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You're reading from Security Automation with Ansible 2 Leverage Ansible 2 to automate complex security tasks like application security, network security, and malware analysis

Product type Paperback

Published in Dec 2017

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781788394512

Length 364 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Tools

Ansible

Concepts

Application Security

Authors (2):

Akash Mahajan

MADHU AKULA

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Table of Contents (12) Chapters

Preface

1. Introduction to Ansible Playbooks and Roles FREE CHAPTER

2. Ansible Tower, Jenkins, and Other Automation Tools

3. Setting Up a Hardened WordPress with Encrypted Automated Backups

4. Log Monitoring and Serverless Automated Defense (Elastic Stack in AWS)

5. Automating Web Application Security Testing Using OWASP ZAP

6. Vulnerability Scanning with Nessus

7. Security Hardening for Applications and Networks

8. Continuous Security Scanning for Docker Containers

9. Automating Lab Setups for Forensics Collection and Malware Analysis

10. Writing an Ansible Module for Security Testing

11. Ansible Security Best Practices, References, and Further Reading

Why Ansible for this setup?

Ansible is made for security automation and hardening. It uses YAML syntax, which helps us to codify our entire process of repeated tasks. By using this, we can automate the process of continuous delivery and deployment of infrastructure using roles and playbooks.

The modular approach enables us to perform tasks very simply. For example, the operations teams can write a playbook to set up a WordPress site and the security team can create another role which can harden the WordPress site.

It is very easy to use the modules for repeatability, and the output is idempotent, which means creating standards for the servers, applications, and infrastructure. Some use cases include creating base images for organizations using internal policy standards.

Ansible uses SSH protocol, which is by default secured with encrypted transmission and host encryption. Also, there are no dependency issues while dealing with different types of operating systems. It uses Python to perform...