SEC488: Cloud Security Essentials™

GIAC Cloud Security Essentials (GCLD)
GIAC Cloud Security Essentials (GCLD)
  • In Person (6 days)
  • Online
36 CPEs

Even if your organization has the tooling, experience, and teams to secure on-premises environments, you likely aren't fully prepared for the cloud. Organizations all over the world are rushing to adopt cloud technologies despite having an insufficient understanding of critical cloud security issues, such as properly configuring cloud environments to protect sensitive data, managing billing costs, and balancing computing power usage. The problem is, many cloud security courses focus solely on theory. SEC488: Cloud Security Essentials tackles these practical challenges head-on, offering over 20 real-world, technical, hands-on labs, a Capstone Capture the Flag event, and industry-leading content to build a secure cloud foundation.

What You Will Learn

Essential knowledge for a secure cloud environment

Attackers are targeting everything that uses code to compute, making insecure cloud environments highly vulnerable to breaches. SEC488 is your solution for securely migrating to the cloud and continuously enhancing cloud security. This course offers comprehensive cloud security knowledge, delivering quick and powerful results in areas such as identity guardrails, cloud storage, virtual machines, automation, remote management, cloud logging, legal and contractual requirements, and more. Safeguarding critical issues like Identity and Access Management (IAM) and securing S3 Buckets are crucial for mitigating risks associated with lift-and-shift transitions.

Maximize your time and resources with this curated, hands-on course that goes beyond theory. Engage in fun, interactive, live-fire labs within actual cloud service provider (CSP) environments on both AWS and Azure. Learn to effectively limit and mitigate the impact of cloud security breaches, preventing issues like service shutdowns due to computational limits or excessive charges from unauthorized covert bitcoin mining operations. Enhance compliance, protect your organization's reputation and assets, and strengthen your security posture while boosting employee retention and team knowledge with SEC488.

"Solid content, good pace, and great explanations, plus it's helpful to see how all of these cloud and security concepts can be integrated and applied in real life." - Craig Harris, SMBC

What Is Cloud Security?

Cloud security involves adapting traditional security practices to the public cloud environment by leveraging the shared responsibility model. It requires applying vendor-provided controls to protect applications, data, and brand within the cloud environment. Effective cloud security includes Identity and Access Management (IAM), data protection, network security, and continuous monitoring to safeguard cloud resources and maintain a strong security posture.

Business Takeaways

  • Decrease your risk profile while operating in cloud environments
  • Protect your computational power and thereby your budget
  • Improve cloud security compliance
  • Become more efficient through automation
  • Improve employee retention while increasing organizational security
  • Protect your organization's brand and reputation
  • Increase customer trust

Skills Learned

  • Learn how to spot organizational deficiencies in cloud security
  • Speak the language of cloud security confidently with both technical and leadership teams
  • Navigate your organization through the current security challenges and opportunities presented by cloud services.
  • Identify risks associated with various services offered by cloud service providers (CSPs).
  • Select appropriate security controls for different cloud network security architectures.
  • Evaluate CSPs based on their documentation, security controls, and audit reports.
  • Confidently use services from leading CSPs, including AWS, Azure, and GCP.
  • Protect secrets and sensitive information within cloud environments.
  • Leverage cloud logging capabilities to establish accountability for events in the cloud.
  • Determine risk control ownership based on deployment and service delivery models of CSP products.
  • Assess the trustworthiness of CSPs using their security documentation, service features, and third-party attestations.
  • Secure access to CSP management consoles and environments.
  • Implement native network security controls in AWS and Azure.
  • Conduct penetration testing following guidelines from AWS and Azure to test full-stack cloud applications.

Hands-On Cloud Security Training

Much like advanced flight simulators to a commercial pilot, the SEC488 lab environment is designed to provide students with practical, real-world experience to practice the theory and skills learned during lecture. With 15 hours of the course dedicated entirely to hands-on keyboard experiences, students walk away capable of "flying the plane", not just reading its manual. Students love the SEC488 exercises because they WORK! Constantly maintained to keep up with vendor updates, the SEC488 labs are resilient and students receive extended access to lab content via the course lab workbook.

This multicloud, immersive lab environment includes various cloud resources such as virtual machines, storage services, and security tools, all configured to simulate real-world scenarios, which allows students to gain comprehensive exposure to different cloud service providers. Students spend about 50% of lab time in AWS and 50% in Azure environments across 20 labs and a gamified capture the flag in Section 6. Some labs do have dependencies on other labs. For more advanced students, a fast forward script is provided for Lab 1 to get past the set-up steps to dig right into the more technical experiences.

Labs provide a crucial opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge in a controlled setting, helping students to solidify their understanding of cloud security principles. By actively engaging in these repeatable labs, students can practice and refine their skills, ensuring they are well-prepared to tackle cloud security challenges in their own organizations the day the return to the office.

