We have seen shifts in the internet environment that we did not think were conceivable since Amazon Web Services (AWS) came to the fore. The services like AWS Security Specialist have grown in popularity over time because of the benefits of scalability and simplicity of use that they provide to a variety of web-related tasks. This is why AWS Salary in India is growing dramatically as well. Cloud computing expertise is in high demand.
According to 63 per cent of IT leaders, finding skilled engineers is more difficult than finding Bigfoot. Whether you want to further your career or enter a new industry, learning cloud skills and obtaining the appropriate Amazon Web Services certification can help open the door to some life-changing job opportunities.
Firstly, it is very important to know about the certification in detail. Furthermore, about the resources, while planning a career path for any specific field. That is to say, in order to assist you in obtaining the post of AWS Security Specialist, we will discuss the best approaches and resources in this article.
Before jumping on to the resources and methods, let us talk a bit about AWS.
What is AWS?
Amazon Web Service is a cloud-based platform that offers organizations around the world scalable, cost-effective, dependable, and simple-to-use cloud computing solutions. AWS’s services are not confined to a single location, continent, or time zone. It is for any organization that is willing to pay to take advantage of what the cloud has to offer. Amazon is funding this initiative, which combines SaaS (software as a service), IaaS (infrastructure as a service), and PaaS (platform as a service).
It is a combination of numerous goods and services that are individually connected with cloud computing. This is one of Amazon’s most profitable businesses, providing a plethora of equipment, tools, technology, and support necessary to perform the diverse variety of services that it provides. AWS provides everything you need to assist your organization profit from various cloud computing services, including remote computing, servers, security, and storage, as well as mobile development, networking, and email.
AWS is separated into three categories: Glacier, a low-cost storage service, S3, Amazon’s storage system, and EC2, a virtual machine service supplied by Amazon. The relevance of all of the services provided by AWS, as well as the volume at which they are provided, have propelled it well ahead of its competitors.
Let us now move on to knowing about one of the popular exam AWS Security Specialist!
About AWS Security Specialist
The AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C01) exam is designed for those who work in security. The test verifies a candidate’s ability to successfully show knowledge of AWS platform security. The exam also determines if an applicant possesses the following characteristics:
- Knowledge of specific data classifications and AWS data security protocols
- Understanding of data encryption techniques and the AWS technologies used to apply them
- Understanding of secure internet protocols as well as the AWS technologies used to deploy them
- A working knowledge of AWS security services and service capabilities required to enable a secure production environment.
- Competency in utilizing AWS security services and features based on two or more years of production deployment experience
- The capacity to make cost, security, and deployment complexity tradeoff decisions in order to satisfy a set of application requirements.
- An understanding of security risks and operations
Tasks and Responsibilities
- The Special Programs, Evaluations, and Response (SPEAR) Special Testing Team (STT) is responsible for conducting information collecting activities and using this data to drive changes in the security posture of Amazon Web Services (AWS) locations.
- AWS Security Specialist primary duties include identifying, analysing, and reporting security risks to management and internal customers. They evaluates security measures as well as operational threats to our personnel, data, and physical assets using suitable evaluation procedures.
- You will be managing tight deadlines, being highly flexible, driving outcomes, being detail oriented, identifying, analysing, planning, and organising operational operations connected to AWS and its internal customers’ physical security.
- Maintaining a high level of situational awareness in a wide range of global locations is part of this. You can be receptive to new challenges, excellent at multitasking, imaginative, creative, self-directed, and a superb team member.
- Furthermore, You will be expected to strictly adhere to the policies, processes, and team rules of engagement (ROE). You will be able to cope with uncertainty successfully, as well as independently plan, make choices, and manage highly fluid operational tasks.
Average Salary
Talking about the Salary – According to ZipRecruiter, AWS Security experts in the United States earn around US$143,677 per year. However, the average Amazon Security Specialist pay in India ranges from 3.3 Lakhs for individuals with less than one year of experience to 12 Lakhs for those with more than one year of experience. The pay range for a Security Specialist at Amazon is between 2.3 Lakhs and 4.8 Lakhs.
Let us now jump on the resources through which you can get certified.
