Introduction

Everyone in the IT world knows that application and infrastructure security are critically important elements of any deployment. Unfortunately, the constant stream of news about catastrophic data breaches suggests that some of us may not yet realize just how important.

No matter what role you play within your organization’s cloud deployment life cycle, ensuring that your assets are properly protected is part of your job. This chapter will help you explore the tools AWS provides to help you with that responsibility.

You’ll learn how to use the Identity and Access Management (IAM) service to control which people and processes get past the wall guarding your resources (authentication) and what they’re allowed to do once they’re in (authorization). You’ll learn how IAM does that through the smart use of users, groups, roles, and federated identities.

We’ll discuss applying encryption to your cloud data—both while it’s on...