in the AWS Cloud.

When using AWS services, you, the customer, maintain complete control over your content. You are responsible for managing security requirements for your content, including which content you choose to store on AWS, which AWS services you use, and who has access to that content. You also control how access rights are granted, managed, and revoked.

The security steps that you take will depend on factors such as the services that you use, the complexity of your systems, and your company’s specific operational and security needs. Steps include selecting, configuring, and patching the operating systems that will run on Amazon EC2 instances, configuring security groups, and managing user accounts.

Question 4

AWS: Security of the cloud

Answer 4

AWS is responsible for security of the cloud.

AWS operates, manages, and controls the components at all layers of infrastructure. This includes areas such as the host operating system, the virtualization layer, and even the physical security of the data centers from which services operate.

AWS is responsible for protecting the global infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the AWS Cloud. This infrastructure includes AWS Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations.

AWS manages the security of the cloud, specifically the physical infrastructure that hosts your resources, which include:

Physical security of data centers
Hardware and software infrastructure
Network infrastructure
Virtualization infrastructure
Although you cannot visit AWS data centers to see this protection firsthand, AWS provides several reports from third-party auditors. These auditors have verified its compliance with a variety of computer security standards and regulations.

Question 5

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Answer 5

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) enables you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely.

IAM gives you the flexibility to configure access based on your company’s specific operational and security needs. You do this by using a combination of IAM features, which are explored in detail in this lesson:

IAM users, groups, and roles
IAM policies
Multi-factor authentication

Question 6

AWS account root user

Answer 6

When you first create an AWS account, you begin with an identity known as the root user.

The root user is accessed by signing in with the email address and password that you used to create your AWS account. You can think of the root user as being similar to the owner of the coffee shop. It has complete access to all the AWS services and resources in the account.

Question 7

Root User Best Practice

Answer 7

Do not use the root user for everyday tasks.

Instead, use the root user to create your first IAM user and assign it permissions to create other users.

Then, continue to create other IAM users, and access those identities for performing regular tasks throughout AWS. Only use the root user when you need to perform a limited number of tasks that are only available to the root user. Examples of these tasks include changing your root user email address and changing your AWS support plan.

Question 8

IAM users

Answer 8

An IAM user is an identity that you create in AWS. It represents the person or application that interacts with AWS services and resources. It consists of a name and credentials.

By default, when you create a new IAM user in AWS, it has no permissions associated with it. To allow the IAM user to perform specific actions in AWS, such as launching an Amazon EC2 instance or creating an Amazon S3 bucket, you must grant the IAM user the necessary permissions.

Question 9

IAM Best Practice

Answer 9

We recommend that you create individual IAM users for each person who needs to access AWS.

Even if you have multiple employees who require the same level of access, you should create individual IAM users for each of them. This provides additional security by allowing each IAM user to have a unique set of security credentials.

Question 10

IAM policies

Answer 10

An IAM policy is a document that allows or denies permissions to AWS services and resources.

IAM policies enable you to customize users’ levels of access to resources. For example, you can allow users to access all of the Amazon S3 buckets within your AWS account, or only a specific bucket.

Question 11

IAM Best Practice

Answer 11

Follow the security principle of least privilege when granting permissions.

By following this principle, you help to prevent users or roles from having more permissions than needed to perform their tasks.

For example, if an employee needs access to only a specific bucket, specify the bucket in the IAM policy. Do this instead of granting the employee access to all of the buckets in your AWS account.

Question 12

IAM Group

Answer 12

An IAM group is a collection of IAM users. When you assign an IAM policy to a group, all users in the group are granted permissions specified by the policy.

Question 13

IAM Role

Answer 13

An IAM role is an identity that you can assume to gain temporary access to permissions.

Before an IAM user, application, or service can assume an IAM role, they must be granted permissions to switch to the role. When someone assumes an IAM role, they abandon all previous permissions that they had under a previous role and assume the permissions of the new role.

Question 14

Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

Answer 14

Have you ever signed in to a website that required you to provide multiple pieces of information to verify your identity? You might have needed to provide your password and then a second form of authentication, such as a random code sent to your phone. This is an example of multi-factor authentication.

In IAM, multi-factor authentication (MFA) provides an extra layer of security for your AWS account.

Question 15

AWS Organizations

Answer 15

Suppose that your company has multiple AWS accounts. You can use AWS Organizations to consolidate and manage multiple AWS accounts within a central location.

When you create an organization, AWS Organizations automatically creates a root, which is the parent container for all the accounts in your organization.

In AWS Organizations, you can centrally control permissions for the accounts in your organization by using service control policies (SCPs).

Question 16

service control policies (SCPs)

Answer 16

SCPs enable you to place restrictions on the AWS services, resources, and individual API actions that users and roles in each account can access.

Question 17

Organizational units

Answer 17

In AWS Organizations, you can group accounts into organizational units (OUs) to make it easier to manage accounts with similar business or security requirements. When you apply a policy to an OU, all the accounts in the OU automatically inherit the permissions specified in the policy.

By organizing separate accounts into OUs, you can more easily isolate workloads or applications that have specific security requirements. For instance, if your company has accounts that can access only the AWS services that meet certain regulatory requirements, you can put these accounts into one OU. Then, you can attach a policy to the OU that blocks access to all other AWS services that do not meet the regulatory requirements.

Question 18

AWS Artifact

Answer 18

AWS Artifact is a service that provides on-demand access to AWS security and compliance reports and select online agreements. AWS Artifact consists of two main sections: AWS Artifact Agreements and AWS Artifact Reports.

