4.2.6. Key Concepts Review: Security & Compliance
First Principle: Integrating security controls throughout the entire SDLC, not as an afterthought, ensures "security by design."
Security and compliance are paramount in any cloud environment, especially for DevOps professionals.
Core Concepts & AWS Services for Security & Compliance:
- Identity and Access Management (IAM): Controlling who can do what in your AWS account (users, groups, roles, policies, MFA).
- Network Security: Protecting your network perimeter and internal traffic (Security Groups, Network ACLs, VPC Flow Logs, AWS WAF, AWS Shield).
- Data Protection: Encrypting data at rest and in transit (KMS, ACM, S3 encryption).
- Security Monitoring & Auditing: Detecting and investigating security events (CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Security Hub, Amazon Inspector).
- Compliance: Adhering to regulatory standards and best practices (AWS Config, AWS Organizations SCPs).
- Automated Security: Using services like AWS Config Rules and Lambda to enforce security policies and remediate non-compliant resources automatically.
Key Security & Compliance Concepts:
- IAM: Who can do what.
- Network Security: Protect perimeter & internal.
- Data Protection: Encryption (at rest/transit).
- Monitoring/Auditing: Detect/investigate events.
- Compliance: Meet standards.
- Automation: Enforce & remediate.
Scenario: You need to design a secure CI/CD pipeline for an application that processes sensitive customer data and must adhere to strict regulatory compliance. You need to ensure access is controlled, data is encrypted, and all actions are auditable.
Reflection Question: How would you integrate security controls throughout the entire SDLC for this application, leveraging IAM (for least privilege), KMS (for encryption), CloudTrail (for auditing), and AWS Config (for compliance) to achieve "security by design" and continuous compliance?
š” Tip: Understand the shared responsibility model. AWS is responsible for security of the cloud, while you are responsible for security in the cloud. Focus on how DevOps practices enhance security posture.