Cloud computing can be an incredibly powerful tool for your business. The ability to easily start and stop resources means that you can ramp up operations quickly in the face of unexpected demand, and you don’t have to pay for resources that are idle, saving money. Here are some best practices to consider:
AWS role-based access
- AWS role-based access control (RBAC) is a feature that
allows you to assign granular permissions to users. This can be done by
creating IAM roles, which are special accounts that give users access to
specific resources in your account. For example, you could create an
IAM role for developers and another one for operations engineers with
different permissions so that each group has only the privileges they
need without interfering with one another’s workflows. You can also use
these IAM roles in conjunction with AWS Identity and Access Management
(IAM) policies or API keys to limit what actions users can perform on
resources based on who they are—a concept known as user policy.
- A great practice when using RBAC is to restrict administrative privileges by requiring two out of three credentials: username/password combination; MFA token; or multi-factor authentication (MFA). For example: “Bob Smith” has full administrator rights but cannot take any action unless he authenticates through either his username/password combination or MFA token; “Jane Doe” has read-only access and cannot take any action unless she authenticates through her username/password combination; “John Q Public” has no access at all until he authenticates through either his username/password combination, MFA token or multi-factor authentication (MFA).
VPC Security Groups
VPC security groups are a great way to control access to your VPC resources. Security groups are a list of rules that allow or deny traffic to and from a VPC, EC2 instance or subnet, or route table. They can also be applied to other AWS services like S3 buckets and CloudFront distributions.
VPC security groups let you enforce the principle of least privilege by limiting external access based on source IP address ranges, protocols (TCP/UDP), ports, and more. You can also use them for internal traffic filtering by inspecting source IP addresses only if they’re from within your company’s network or when using private IP ranges for inter-availability zone communication between AZs in different regions through VPNs on demand links known as virtual tunnels.[1]
Use IAM groups and users
IAM groups and users provide a more secure way of delegating permissions to other users. Using ACLs, you can grant access to resources like S3 buckets or DynamoDB tables. With IAM, you can delegate these permissions to other AWS services as well as individual users. This way, if someone leaves the company or changes their role in some way that alters their access rights, it's easy for you to revoke those permissions through your group or user definition instead of having to go into each service individually and change those settings there too.
SSH key pairs for EC2 instances
To use SSH keys for EC2 instances, you must first create an SSH key pair. You can do this in the IAM console by clicking on your AWS account name and selecting Security Credentials from the navigation bar. Once there, click on Generate Key Pair to create a new key.
Next, you need to attach that key to your instance by launching it through the EC2 console or using the AWS CLI command run-instances . The syntax for attaching an existing key using run-instances is ssh-add -K .pem (where is replaced with your actual public/private key pair name).
You can also manage individual server instances by attaching that same private/public key pair instead of having it stored locally on your computer via ssh-add -K .pem (where is replaced with your actual public/private key pair name). This will allow you to log into any other servers within your infrastructure without requiring another password or username combination!
S3 bucket policies
S3 bucket policies are a way to control access to S3 buckets and objects within them. Bucket policies can be applied when the bucket is created, or they can be changed at any time later. Once applied, the policy applies to all objects in that particular bucket.
Let's look at an example: You have an S3 bucket containing several files that need to be shared with your team members as well as external customers via an internet-facing web application. The first thing you'd want to do is create a new IAM user who will only have access rights on this particular S3 bucket:
```javascript
// Create an IAM user named "team" with no role assignments yet (IAM roles will be added later)
user = boto3.client('iam')['create_user']('team', 'accessS3BucketOnly')
''`Now let's add our custom policy for this new team user! The following code sets up some basic permissions for the team member here; note that we're using Path Policies and not ACL Policies (which would use more resources). A Path Policy allows us more fine-grained control over actions than ACL Policies do:
Managed security groups & alerting
Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a managed security service that helps you monitor and secure your AWS environment. The managed security service integrates with Amazon CloudWatch to provide alerts if there are any changes to the state of your resources.
