AWS Security Identification and Monitoring

This curriculum provides a structured overview of the services and practices used to identify, monitor, and remediate security issues within the AWS Cloud environment. It focuses heavily on AWS Trusted Advisor as a central pillar, while also covering proactive threat detection and vulnerability management.

## Prerequisites

Before engaging with this curriculum, students should possess the following foundational knowledge:

• AWS Cloud Fundamentals: Understanding of the shared responsibility model.
• IAM Basics: Knowledge of users, groups, and the importance of the Root User.
• AWS Management Console: Familiarity with navigating the AWS web interface.
• Basic Support Plans: Awareness that service availability (especially for Trusted Advisor) varies by support tier (Basic, Developer, Business, Enterprise).

## Module Breakdown

## Learning Objectives per Module

Module 1: AWS Trusted Advisor

• Identify the five categories of Trusted Advisor checks (Cost, Performance, Security, Fault Tolerance, Service Limits).
• Interpret status icons (Green, Orange, Red) to prioritize security remediation.
• Understand the limitations of the Free Tier regarding security checks.

Module 2: Proactive Vulnerability Management

• Describe how Amazon Inspector automates security assessments for EC2 instances and container images.
• Differentiate between network reachability and software vulnerability scans.

Module 3: Intelligent Threat Detection

• Explain the role of Amazon GuardDuty in monitoring CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs.
• Recognize how machine learning identifies anomalies like unauthorized access or compromised instances.

Module 4: The Security Dashboard

• Define AWS Security Hub as a central point for aggregating findings from Inspector, GuardDuty, and Macie.

## Success Metrics

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

1. Categorize Findings: Correctly assign a security issue (e.g., an open S3 bucket) to the correct service (Trusted Advisor).
2. Differentiate Tools: Explain the difference between Detective (investigation) and GuardDuty (detection).
3. Support Tier Impact: Identify which security checks require a Business or Enterprise support plan.
4. Remediation Mapping: Suggest the correct tool for a specific business need (e.g., "We need to automate compliance evidence collection" → AWS Audit Manager).

## Real-World Application

[!IMPORTANT] Security tools are "advisors," not absolute blockers. A "Red" alert for a public S3 bucket is critical for private data but expected for a static website.

• Enterprise Compliance: Using AWS Audit Manager to prepare for SOC2 or HIPAA audits by automatically collecting evidence from AWS resource configurations.
• Incident Response: When a suspicious login is detected by GuardDuty, security analysts use Amazon Detective to visualize the API calls and identify the root cause.
• Cost & Security Synergy: Using Trusted Advisor to shut down idle resources (saving money) while simultaneously ensuring all active resources have MFA enabled (securing the account).

## Examples Section

Security Check Scenarios

Visualizing the Security Workflow

[!TIP] Always start with Trusted Advisor for low-hanging fruit (like MFA and Open Security Groups) before moving to complex automated detection services like GuardDuty.