Multiple Clouds Require Multiple Solutions
NOTICE: SEC510: Public Cloud Security: AWS, Azure, and GCP was formerly known as SEC510: Multicloud Security Assessment and Defense. It is the exact same material but with two additional days of content! The new title betters reflect the course content.
COURSE OVERVIEW
SEC510: Public Cloud Security: AWS, Azure, and GCP teaches you how the major cloud providers work and how to securely configure and use their services and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings.
Organizations in every sector are increasingly adopting cloud offerings to build their online presence. However, although cloud providers are responsible for the security of the cloud, their customers are responsible for what they do in the cloud. Unfortunately, the providers have made the customer's job difficult by offering many services that are insecure by default. Worse yet, with each provider offering hundreds of different services and with many organizations opting to use multiple providers, security teams need a deep understanding of the underlying details of the different services in order to lock them down. As the landscape rapidly evolves and development teams eagerly adopt the next big thing, security is constantly playing catch-up in order to avert disaster.
SEC510 provides cloud security practitioners, analysts, and researchers with an in-depth understanding of the inner workings of the most popular public cloud providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Students will learn industry-renowned standards and methodologies, such as the MITRE ATT&CK Cloud Matrix and CIS Cloud Benchmarks, then apply that knowledge in hands-on exercises to assess a modern web application that leverages the cloud native offerings of each provider. Through this process students will learn the philosophies that undergird each provider and how these have influenced their services.
The Big 3 cloud providers alone provide more services than any one company can consume. As security professionals, it can be tempting to limit what the developers use to the tried-and-true solutions of yesteryear. Unfortunately, this approach will inevitably fail as the product development organization sidelines a security entity that is unwilling to change. Functionality drives adoption, not security, and if a team discovers a service offering that can help get its product to market quicker than the competition, it can and should use it. SEC510 gives you the ability to provide relevant and modern guidance and guardrails to these teams to enable them to move both quickly and safely.
THIS COURSE WILL PREPARE YOU TO:
NOTICE TO STUDENTS
LAB INFORMATION
SEC510: Public Cloud Security: AWS, Azure, and GCP consolidates all of the concepts discussed in the lectures through hands-on labs. In the labs, students will assess a modern web application written with Next.js, React, and Sequelize that leverages the cloud native offerings of each provider. Each lab includes step-by-step guide as well as a "no hints" option for students who want to test their skills without further assistance. This allows students to choose the level of difficulty that is best for them and fall back to the step-by-step guide as needed.
WHAT YOU WILL RECEIVE
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
WHAT TO TAKE NEXT
SANS courses that are good follow-ups to SEC510:
Although SEC510 uses Terraform Infrastructure-as-Code to deploy and configure services in each cloud for the labs, students will not need in-depth knowledge of Terraform or need to understand any of the syntax used. However, students will be introduced at a high level to what this code accomplishes.
SEC510 starts with a brief overview of the Big 3 cloud providers. We will examine the factors driving adoption of multiple cloud providers and the rise in popularity of Azure and GCP, which historically have lagged far behind AWS. Students will then initialize their lab environment and deploy a modern web application to each of the Big 3 providers.
This leads into an analysis of the intricacies of Identity and Access Management (IAM), one of the most fundamental and misunderstood concepts in cloud security. Playing the role of an attacker in their lab environment, students will compromise real IAM credentials using application vulnerabilities and then use them to access sensitive data.
The remainder of this section will focus on how to leverage well-written IAM policies to minimize the damage caused by such attacks. Although the ultimate solution is to fix the bug in the application, these strategies can prevent a minor incident from becoming front-page news.
CPE/CMU Credits: 6
The Multicloud Movement
Multicloud Security Assessment
Identity and Access Management
Cloud Credential Management
Application Vulnerability Overviews
Section 2 covers how to lock down infrastructure within a virtual private network. As the public cloud IP address blocks are well known and default network security is often lax, millions of sensitive assets are unnecessarily accessible to the public Internet. This section will ensure that none of these assets belong to your organization.
The section begins by demonstrating how ingress and egress traffic can be restricted within each provider. Students will analyze the damage that can be done without these controls by accessing a public-facing database and creating a reverse shell session in each environment. We will then eliminate both attack vectors with secure cloud configuration.
In addition to introducing additional network defense-in-depth mechanisms, we will discuss cloud-based intrusion detection capabilities to address the network-based attacks we cannot eliminate. Students will analyze cloud traffic and search for indicators of compromise.
CPE/CMU Credits: 6
Cloud Virtual Networks
Network Traffic Analysis
Private Endpoints
Advanced Remote Access
Command and Control Servers
The first half of Section 3 covers all topics related to encryption in the cloud. Students will learn about each provider's cryptographic key solution and how it can be used to encrypt data at rest. Students will also learn how end-to-end, in-transit encryption is performed in the cloud, such as the encryption between clients, load balancers, applications, and database servers.
Proper encryption is not only critical for security; it is also an important legal and compliance consideration. This section will ensure that your organization has all of the information at its disposal to send the auditors packing.