"As a relative cloud newb, this course has really allowed me to understand how to best secure the cloud. My day to day role doesn't allow for hands on work so I've particularly enjoyed the labs." - Will Hotard, State of Louisiana OTS

"The labs serve to both break up a fairly intensive academic upskilling, and also to teach you how to apply the knowledge correctly and safely, allowing you to secure your cloud environment with confidence and ease." - Matt Hunter, National E-Crime Team

"I appreciate the thorough information, and how it is delivered. Plus the steps are very helpful and easy to follow." - Taylor Ripplinger, Encompass Health

Syllabus Summary

  • Section 1: Utilize Identity and Access Management (IAM) to secure cloud accounts and implement least privilege access.
  • Section 2: Focus on securing compute instances and managing configurations within cloud environments.
  • Section 3: Learn to protect data through encryption and automation using Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
  • Section 4: Explore network security controls and logging to monitor and manage cloud data flows.
  • Section 5: Understand compliance requirements, perform penetration testing, and respond to incidents in the cloud.
  • Section 6: Apply all learned skills in a comprehensive CloudWars challenge to reinforce cloud security concepts.

Additional Free Resources

What You Will Receive

  • AWS and Azure provisioned accounts
  • MP3 audio files of the complete course lectures
  • Printed and Electronic courseware
  • Extended access to the course's 20+ lab exercises

What Comes Next?

Depending on your professional goals and direction, SANS offers a number of follow-on courses to SEC488.

Cloud Security Analyst

Cloud Security Engineer

Cloud Security Architect

Cloud Security Management / Leadership

Syllabus (36 CPEs)

Download PDF
  • Overview

    The first section of this cloud security course focuses on Identity and Access Management (IAM). Students will quickly understand IAM's critical role in protecting cloud accounts. By the end of this section, students will be able to:

    • Identify security vulnerabilities in their cloud account's IAM service
    • Implement least privilege access in cloud accounts
    • Discover and protect secrets related to cloud service authentication
    • Use cloud vendor IAM tools to automate the detection of security issues
    Exercises
    • New Cloud Users
    • Permissions Boundaries
    • Cloud Management Station
    • Deploy CD/CA Environment
    Topics
    • Course Overview
    • Cloud Accounts and Groups
    • Policies and Permissions
    • Identity Guardrails
    • Temporary Credentials and Secrets Management
    • Cloud Resource and External Identities
    • Customer Account Management
    • More IAM Best Practices
  • Overview

    The second section will cover ways to protect the compute elements in cloud providers' Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings. Students will determine early on that there is much more complexity when launching instances or virtual machines in the cloud as opposed to on-premises. As the section progresses, students will learn to:

    • Securely deploy a compute instance/virtual machine in CSP environments
    • Maintain the running instance throughout its lifecycle
    • Create hardened images for re-use in the organization
    • Understand the various threats that could affect cloud-based applications
    • Lock down cloud storage to prevent spillage of sensitive information
    Exercises
    • Secure Instance Deployment
    • Threat Intelligence Gold Image
    • Which Reality
    • Blob Lock Down
    Topics
    • Secure Instance/ Virtual Machine Deployment
    • Host Configuration Management
    • Image Management
    • Application Security
    • Threat Modeling
    • Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) Challenges
    • Container Services
    • Cloud Storage
  • Overview

    The third section will first focus on the protection of data in cloud environments. All too often, we are reading news articles about breaches that, very frequently, come down to a misconfiguration of a cloud service. Students will learn just what to look out for regarding these misconfiguration as well as:

    • How to properly identify and classify their organization's data in various cloud services
    • Encrypt data where it resides and as it traverses networks
    • Ensure the data is available when it is required
    • Leverage Infrastructure as Code (IaC) not only to automate operations, but also automate security configurations
    • Identify gaps in cloud-based productivity services
    • Learn how Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP), and Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools operate and what benefit they may add to the organization
    Exercises
    • Data Hunting
    • Data in Transit Encryption
    • Terraform Code Assessment
    • Cloud Custodian
    Topics
    • Data Classification
    • Data at Rest Encryption
    • Availability
    • Data in Transit
    • Lifecycle Management
    • Infrastructure as Code
    • Productivity Services
    • CASBs, CWPPs, and CSPMs... Oh My!
  • Overview

    Section 4 is where many network security analysts, engineers, and architects will begin salivating as they will do a deep dive into the ins and outs of cloud networking and log generation, collection, and analysis to set themselves up for success to defend their IaaS workloads. Students will learn to:

    • Learn how to control cloud data flows via network controls
    • Add segmentation between compute resources of varying sensitivity levels
    • Generate the proper logs, collect those logs, and process them as a security analyst
    • Increase the effectiveness of their security solutions by gaining more network visibility
    • Detect treats in real time as they occur in the cloud
    Exercises
    • Restricting Network Access
    • Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    • Cloud Services Logging
    • IaaS Logging
    Topics
    • Public Cloud Networking
    • Remote Management of IaaS Systems
    • Segmentation
    • Network Protection Services
    • Cloud Logging Services
    • Log Collection and Analysis
    • Network Visibility
    • Cloud Detection Services
  • Overview

