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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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