Hands-On Workshop: Cloud VM Deployment and Hardening

Securing a cloud environment can be challenging and time consuming, especially if you don't know where to start. This Workshop will scrutinize a common cloud service: Virtual Machines, and focus on the secure implementation of that service. We'll discuss Operating Systems (and why it matters from a cloud perspective), as well as security groups, remote access, system and network hardening as well as how mature organizations handle deployments. While discussing these topics will be enlightening and entertaining, deploying our own infrastructure will be a blast! Join this 2-hour workshop to learn how experts solve for the security concerns surrounding virtual machines in a cloud environment.

Learning Objectives

• Learn about how to deploy and harden an EC2 instance
• Understand the attack surface an exposed instance creates
• Apply your knowledge to implement stronger security controls on an AWS endpoint

Prerequisite Knowledge

• An AWS cloud account with root access or the ability to deploy virtual machines. SSH client software. Familiarity with cloud computing and networking/system administration.

System Requirements

• Web Browser and SSH client (no VM is required) already installed and ready to use
• This workshop supports content and concepts from SEC502: Cloud Security Tactical Defense