The second half of Section 3 covers storing data in the cloud, defense-in-depth mechanisms, access logging, filesystem persistence, and more.
CPE/CMU Credits: 6
Cloud Key Management
Encryption with Cloud Services
Cloud Storage Platforms
This course section tackles the ever-changing trends in technology by providing in-depth coverage of a paradigm taking the industry by storm: Serverless. It balances the discussion of the challenges serverless introduces with the advantages it provides in securing product development and security operations.
The first half of the section covers serverless cloud functions in AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Functions. After introspecting the serverless runtime environments using Serverless Prey (a popular open-source tool written by the course authors), students will examine and harden practical serverless functions in a real environment.
The second half of the course section covers App Services, which often interplay with cloud functions. The section concludes with a detailed analysis of Firebase, an application platform with serverless offerings that has been loosely integrated with the Google Cloud Platform since its acquisition by Google in 2014.
CPE/CMU Credits: 6
Cloud Serverless Functions
Persistence with Serverless
App Services
Firebase
The course concludes with practical guidance on how to operate an organization across multiple cloud accounts and providers. Many of the topics discussed in the earlier course sections are significantly complicated when moving from a single account to multiple accounts, as well as when the providers are integrated with each other. We begin by discussing how using multiple accounts and clouds changes Identity and Access Management (IAM).
No discussion of secure user identity management would be complete without mentioning Single Sign-On (SSO). With it, members of an organization can use the same credential set to sign onto a variety of applications. When a member leaves the organization, an administrator can terminate their all of their access with a single command. Section 5'?s second half covers each cloud?s native SSO solution, how AWS SSO is key for managing multiple AWS accounts, and each cloud?s end-user identification service.
We conclude by introducing tools and services that can be used to automate compliance checks against the benchmarks we have covered throughout the course. This includes open-source solutions as well as cloud-based security services. With these capabilities, an organization can take the lessons learned in SEC510 and apply them at scale.
CPE/CMU Credits: 6
Multicloud Access Management
Cloud Single Sign-On
End-User Identity Management
Automated Benchmarking
Summary
Additional Resources
!!! IMPORTANT NOTICE !!!
Please plan to arrive 30 minutes early before your first session for lab preparation and setup. During this time, students can confirm that each cloud account is properly set up, ensure that laptops have virtualization enabled, copy the lab files, and start the Linux virtual machine. For students taking the course Live Online, the instructor will be available to assist them with laptop prep and setup 30 minutes prior to the start of the course.
Mandatory: Students must bring their own AWS, Azure, and GCP accounts to complete the exercises. Please ensure that you have done the following before class starts:
Amazon Web Services
Microsoft Azure
Google Cloud Platform
USE YOUR OWN LAPTOP CONFIGURED USING THE FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS:
A properly configured system is required for each student participating in this course. Before starting the course, carefully read and follow these instructions exactly:
Mandatory Host Hardware Requirements
Mandatory Host Operating System Requirements
You must use a 64-bit laptop with one of the following operating systems that have been verified to be compatible with course VMware image:
Mandatory Software Requirements
Prior to class, ensure that the following software is installed on the host operating system:
In summary, before beginning the course you should:
Have a laptop with a solid-state drive (SSD), 8 GB of RAM, and a 64-bit operating system.
Install VMware (Workstation or Fusion).
Windows Only: Verify that the BIOS settings have the Intel VT virtualization extensions enabled.
Download the SEC510 Lab Setup Instructions and Course Media from your sans.org account.
Register a NEW AWS account prior to the start of the class at https://aws.amazon.com/.
Register a NEW Azure account prior to the start of class at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/.
Register a NEW GCP free-tier account prior to the start of class at https://console.cloud.google.com/freetrial.
If you have additional questions about the laptop specifications, please contact laptop_prep@sans.org.
If you have additional questions about the laptop specifications, please contact laptop_prep@sans.org.
Security analysts, security engineers, security researchers, cloud engineers, DevOps engineers, security auditors, system administrators, operations personnel, and anyone who is responsible for:
Courses that are prerequisites for SEC510:
For those looking to prepare ahead of time, check out the Terraform Getting Started Guide: https://learn.hashicorp.com/terraform/getting-started/install
"The move to leveraging multiple public cloud providers introduces new challenges and opportunities for security and compliance professionals. As the service offering landscape is constantly evolving, it is far too easy to prescribe security solutions that are not accurate in all cases. While it is tempting to dismiss the multicloud movement or block it at the enterprise level, this will only make the problem harder to control.
"Why do teams adopt additional cloud solutions in the first place? To make their jobs easier or more enjoyable. Developers are creating products that make money for the business, not for the central security team. If a team discovers a service offering that can help get its product to market quicker than the competition, it can and should use it. Security should embrace the inevitability of the multicloud movement and take on the hard work of implementing guardrails that enable the organization to move quickly and safely.
"The multicloud storm is coming, whether you like it or not."
- Brandon Evans and Eric Johnson
"Very well spoken, super attentive, had a sense of humor. What more could you ask for. He really knew the content and when he didn't know something he wasn't afraid to let us know. Would love to take other courses with him." - Mike Schimmel, VMware