Organizations can integrate tools and services into their DevSecOps pipelines to identify security vulnerabilities at multiple stages. AWS has the services and tools necessary to accelerate this objective and provides flexibility to build DevSecOps pipelines with easy integrations of AWS cloud-native and third-party tools. AWS also offers services to aggregate security findings.

AWS does not require security teams to integrate and configure these tools. Instead, they must use their existing workflows to incorporate the tools into their existing pipelines and open security information.

AWS has the services and tools necessary to accelerate this objective and provides the flexibility to build DevSecOps pipelines with easy integrations of AWS cloud-native and third-party tools. It also offers services to aggregate security findings. Your team can focus on identifying risks and vulnerabilities rather than building and implementing tools. AWS offers easy integration of several services and tools, enabling different groups to develop their security validation pipelines. Tools or services that allow tools to be made and run parallel with the security validation pipelines are needed for speed and agility.

While security is a big concern for cloud-native applications, many teams have already deployed and successfully run DevSecOps practices. A common denominator is their use of security technologies that help them prioritize and mitigate risks and vulnerabilities. Many of the technologies involved in DevOps are well suited for DevSecOps workflows.

  • AWS CodeBuild is a wholly managed continuous integration service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages ready to deploy in the cloud.
  • AWS CodeDeploy is a set of security operations and workflow automation services integrated with existing security technologies.
  • AWS CodePipeline has been integrated into the AWS DevOps service catalog.

Integrated SDKs

Amazon Simple Workflow Service (SWF) provides a fully managed service for integrating and enhancing workflows and processes. The SDK provides various AWS services, including Lambda, Amazon WorkSpaces, Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB, AWS WMS, and more.

AWS CodeSnippets is a symbolic language for deploying and managing complex, repeatable, and reusable actions in code. The collection includes actions for functions, directives, and filters.

AWS Service Catalog

AWS has an integrated service catalog for its services that include Amazon API Gateway, AWS Lambda (AWS Lambda), and AWS ElasticBeanstalk.

In addition to the catalog services, AWS has many additional tools that often integrate with catalog services. The other AWS services you will often use include:

  • Amazon SNS
  • Amazon Connect
  • AWS Snowball Edge
  • AWS Security Hub

AWS Automation Command Line Interface (AWS Automation CLI) provides an intuitive, easy-to-use graphical interface to connect to AWS Automation services. AWS Kinesis Firehose is a fully managed stream processing service that runs in the Amazon AWS Cloud and allows to take data from sensors, Internet of Things, log files, text and other files, cloud storage, and so on. One of the challenges you will face is the management of HTTP server volumes on Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2). AWS Elasticache will help you manage HTTP server volumes and make it much easier to read server logs.

Amazon CloudWatch has been enhanced to help teams monitor or analyze computing, storage, and memory usage patterns. The Auto Scaling Groups service is also updated to help manage the performance of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances.

Amazon EMR is an object store for Hadoop and cloud-native apps and services that supports the popular Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and Jupyter Notebook that allow developers to write, query, and analyze in real-time without writing to disk.

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is an AWS service that allows developers and security administrators to manage Amazon accounts, cloud resources, and permissions for various cloud services. The services you can control include the following: Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon Elasticsearch Service, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Glacier, Amazon EFS, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon CloudSearch, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), and Amazon Machine Learning.

Amazon Route 53 provides a failover configuration for AWS accounts, roles, and permissions.

Amazon Connect is an application-to-person service that provides a contact center-as-a-service based on a global presence, simplified authentication, and multi-tenant licensing.

Using AWS to Secure Your DevOps Pipelines

Large enterprises and distributed organizations are concerned about securing their DevOps pipelines using AWS and other cloud providers. These enterprises must overcome many constraints and prioritize their security requirements to support their DevOps initiatives. There are two commonly used solutions:

  • AWS Fargate provides physical security for AWS resources and cloud workloads in AWS, including ensuring that your most sensitive and critical systems are physically isolated and secured
  • Amazon has developed a comprehensive security product portfolio that includes AWS Defender for cloud application security and AWS Defender for AWS Infrastructure Security.

Together, these products offer complete security solutions designed to meet the needs of organizations dealing with big data, cloud computing, and DevOps.

Though security solutions are becoming more focused on cloud services, it is still not a trivial task for an enterprise to move to cloud computing. There is still complexity when handling security in the cloud, and security solutions are often built with in-house expertise. Making an answer within a cloud infrastructure is also complex as it involves the integration of several cloud services as well as a parallel integration of security products.

Moreover, the skills required to operate DevOps can be quite different from those needed for managing a production-like infrastructure. On top of this, DevOps and security often compete for resources and attention. This competition, in combination with constraints on budgets, time, and resources, makes adopting a cloud-based security solution a complex task.

Many security solutions built around the cloud lack the sophistication to automatically enforce security controls, which means that the solution only works at its convenience. Furthermore, these solutions often still operate with in-house expertise. As a result, security engineers are the ones building solutions within these solutions, and their expertise is built on their most sophisticated tools. This specialization is not the case for security solutions designed with tools that provide simplicity and ease of use.

AWS Provisioning and Management Tools

Amazon provides several great tools you can use immediately as part of your DevSecOps workflow, including the following:

  • AWS Auto Scaling helps users get up and running on-demand by providing autoscaling of their AWS resources.
  • AWS CloudTrail provides a solution to audit your AWS deployments, including usage information, stack traces, custom parameters, and insights into AWS usage patterns.
  • AWS Trusted Advisor helps users understand security features and adopt the right one for the application and the environment.
  • Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) allow users to request services by invoking a call to an AWS service.
  • AWS Device Management is an AWS service that enables connecting applications to devices with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and digital certificates.
  • AWS CodeCommit supports Git and Subversion repositories for continuous integration and continuous delivery.
  • CloudFormation is a full-stack provisioning service that allows creating, upgrading, moving, copying, and renaming AWS resources.

By using AWS, you will be able to take full advantage of the platforms and services available in the cloud, and you can create secure and scalable applications in less than 30 minutes. With AWS, you can build applications that can run in AWS or anywhere else on demand.

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Conclusion

This article touches on three overlapping skill domains: cloud computing, DevOps, and cybersecurity. Simplilearn offers comprehensive skills training programs in each of these areas, such as the Caltech CTME Post Graduate Program in DevOps. This nine-month multi-course program is a fully online bootcamp that features live virtual classrooms and hands-on labs and projects. Whichever path you choose to get into DevSecOps, Simplilearn can help you get there.

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