Welcome to the third installment focusing on AWS security, diving into infrastructure protection. When we talk about infrastructure, we’re not referring to brick-and-mortar buildings but rather the virtual servers that drive and host your applications. Infrastructure protection services for AWS are crucial and cannot be overlooked. Let’s explore the key services that comprise this domain.
- AWS WAF
- AWS Shield
- AWS Firewall manager
- AWS Network firewall
- AWS systems manager
- AWS Verified Access.
- Amazon VPC
- AWS Private Link.
Let’s explore each service’s features and how they protect the underlying infrastructure.
AWS WAF: AWS WAF, or Web Application Firewall, is a vital tool for safeguarding web applications against attacks. It lets you set up rules to allow, block, or monitor web requests based on criteria you define. These criteria cover IP addresses, HTTP headers, HTTP body content, URI strings, and protections against SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
What makes AWS WAF especially effective is its seamless integration with key AWS services like Amazon CloudFront, Application Load Balancer (ALB), Amazon API Gateway, and AWS AppSync—platforms widely used by AWS customers for content delivery.
When you deploy AWS WAF with Amazon CloudFront, your protective rules operate in all AWS Edge Locations scattered worldwide, positioned close to your end users. This design ensures that security doesn’t slow down your applications—blocked requests are intercepted before they ever reach your web servers.
AWS Shield: AWS Shield is a service designed to defend your AWS-hosted applications from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. There are two versions available: AWS Shield Standard and AWS Shield Advanced.
AWS Shield Standard comes automatically with all AWS accounts at no extra charge. It provides baseline protection against common DDoS threats.
For more robust defense against advanced and larger-scale attacks, you can opt for AWS Shield Advanced, which is a paid service. AWS Shield Advanced extends protection to applications running on Amazon EC2, Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Amazon CloudFront, AWS Global Accelerator, and Route 53, giving you comprehensive security against a wider range of threats.
AWS Firewall Manager: AWS Firewall Manager is a powerful security tool that lets you control and oversee firewall settings across all your AWS accounts and applications. It’s seamlessly integrated with AWS Organizations, enabling you to apply AWS WAF rules, AWS Shield Advanced protections, VPC security groups, AWS Network Firewalls, and Amazon Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall rules across numerous AWS resources and accounts, all from one central hub.
AWS Network Firewall: AWS Network Firewall is a service designed to simplify the deployment of crucial network security measures across your Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs). It works seamlessly with AWS Firewall Manager, allowing you to create policies based on AWS Network Firewall rules and then apply these policies centrally across your VPCs and accounts.
With AWS Network Firewall, you get robust protection against common network threats. Its stateful firewall leverages traffic flow context, such as connection tracking and protocol identification, to enforce policies like blocking unauthorized protocols from accessing domains within your VPCs. This means better security without the complexity.
AWS Systems Manager: AWS Systems Manager is like a super tool for managing your AWS setup it gathers all your operational info from different AWS services and lets you automate tasks across all your resources, whether they’re on AWS or in a mix of cloud setups. You can organize your resources logically, grouping things like apps, layers of your app stack, or separate environments (like production versus development).
With Systems Manager, you can dive into a resource group and check out what’s been going on lately: recent API actions, any changes to configurations, notifications, alerts for operations, software inventory details, and whether your patches are up to date. It’s like having a control center for your AWS universe.
AWS Verified Access: AWS Verified Access can revolutionize your network security! With Verified Access, you can securely connect to corporate applications without the hassle of a VPN. Each access request is verified instantly, ensuring users are only connected to the applications they’re authorized to use. No more broad access means minimized risks for your corporate applications. Unlock the power of AWS Verified Access for streamlined secure connections.
Amazon VPC: Amazon VPC allows you to create your own private piece of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. It’s like carving out your own space within AWS where you can set up virtual networks just the way you want. You get to decide everything from choosing your own IP addresses to creating specific sub-networks and configuring how everything connects using route tables and network gateways. It’s like having your own customized slice of the AWS cloud, tailored exactly to your needs.
AWS Private Link: AWS PrivateLink allows customers to securely access AWS-hosted services in a way that’s both reliable and scalable. With PrivateLink, all network traffic stays within the secure AWS environment. Users of these services can connect to them privately from their Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) or on-premises infrastructure, without needing public IP addresses or relying on internet traffic. Service providers can register their Network Load Balancers with PrivateLink to offer their services directly to other AWS users. This means smoother, more secure connections without exposing traffic to the broader internet.
Organizations can make use of individual services or combination of them as per their use case to protect their IT infrastructure in AWS. Hope this article has shared initial inputs for your secure infrastructure journey in AWS.
