The AWS Shared Responsibility Model
The AWS cloud—like any large and complex environment—is built on top of a stack of rules and assumptions. The success of your AWS projects will largely depend on how well you understand those rules and assumptions and on how fully you adopt the practices that they represent. The AWS Shared Responsibility Model is a helpful articulation of those rules and assumptions, and it’s worth spending some time thinking about it.
Amazon distinguishes between the security and reliability of the cloud, which is its responsibility, and the security and reliability of what’s in the cloud, which is up to you, the customer.
The cloud itself consists of the physical buildings, servers, and networking hardware used by AWS data centers. AWS is responsible for making sure that its locations are secure, reliably powered, and properly maintained. AWS is also on the hook for patching, encrypting (where relevant), and maintaining the operating systems...