Question 19

AWS Artifact Agreements

Answer 19

Suppose that your company needs to sign an agreement with AWS regarding your use of certain types of information throughout AWS services. You can do this through AWS Artifact Agreements.

In AWS Artifact Agreements, you can review, accept, and manage agreements for an individual account and for all your accounts in AWS Organizations. Different types of agreements are offered to address the needs of customers who are subject to specific regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Question 20

AWS Artifact Reports

Answer 20

Next, suppose that a member of your company’s development team is building an application and needs more information about their responsibility for complying with certain regulatory standards. You can advise them to access this information in AWS Artifact Reports.

AWS Artifact Reports provide compliance reports from third-party auditors. These auditors have tested and verified that AWS is compliant with a variety of global, regional, and industry-specific security standards and regulations. AWS Artifact Reports remains up to date with the latest reports released. You can provide the AWS audit artifacts to your auditors or regulators as evidence of AWS security controls.

Question 21

Customer Compliance Center

Answer 21

The Customer Compliance Center contains resources to help you learn more about AWS compliance.

In the Customer Compliance Center, you can read customer compliance stories to discover how companies in regulated industries have solved various compliance, governance, and audit challenges.

You can also access compliance whitepapers and documentation on topics such as:

AWS answers to key compliance questions
An overview of AWS risk and compliance
An auditing security checklist
Additionally, the Customer Compliance Center includes an auditor learning path. This learning path is designed for individuals in auditing, compliance, and legal roles who want to learn more about how their internal operations can demonstrate compliance using the AWS Cloud.

Question 22

Denail-of-service-attacks (DoS attacks)

Answer 22

A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is a deliberate attempt to make a website or application unavailable to users.

Illustration of a denial-of-service attack, in which the attack originates from a single source
For example, an attacker might flood a website or application with excessive network traffic until the targeted website or application becomes overloaded and is no longer able to respond. If the website or application becomes unavailable, this denies service to users who are trying to make legitimate requests.

Question 23

Distributed Denial-of-service-attacks (DDoS)

Answer 23

In a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, multiple sources are used to start an attack that aims to make a website or application unavailable. This can come from a group of attackers, or even a single attacker. The single attacker can use multiple infected computers (also known as “bots”) to send excessive traffic to a website or application.

To help minimize the effect of DoS and DDoS attacks on your applications, you can use AWS Shield.

Question 24

AWS Shield

Answer 24

AWS Shield is a service that protects applications against DDoS attacks. AWS Shield provides two levels of protection: Standard and Advanced.

Question 25

AWS Shield Standard

Answer 25

AWS Shield Standard automatically protects all AWS customers at no cost. It protects your AWS resources from the most common, frequently occurring types of DDoS attacks.

As network traffic comes into your applications, AWS Shield Standard uses a variety of analysis techniques to detect malicious traffic in real time and automatically mitigates it.

Question 26

AWS Shield Advanced

Answer 26

AWS Shield Advanced is a paid service that provides detailed attack diagnostics and the ability to detect and mitigate sophisticated DDoS attacks.

It also integrates with other services such as Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, and Elastic Load Balancing. Additionally, you can integrate AWS Shield with AWS WAF by writing custom rules to mitigate complex DDoS attacks.

Question 27

AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)

Answer 27

AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) enables you to perform encryption operations through the use of cryptographic keys. A cryptographic key is a random string of digits used for locking (encrypting) and unlocking (decrypting) data. You can use AWS KMS to create, manage, and use cryptographic keys. You can also control the use of keys across a wide range of services and in your applications.

With AWS KMS, you can choose the specific levels of access control that you need for your keys. For example, you can specify which IAM users and roles are able to manage keys. Alternatively, you can temporarily disable keys so that they are no longer in use by anyone. Your keys never leave AWS KMS, and you are always in control of them.

Question 28

AWS WAF

Answer 28

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that lets you monitor network requests that come into your web applications.

AWS WAF works together with Amazon CloudFront and an Application Load Balancer. Recall the network access control lists that you learned about in an earlier module. AWS WAF works in a similar way to block or allow traffic. However, it does this by using a web access control list (ACL) to protect your AWS resources.

Question 29

Amazon Inspector

Answer 29

Amazon Inspector helps to improve the security and compliance of applications by running automated security assessments. It checks applications for security vulnerabilities and deviations from security best practices, such as open access to Amazon EC2 instances and installations of vulnerable software versions.

After Amazon Inspector has performed an assessment, it provides you with a list of security findings. The list prioritizes by severity level, including a detailed description of each security issue and a recommendation for how to fix it. However, AWS does not guarantee that following the provided recommendations resolves every potential security issue. Under the shared responsibility model, customers are responsible for the security of their applications, processes, and tools that run on AWS services.

Question 30

Amazon GuardDuty

Answer 30

Amazon GuardDuty is a service that provides intelligent threat detection for your AWS infrastructure and resources. It identifies threats by continuously monitoring the network activity and account behavior within your AWS environment.

After you have enabled GuardDuty for your AWS account, GuardDuty begins monitoring your network and account activity. You do not have to deploy or manage any additional security software. GuardDuty then continuously analyzes data from multiple AWS sources, including VPC Flow Logs and DNS logs.

If GuardDuty detects any threats, you can review detailed findings about them from the AWS Management Console. Findings include recommended steps for remediation. You can also configure AWS Lambda functions to take remediation steps automatically in response to GuardDuty’s security findings.