Ways to build a career as an AWS Security Specialist
The most significant aspect of this journey will be the development of skills and a firm comprehension of the concepts. But there’s no need to be alarmed. The most important factor is to have the essential skills and expertise. Let us have a look at various ways and resources through which you can build a career as an AWS Security Specialist –
1. Gather knowledge about Certificate
Certification is the most effective approach to cover the abilities. Not only will this enhance your knowledge and abilities, but it will also increase your market worth. Given below are some topics that you need to study in depth for this certification –
Domain 1: Incident Response (12%)
1.1 Given an AWS abuse notice, evaluate the suspected compromised instance or exposed access keys.
- Given an AWS Abuse report about an EC2 instance, securely isolate the instance as part of a forensic investigation. (AWS Documentation: receive an abuse report from AWS about my resources, automate incident response in the AWS Cloud for EC2 instances)
- Analyze logs relevant to a reported instance to verify a breach, and collect relevant data. (AWS Documentation: detect and investigate security events, Analyzing AWS CloudTrail in Amazon CloudWatch)
- Capture a memory dump from a suspected instance for later deep analysis or for legal compliance reasons.
1.2 Verify that the Incident Response plan includes relevant AWS services.
- Determine if changes to baseline security configuration have been made. (AWS Documentation: predefined and custom patch baselines, Configuration management in Amazon EC2)
- Determine if list omits services, processes, or procedures which facilitate Incident Response. (AWS Documentation: perform automated incident response in a multi-account environment)
- Recommend services, processes, procedures to remediate gaps. (AWS Documentation: Automated Response and Remediation with AWS Security Hub, Assess your security posture)
1.3 Evaluate the configuration of automated alerting, and execute possible remediation of securityrelated incidents and emerging issues.
- Automate evaluation of conformance with rules for new/changed/removed resources. (AWS Documentation: Custom Lambda Rules (General Example), Evaluating Resources with AWS Config Rules, Use AWS Config Rules, Remediating Noncompliant AWS Resources)
- Apply rule-based alerts for common infrastructure misconfiguration. (AWS Documentation: Alert when on security events, misconfiguration, and behavior violations are detected, Proactively Detect and Repair Common Misconfigurations)
- Review previous security incidents and recommend improvements to existing systems. (AWS Documentation: security items to improve in your AWS account, Resolve IT Incidents Faster, Incident Manager from AWS Systems Manager)
Domain 2: Logging and Monitoring (20%)
2.1 Design and implement security monitoring and alerting.
- Analyze architecture and identify monitoring requirements and sources for monitoring statistics. (AWS Documentation: AWS Reference Architecture Diagrams, Monitor your Applications Effectively, statistics for a specific resource)
- Analyze architecture to determine which AWS services can be used to automate monitoring and alerting. (AWS Documentation: automate capture and analysis of CI/CD metrics, Extend and automate monitoring of multi-account, Automating processes for handling and remediating AWS Abuse alerts)
- Analyze the requirements for custom application monitoring, and determine how this could be achieved. (AWS Documentation: Monitor your Applications Effectively)
- Set up automated tools/scripts to perform regular audits. (AWS Documentation: automate the auditing of operational best practices for your AWS account, Audit Your AWS Resources for Security Compliance)
2.2 Troubleshoot security monitoring and alerting.
- Given an occurrence of a known event without the expected alerting, analyze the service functionality and configuration and remediate. (AWS Documentation: Post-incident analysis, Alarms, incident management, and remediation in the cloud, Using AWS Config for security analysis and resource administration)
- Given an occurrence of a known event without the expected alerting, analyze the permissions and remediate. (AWS Documentation: Identity-based policy examples, AWS managed policies for AWS Systems Manager Incident Manager)
- Given a custom application which is not reporting its statistics, analyze the configuration and remediate. (AWS Documentation: monitor your custom application metrics, Set up, configure, and manage your application)
- Review audit trails of system and user activity. (AWS Documentation: Configuring an audit log to capture database activities, Auditing)
2.3 Design and implement a logging solution.
- Analyze architecture and identify logging requirements and sources for log ingestion. (AWS Documentation: Security at Scale: Logging in AWS, Logging ingestion and storage, Architecture overview)
- Analyze requirements and implement durable and secure log storage according to AWS best practices. (AWS Documentation: Store and Monitor OS & Application Log Files with Amazon CloudWatch)
- Analyze architecture to determine which AWS services can be used to automate log ingestion and analysis. (AWS Documentation: Automate Centralized Logging and Integrate with Datadog, Architecture overview)
