AWS Security Best Practices

Explore free or low-cost lab practices to start learning AWS security and get hands-on experience with practical labs.

Explore options for building an affordable AWS security lab using free tier, 15- or 30-day trials, and key security services like EC2, Systems Manager, Inspector, and Security Hub.

Create an AWS security lab guide using free tier services to teach IAM, WAF, Amazon Inspector, and Amazon GuardDuty, while highlighting security auditing with AWS Security Hub and AWS Config.

Explore the core security configuration of AWS, covering VPC security groups, Knakal, and web application firewall concepts as a fast track review of AWS security best practices.

Master VPC basics to build a virtual private cloud in a region, defining IP ranges, routing tables, gateways, subnets, and network access control lists.

Manage subnet-level traffic with stateless network ACLs that allow or deny traffic using top-down, first-match rules, require return traffic, and associate ACLs to multiple subnets in a VPC.

Explore how aws security groups provide stateful, permissive traffic control at the ec2 level with inbound and outbound rules and default deny behavior.

Explore how aws web application firewall provides application-specific protection for web apps, with rule and signature based defense, visibility, and deployment to an application load balancer or CloudFront.

Audit and implement AWS network security by evaluating VPC, security groups, NACL, and WAF; design subnets, CIDR blocks, and ALB usage to enforce restricted, HTTPS traffic and proper isolation.

Apply network security best practices with non-default nacl, explicit allow or deny rules, separate nacls per subnet, and use an application load balancer with waf and shield for layered protection.

Explore proactive security by examining AWS services such as Amazon Inspector, Systems Manager, and GuardDuty, and understand why enabling these services is essential to security best practices.

Learn how Amazon Inspector provides non-intrusive security assessments for AWS resources, using predefined rules to identify vulnerabilities, compliance issues, and network exposure with agent-based findings and remediation guidance.

Discover how AWS Systems Manager centralizes operations to automate tasks, enforce configuration, and audit security and compliance, featuring Parameter Store, Run Command, Session Manager, Patch Manager, and Distributor.

Activate Amazon GuardDuty to detect threats across AWS data sources, generate findings, and push alerts to Eventbridge, AWS Security Hub, and email for real-time response.

Tailor Amazon Inspector with custom rules and baseline assessments for continuous improvement; align with GuardDuty best practices and integrate with Security Hub and CloudWatch.

Explore CloudWatch, EventBridge, and VPC flow logs to monitor security and networking, and analyze practical security use cases.

Explore AWS CloudWatch metrics and logs, including alarms and dashboards. Learn CloudWatch events are Amazon EventBridge and how log groups, log streams, retention, and the CloudWatch agent support EC2 autoscaling.

Discover AWS EventBridge, a serverless event bus that triggers Lambda, SNS, Systems Manager actions, or API Gateway from event patterns or schedules.

Learn how VPC flow logs capture traffic types (accepted, rejected, or all) and store them in CloudWatch logs or S3 for network monitoring, security analysis, troubleshooting, and compliance auditing.

Define CloudWatch log retention and archive unused logs, enforce log group access, and enable the unified CloudWatch agent to centralize EC2 and on‑prem logs.

Explore AWS auditing and compliance by examining AWS Config, CloudTrail, and Security Hub as essential tools to keep your cloud environment in check.

Assess and audit AWS resource configurations with AWS Config to evaluate compliance. Define managed or custom rules, receive real-time alerts, and automate remediation for non-compliant resources.

Understand how AWS CloudTrail logs user activities, API calls, and events to support governance and audit, with 90-day default retention and long-term storage in S3 queried by Athena.

Explore AWS Security Hub, a posture management service that aggregates alerts, enables automated remediations, and uses an integrated dashboard with standards like foundational security best practices and PCI DSS.

Audit and compliance best practices for aws config and cloudtrail, enabling across all accounts and regions, and securing config history in s3.

Secure your AWS compute and storage by applying best practices to protect EC2 instances and storage services, the prime targets for cyber attackers.

Discover how AWS EC2 provides resizable compute capacity via virtual instances and apply security best practices, including OS patching, endpoint protection, security groups, and IAM and networking.

Explore AWS EBS, a high-performance block storage for EC2, with mount and unmount capabilities across instances, and encryption via AWS Key Management Service (KMS) keys to secure data at rest.

Learn to manage EC2 instances using the AWS console, instance connect, and session manager, compare SSH and RDP access, and enable centralized auditing with IAM, CloudWatch, and S3 logging.

Explore AWS compute and storage security best practices for EC2, including strong passwords, minimal services and logins, host IDS/IPS, and EBS encryption with Systems Manager and session manager.

Dive into identity and access management (IAM) and its crucial role in AWS security services, highlighting IAM principles. Look for external video resources, blogs, and lab guides to enrich learning.

Learn the basics of AWS IAM, focusing on users and policies, how to configure passwords and access keys, enable console access, and attach identity and resource policies to prevent misconfigurations.

Explore inline versus managed IAM policies and learn how identity policies grant permissions to users, groups, and roles using JSON policy documents.

Explore resource-based policies and the principal block, comparing them with identity-based policies, to grant or deny access to resources like S3, Lambda, and Secrets Manager.

Learn to manage permissions at scale by using IAM groups to attach inline or managed policies and assign users via groups with shared permissions such as AWS WAF full access.

Create and manage IAM roles to grant temporary access, set maximum session duration, choose trust entities, and attach roles to EC2 with policies like S3 read only.

Explore IAM patterns to simplify resource management with AWS managed and custom managed policies, and implement advanced patterns by splitting permissions across master and manager roles to prevent self-granting.

Explore aws organizations to centrally manage multiple accounts with organization units and service control policies that deny actions across accounts, using json policy documents and service role arn.

Build an IAM threat model to protect assets from insider threats, map architecture and principals, and evaluate policies—administrator, custom, and AWS managed—alongside MFA and strong password rules.

Explore AWS auditing to document compliance and align systems with industry standards, using Cloud Control Matrix (CM), AWS Artifact, AWS Audit Manager, and open source auditing tools.

Discover the Cloud Security Alliance's Cloud Controls Matrix (CM) and its domains, including governance, risk, data privacy, and interoperability, and how CAIQ and CCM guide security across AWS and providers.

Access on-demand AWS artifact to streamline audits with comprehensive compliance and security documents, including PCI DSS, SOC, ISO 27001, HIPAA attestations, and governance for agreements.

Automate audits and strengthen compliance with AWS Audit Manager, offering predefined and customizable frameworks, centralized evidence collection, and automated reporting across standards like ISO 27001 and PCI.

Summarize the AWS security best practices wrap up, highlighting the AWS security lab, network protections (VPC, NACL, WAF) and threat management with Inspector and GuardDuty.

Advance your AWS security knowledge while preparing for the AWS certified security specialist exam, CCSP from ISC², and the certificate of cloud auditing knowledge from ISACA, with ongoing labs.

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We continually update this course to reflect AWS evolution and security best practices, so stay tuned for the latest.