Book Image

Cloud Security Automation

By : Prashant Priyam
Book Image

Cloud Security Automation

By: Prashant Priyam

Overview of this book

Security issues are still a major concern for all IT organizations. For many enterprises, the move to cloud computing has raised concerns for security, but when applications are architected with focus on security, cloud platforms can be made just as secure as on-premises platforms. Cloud instances can be kept secure by employing security automation that helps make your data meet your organization's security policy. This book starts with the basics of why cloud security is important and how automation can be the most effective way of controlling cloud security. You will then delve deeper into the AWS cloud environment and its security services by dealing with security functions such as Identity and Access Management and will also learn how these services can be automated. Moving forward, you will come across aspects such as cloud storage and data security, automating cloud deployments, and so on. Then, you'll work with OpenStack security modules and learn how private cloud security functions can be automated for better time- and cost-effectiveness. Toward the end of the book, you will gain an understanding of the security compliance requirements for your Cloud. By the end of this book, you will have hands-on experience of automating your cloud security and governance.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Title Page
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 3. Identity and Access Management in the Cloud

In Chapter 1Introduction to Cloud Security, we read about the AAA model of security, where we saw that authentication and authorization are very critical points. In cloud, we defined the two parts, authentication and authorization, using IAM.

IAM stands for Identity and Access Management. It plays a critical role in security implementation in the cloud. Here, we define users, groups, roles, and policies.

In AWS, when we subscribe the services, we actually create a root account, which is single sign in for all the services.

Note

In single sign in, we enter our user credentials once and we can move through all the connected applications without being prompted for user credentials.It's always advisable to not access the AWS Console using the root account, and also make sure that you have enabled multi-factor authentication (MFA).

In this chapter, we will look at the following topics:

  • Users and groups 
  • Roles and policies
  • WAF and Shield
  • Certificate...