2.4 Troubleshoot logging solutions.
- Given the absence of logs, determine the incorrect configuration and define remediation steps. (AWS Documentation: Compliance as code and auto-remediation with Cloud Custodian, Automatically re-enable AWS CloudTrail)
- Analyze logging access permissions to determine incorrect configuration and define remediation steps. (AWS Documentation: managing access permissions to your CloudWatch Logs resources, Identity and access management for Amazon CloudWatch Logs, Creating an IAM policy to access CloudWatch Logs resources, Using identity-based policies (IAM policies))
- Based on the security policy requirements, determine the correct log level, type, and sources. (AWS Documentation: Log levels, Working with security policies)
Domain 3: Infrastructure Security (26%)
3.1 Design edge security on AWS.
- For a given workload, assess and limit the attack surface. (AWS Documentation: Attack surface reduction, Prepare for DDoS Attacks by Reducing Your Attack Surface)
- Reduce blast radius (e.g. by distributing applications across accounts and regions).
- Choose appropriate AWS and/or third-party edge services such as WAF, CloudFront and Route 53 to protect against DDoS or filter application-level attacks. (AWS Documentation: Help Protect Dynamic Web Applications Against DDoS Attacks, Responding to DDoS events, Application layer defense (BP1, BP2))
- Given a set of edge protection requirements for an application, evaluate the mechanisms to prevent and detect intrusions for compliance and recommend required changes. (AWS Documentation: Intrusion Detection & Prevention Systems, use Amazon GuardDuty to detect suspicious activity within your AWS account)
- Test WAF rules to ensure they block malicious traffic. (AWS Documentation: Testing and tuning your AWS WAF protections, Testing New Rules)
3.2 Design and implement a secure network infrastructure.
- Disable any unnecessary network ports and protocols.
- Given a set of edge protection requirements, evaluate the security groups and NACLs of an application for compliance and recommend required changes. (AWS Documentation: Control traffic to subnets using Network ACLs, Security group rules for different use cases, continuously audit and limit security groups with AWS Firewall Manager, Network ACLs work with transit gateways)
- Given security requirements, decide on network segmentation (e.g. security groups and NACLs) that allow the minimum ingress/egress access required. (AWS Documentation: Creating, configuring, and deleting security groups for Amazon EC2, Securing ingress using security solutions and AWS Transit Gateway)
- Determine the use case for VPN or Direct Connect. (AWS Documentation: AWS Client VPN to Securely Access AWS and On-Premises Resources)
- Determine the use case for enabling VPC Flow Logs. (AWS Documentation: Log and View Network Traffic Flows, Work with flow logs, Publish flow logs to CloudWatch Logs)
- Given a description of the network infrastructure for a VPC, analyze the use of subnets and gateways for secure operation. (AWS Documentation: Work with VPCs, Gateway endpoints)
3.3 Troubleshoot a secure network infrastructure.
- Determine where network traffic flow is being denied. (AWS Documentation: Log and View Network Traffic Flows, Troubleshoot VPC Flow Logs)
- Given a configuration, confirm security groups and NACLs have been implemented correctly. (AWS Documentation: Security group connection tracking)
3.4 Design and implement host-based security.
- Given security requirements, install and configure host-based protections including Inspector, SSM. (AWS Documentation: Installing Amazon Inspector Classic agents, Manually installing SSM Agent on EC2 instances for Linux, Working with SSM Agent on EC2 instances for Windows Server)
- Decide when to use host-based firewall like iptables.
- Recommend methods for host hardening and monitoring.
Domain 4: Identity and Access Management (20%)
4.1 Design and implement a scalable authorization and authentication system to access AWS resources.
- Given a description of a workload, analyze the access control configuration for AWS services and make recommendations that reduce risk. (AWS Documentation: Using AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer)
- Given a description how an organization manages their AWS accounts, verify security of their root user. (AWS Documentation: Security best practices in IAM, AWS account root user)
- Given your organization’s compliance requirements, determine when to apply user policies and resource policies. (AWS Documentation: Creating IAM policies, User policy examples, Identity-based policies and resource-based policies)
- Within an organization’s policy, determine when to federate a directory services to IAM. (AWS Documentation: Identity federation in AWS, Providing access to externally authenticated users, Establish Federated Access to Your AWS Resources)
- Design a scalable authorization model that includes users, groups, roles, and policies. (AWS Documentation: scale your authorization needs by using attribute-based access control with S3, Permissions required to access IAM resources)
- Identify and restrict individual users of data and AWS resources. (AWS Documentation: AWS account identifiers)
- Review policies to establish that users/systems are restricted from performing functions beyond their responsibility, and also enforce proper separation of duties. (AWS Documentation: Testing IAM policies with the IAM policy simulator, Apply the principle of separation of duties to shell access to your EC2 instances, Validating IAM policies)
