Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Explore virtualization and containerization, from traditional infrastructure with multiple physical servers to virtual machines under a hypervisor, then to single operating system containers powering cloud computing.

Explore how cloud computing delivers files, applications, and resources over the internet, with daily examples like Google Drive, social media, and online payments, and its business potential.

Define cloud computing with the Nysed model: on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources—servers, storage, databases, networking, software and analytics—provisioned rapidly with minimal management over the internet.

Explore cloud service models, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, and learn how providers manage infrastructure while you focus on data and applications.

Explore cloud service models with a pizza analogy, mapping on premise and four options—take and bake (IaaS), pizza delivered (PaaS), and dine it out (SaaS)—to simplify understanding.

SaaS delivers software over the internet via cloud apps accessible from any device, with centralized updates, no upfront hardware, scalable subscriptions, broader market reach, cloud backups, and analytics.

Explore criteria for selecting a cloud service provider to maximize the value of cloud services purchased. Apply these criteria to make informed decisions in cloud computing fundamentals.

Develop an analytical framework to select a cloud service provider you trust with data and applications. Analyze your organization's requirements to identify features, resources, and security and compliance goals.

Explore the eight cloud computing challenges from the 2020 Rightscale state of the cloud survey, including security, managing cloud spend, governance, lack of resources or expertise, multi-cloud, and cloud migration.

Explore cloud security risks, including hacking, virus attacks, data privacy, data loss, and data leaks, and learn why organizations need robust cloud security and management systems.

Improve cloud governance by enforcing compliance, data quality, and risk management through conventional control procedures, highlighting core IT and business unit roles and the support of third-party providers.

Master cloud compliance by selecting vendors that provide certified compliance and meet industry standards when moving data from internal storage to cloud or backup services, with mutual input.

Leverage your existing licenses in the cloud with BYOL to enable license mobility, reduce upfront costs with subscription-based models, and track license validity and usage across the company.

Learn how to manage a multi-cloud environment by mapping workloads to cloud services, defining SLAs for privacy and latency, and using a cloud management platform for governance, integration, and analytics.

Learn cloud security as safeguards and protections that shield resources from leakage, theft, and data loss, including data center security, access control, threat detection, threat mitigation, redundancy, cloud security policy.

Explore the cloud security alliance's role in advancing practices, research, and education for securing cloud computing, including its member types and the egregious 11 top threats to cloud computing report.

Explore the CSA's egregious 11 top cloud security threats, highlighting misconfiguration, change control, identity and access management lapses, account hijacking, and insecure APIs.

Explore how cloud computing data breaches expose sensitive information to unauthorized access, affecting reputation, IP, and regulatory and financial liabilities, and how encryption and incident response plans mitigate risk.

Explore misconfiguration and inadequate change control as top cloud threats, causing unsecured data and excessive permissions. Embrace automation to continuously scan and remediate in real time.

Develop a cloud security architecture aligned with business goals, implement a security architecture framework, and maintain an up-to-date threat model with continuous visibility.

Explore how insufficient identity, credentials and key management enables unauthorized access to data. Mitigate risks with multifactor authentication, strong passwords, regular key rotation, least privilege, and centralized key management.

Explore how cloud account hijacking compromises privileged accounts, triggers data leaks, and disrupts operations, and learn defense in depth and IAM controls to mitigate the threat.

Protect cloud interfaces and APIs from exposure through authentication, access control, encryption, and activity monitoring, while maintaining hygiene by inventory, testing, auditing, and safe API key management.

Jeopardize cloud data security and integrity with a weak control plane that undermines the data plane. Apply due diligence and rely on cloud provider controls to protect data and applications.

Explore abuse and nefarious use of cloud services, including DDoS, malware hosting, crypto mining, and data exfiltration, and learn monitoring and DLP controls to prevent these attacks.

Highlight how cloud complexity enables attackers, increasing top threats, risks, and vulnerabilities that risk data loss. Promote cloud security through awareness, proper configuration, and identity management.

Explain end-to-end encryption as a secure method where only sender and recipient can access messages, via asymmetric cryptography using public and private keys.

Choose local data backups to protect data integrity against ransomware, even with cloud backups, follow the FBI guidance to not pay ransoms, and enable quick restoration.

Learn how to defend against DDoS attacks by implementing multi-layered protections with web application firewalls, intrusion protection systems, IPS, and load balancers, and leverage managed service providers for coverage.

Identify and assess vulnerabilities in information systems through testing, analysis, and remediation. Prioritize risks and coordinate security, development, and operations teams to implement patches.

Access management restricts internal users' access to cloud data through role-based controls. Administrators assign roles by need and position, helping meet regulatory requirements and strengthen security.

Develop a cybersecurity strategy to protect your business, employees, and clients' personal information from rising cybercrime, preserve productivity, and maintain credibility and customer trust.

Explore how Amazon Web Services provides a secure cloud platform with compute, storage, databases, analytics, and more, including EC2, S3, RDS, Route 53, and IAM.

Explore Azure, a cloud computing platform and online portal to access resources and services, including Azure Kubernetes Services and Azure Blockchain Services, to build, run, and manage apps across clouds.

We compare open source and proprietary cloud platforms, highlighting advantages such as flexibility, control, and cost, and explore how hybrid solutions can combine the best of both for your business.