As an example, let's say you have a load balancer in an Amazon VPC and want to enable ingress traffic only from the internet gateway for your Internet-facing web servers. To do this, you create a rule that allows EC2 instances in a specified subnet to receive ingress traffic from the Internet gateway via TCP port 443 only. You then create another rule that allows all other hosts on your network to send HTTP requests directly inside the VPC without going through the load balancer. This way, if someone tries accessing your network using non-standard ports or protocols (e.g., ICMP), they will not be able to bypass the firewall rules using these methods because they will have no route back into your VPC unless they go through this specific set of rules first!
Hide AWS meta-data from user VMs
You can easily hide AWS meta-data from user VMs.
- Use a VPN service - This is the easiest method, but you must pay for it. You should consider this option if you don't want to incur any costs for your VPN solution and already have a VPN provider that you're comfortable with.
- Use a VPN endpoint - This option is similar to using a VPN service: it's free and doesn't require much effort on your part besides configuring the AWS side of things (which can be difficult). It requires endpoints on both ends of your connection (in this case, one in each region where users access their applications). These endpoints must be configured with static IPs so they can be reached by other parts of the network without having to rely on DNS resolution every time someone tries connecting through them.
CloudTrail logging (event history) & alerting
CloudTrail is a service that records API calls made on your AWS account. CloudTrail logs are stored in Amazon S3 and can be viewed using the AWS Management Console or directly from the command line.
To get started with CloudTrail, navigate to the 'Security' section of your AWS console (https://console.aws.amazon.com/console/home#section-security) and then click 'CloudTrail'. This will take you to a page where you can configure CloudTrail for your account by clicking on the green button labeled 'Enable'. This will open up a modal window that looks like this:
VPC peering
VPC peering allows you to create a connection between your VPCs. You can connect two VPCs, or two VPCs and your on-premises network. When you peer VPCs, traffic is routed over the internet between them instead of being tunneled through an AWS Direct Connect connection.
Why should you peer? VPC peering can be used to connect your VPCs to AWS services like Amazon S3 and leverage cross-account roles in order to gain access to resources such as Amazon RDS DB instances.
Use WAF (WebApplication Firewall) for websites hosted on EC2 instances or S3 buckets.
- Use WAF (WebApplication Firewall) for websites hosted on EC2 instances or S3 buckets. To protect websites hosted on EC2 instances or S3 buckets, you need to use a web application firewall (WAF).
- Block bad requests. A WAF can be used to block bad requests such as:
- SQL injection attacks - When an attacker attempts to execute arbitrary SQL commands
- Cross-site scripting attacks - When scripts are injected into an application that then execute malicious code in the browser of other visitors
There are many ways to protect your environment in the cloud and learning more about best practices can help you choose services that work for you.
There are many ways to protect your environment in the cloud and learning more about best practices can help you choose services that work for you. Here’s a look at some of our favorite ways to keep your AWS environment protected:
- Encrypting data at rest or in transit is critical to ensuring sensitive information stays secure and private. Amazon S3 offers end-to-end encryption with no additional charge, so you don't have to worry about extra costs or performance issues associated with encrypting such large amounts of data.
- Identity management ensures that only authorized users have access to the resources they need, whether it's on premises or in the cloud. AWS Identity Access Management (IAM) enables administrators control over access permissions across all accounts within an organization as well as provide different levels of permissions based on user roles within an account so everyone has just what they need—and nothing else! This helps ensure only those who need access actually get it without compromising security controls set up by IT staff beforehand which means fewer mistakes made along the way thus making sure all parties stay safe while using cloud applications like Salesforce CRM which requires authentication
Conclusion
In this Article, we’ve covered what you need to know in order to securely configure your AWS environment. By following these best practices, you can ensure that your infrastructure is well-protected and prevent security breaches.
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