AWS Cloud Security, Governance, and Compliance: Curriculum Overview

This curriculum provides a structured path to mastering the foundational security, governance, and compliance concepts required for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) exam. It focuses on the Shared Responsibility Model, AWS security services, and regulatory compliance tools.

Prerequisites

Before starting this curriculum, students should have a baseline understanding of the following:

Cloud Computing Basics: Familiarity with on-demand delivery, pay-as-you-go pricing, and scalability.
Foundational AWS Concepts: Basic knowledge of the AWS Management Console and core services (Compute, Storage, Networking).
General Security Concepts: A high-level understanding of what firewalls, encryption, and user passwords are used for in traditional IT.

Module Breakdown

Module	Focus Area	Difficulty	Est. Time
1. The Shared Responsibility Model	Defining the line between AWS and Customer duties.	Beginner	2 Hours
2. Security Governance & Compliance	AWS Artifact, compliance programs, and auditing.	Intermediate	3 Hours
3. Threat Detection & Monitoring	Amazon GuardDuty, Inspector, and Security Hub.	Intermediate	4 Hours
4. Data Protection & Encryption	KMS, CloudHSM, Encryption at Rest vs. In Transit.	Advanced	3 Hours

Module Objectives

Module 1: The Shared Responsibility Model

Objective: Distinguish between "Security OF the Cloud" and "Security IN the Cloud."
Key Skill: Describe how responsibilities shift when moving from IaaS (EC2) to PaaS (RDS) or SaaS (Lambda).

Module 2: Compliance & Governance

Objective: Identify where to find AWS compliance reports and how to manage multiple accounts.
Key Skill: Use AWS Artifact to download SOC or HIPAA reports for auditing purposes.

Module 3: Security Monitoring

Objective: Understand the purpose of automated security assessment services.
Key Skill: Differentiate between Amazon GuardDuty (threat detection) and Amazon Inspector (vulnerability scanning).

Visual Anchors

The Shared Responsibility Model

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The Security (CIA) Triad

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Success Metrics

To demonstrate mastery of this curriculum, the learner must be able to:

Map Services to Needs: Correctly identify which service to use for a specific security task (e.g., "Which service finds PII?" → Amazon Macie).
Compliance Literacy: Locate and explain the significance of a SOC 2 report within AWS Artifact.
Scenario Analysis: Given a scenario (e.g., an EC2 instance is compromised), identify whether the fix is the customer's or AWS's responsibility.
Security Hub Integration: Explain how AWS Security Hub aggregates findings from GuardDuty and Inspector into a single dashboard.

[!IMPORTANT] Domain 2 (Security and Compliance) represents 30% of the scored content on the CLF-C02 exam. Mastering these concepts is critical for passing.

Real-World Application

Compliance Officer: Use AWS Artifact to provide evidence of security controls to external auditors during annual certifications.
Security Operations (SecOps): Set up Amazon GuardDuty to automatically alert the team if an unauthorized user attempts to access an S3 bucket from a malicious IP address.
Cloud Architect: Implement encryption at rest using AWS KMS to ensure that even if physical storage media were stolen, the data would remain unreadable.

▶Click to expand: Service Comparison Table

Service	Primary Function	Real-World Example
AWS Shield	DDoS Protection	Protecting a web app from being overwhelmed by fake traffic.
AWS WAF	Web Traffic Filtering	Blocking SQL injection attacks on a login page.
Amazon Inspector	Vulnerability Scanning	Finding out if your EC2 instance has an outdated, insecure software version.
AWS KMS	Key Management	Managing the digital keys used to encrypt your database.