    In the fifth section, we'll dive headfirst into compliance frameworks, audit reports, privacy, and eDiscovery to equip you with the information and references to ensure that the right questions are being asked during CSP risk assessments. After covering special-use cases for more restricted requirements that may necessitate the AWS GovCloud or Azure's Trusted Computing, we'll delve into penetration testing in the cloud and finish the day with incident response and forensics. Student will learn to:

    • Leverage the Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Controls Matrix to select the appropriate security controls for a given cloud network security architecture and assess a CSP's implementation of those controls using audit reports and the CSP's shared responsibility model
    • Use logs from cloud services and virtual machines hosted in the cloud to detect a security incident and take appropriate steps as a first responder according to a recommended incident response methodology
    • Perform a preliminary forensic file system analysis of a compromised virtual machine to identify indicators of compromise and create a file system timeline
    Exercises
    • Microsoft Defender for Cloud
    • Fun With Functions
    • Multi-Cloud Penetration Testing
    • Multi-Cloud Forensics
    Topics
    • Security Assurance
    • Cloud Auditing
    • Privacy and Risk Management
    • Serverless for Defenders
    • Preparing for Cloud Penetration Tests
    • Conducting Cloud Penetration Tests
    • Legal and Contractual Requirements
    • Incident Response and Forensics
  • Overview

    This final section of this cloud security training course consists of an all-day, CloudWars competition to reinforce the topics covered in books 1-5. Through this friendly competition, students will answer several challenges made up of multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, as well as hands-on and validated exercises performed in two CSP environments. They will be given a brand-new environment to deploy in two different cloud vendors and will be tasked to take this very broken environment and make the appropriate changes to increase its overall security posture.

GIAC Cloud Security Essentials

The GIAC Cloud Security Essentials (GCLD) certification validates a practitioner's ability to implement preventive, detective, and reactionary techniques to defend valuable cloud-based workloads.

  • Evaluation of cloud service provider similarities, differences, challenges, and opportunities
  • Planning, deploying, hardening, and securing single and multi-cloud environments
  • Basic cloud resource auditing, security assessment, and incident response
More Certification Details

Prerequisites

  • Basic understanding of TCP/IP and network security concepts.
  • Familiarity with general information security principles.
  • Knowledge of common cloud technology concepts (e.g., virtual machines, cloud storage) is beneficial.
  • Experience with the Linux command-line or cloud environments is a plus but not required.

Laptop Requirements

Important! Bring your own system configured according to these instructions.

A properly configured system is required to fully participate in this course. If you do not carefully read and follow these instructions, you will not be able to fully participate in hands-on exercises in your course. Therefore, please arrive with a system meeting all of the specified requirements.

Back up your system before class. Better yet, use a system without any sensitive/critical data. SANS is not responsible for your system or data.

MANDATORY SEC488 SYSTEM HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS
  • Wireless networking (802.11 standard) is required. There is no wired Internet access in the classroom.
MANDATORY SEC488 HOST CONFIGURATION AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
  • Your host operating system must be the latest version of Windows 10, Windows 11, or macOS 10.15.x or newer.
  • Fully update your host operating system prior to the class to ensure you have the right drivers and patches installed.
  • Linux hosts are not supported in the classroom due to their numerous variations. If you choose to use Linux as your host, you are solely responsible for configuring it to work with the course materials and/or VMs.
  • Students should have an OpenSSH client installed on their laptop.

Your course materials include a "Setup Instructions" document that details important steps you must take before you travel to a live class event or start an online class. It may take 30 minutes or more to complete these instructions.

Your class uses an electronic workbook for its lab instructions. In this new environment, a second monitor and/or a tablet device can be useful for keeping class materials visible while you are working on your course's labs.

If you have additional questions about the laptop specifications, please contact customer service.

Author Statement

"More businesses than ever are shifting mission-critical workloads to the cloud. And not just one cloud - research shows that most enterprises are using up to five different cloud providers. Yet, cloud security breaches happen all the time and many security professionals feel ill-prepared to deal with this rampant change. SEC488 equips students to view the cloud through a lens informed by standards and best practices to rapidly identify security gaps. It provides class participants with hands-on tools, techniques, and patterns to shore up their organization's cloud security weaknesses."

- Ryan Nicholson

"Ryan is a content expert and it shows." - Soumya P., Ernst & Young

"Ryan is terrific. His pace and speaking style are relaxed and easy to follow. Yet, it's easy to see he really knows a ton about this, and probably many other, topics. And he's always asking for feedback and checking to make sure everyone is following along OK." - Matt B., US Government

Reviews

I learned a lot, went deeper technically than I expected to, and feel like this was absolutely a great use of my time. The instructors and TAs are top notch and made my experience taking this course a very positive one.
Marni Reemer
AWS
Real world practicality of the labs has enabled me to envision how to explore and implement cloud best practices, tests, configurations, and the like which I found to be very valuable.
Emmanuel Ekochu
USDA
This course is exactly what I hoped it would be. Teaching me Cloud from an IT Cloud Engineer perspective, but with a Security lens.
Jonathan Stohler
Boys Town

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