4.2 Troubleshoot an authorization and authentication system to access AWS resources.
- Investigate a user’s inability to access S3 bucket contents. (AWS Documentation: Troubleshooting IAM and Amazon S3)
- Investigate a user’s inability to switch roles to a different account. (AWS Documentation: Switching to a role (console))
- Investigate an Amazon EC2 instance’s inability to access a given AWS resource.
Domain 5: Data Protection (22%)
5.1 Design and implement key management and use.
- Analyze a given scenario to determine an appropriate key management solution. (AWS Documentation: AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), AWS Key Management Service FAQs, AWS Key Management Service features)
- Given a set of data protection requirements, evaluate key usage and recommend required changes. (AWS Documentation: Determining past usage of a KMS key, Troubleshooting key access)
- Determine and control the blast radius of a key compromise event and design a solution to contain the same.
5.2 Troubleshoot key management.
- Break down the difference between a KMS key grant and IAM policy. (AWS Documentation: Grants in AWS KMS, Using IAM policies with AWS KMS)
- Deduce the precedence given different conflicting policies for a given key. (AWS Documentation: Policy evaluation logic)
- Determine when and how to revoke permissions for a user or service in the event of a compromise. (AWS Documentation: Revoking IAM role temporary security credentials, Disabling permissions for temporary security credentials)
5.3 Design and implement a data encryption solution for data at rest and data in transit.
- Given a set of data protection requirements, evaluate the security of the data at rest in a workload and recommend required changes. (AWS Documentation: Protecting Data at Rest)
- Verify policy on a key such that it can only be used by specific AWS services. (AWS Documentation: Key policies in AWS KMS, Validating IAM policies, Testing IAM policies with the IAM policy simulator)
- Distinguish the compliance state of data through tag-based data classifications and automate remediation. (AWS Documentation: Amazon S3 bucket compliance, Financial Services Industry Lens, Data Classification)
- Evaluate a number of transport encryption techniques and select the appropriate method (i.e. TLS, IPsec, client-side KMS encryption). (AWS Documentation: Transport Encryption, Configure SSL/TLS with the Amazon Linux AMI, Amazon S3 client-side encryption with AWS KMS managed keys)
Target Candidate
The ideal applicant will have 5 years of expertise building and implementing security solutions in the IT industry. Furthermore, the ideal applicant should have at least two years of hands-on expertise safeguarding AWS workloads. The target candidate should have the following knowledge:
- The AWS shared responsibility model and its application
- Security controls for workloads on AWS
- Logging and monitoring strategies
- Cloud security threat models
- Patch management and security automation
- Ways to enhance AWS security services with third-party tools and services
- Disaster recovery controls, including BCP and backups
- Encryption
- Access control
- Data retention
Skills Required
- To begin, candidates should have a general awareness of specific data categories as well as familiarity with AWS data protection procedures.
- Secondly, candidates should have a general awareness of data encryption methods as well as AWS procedures for putting them into action.
- Finally, for a safe production environment, it is recommended that you have a working knowledge of AWS security services and capabilities.
2. Refer to AWS Academy
AWS Academy offers free, ready-to-teach cloud computing coursework to higher education institutions, preparing students to pursue industry-recognized certifications and in-demand cloud careers. Their curriculum assists instructors in staying on the cutting edge of AWS Cloud innovation so that they can provide students with the skills needed to land a job in one of the fastest-growing sectors. Refer to the following trainings by amazon –
- Getting Started with AWS Security, Identity, and Compliance
- AWS Security Fundamentals (Second Edition)
- Architecting on AWS
- Security Engineering on AWS
3. Refer to Amazon Whitepapers
Candidates preparing for the AWS can also use Amazon whitepapers to assist them prepare. The AWS certified security speciality whitepapers are genuine study resources that we can confidently recommend. These are basically the pdf forms of the topics that can be found on the official Amazon certifications page. Whitepapers not only enhance your preparation process, but they also assist you in developing a solid plan to focus on. AWS provides sample papers to help applicants gain more information and skills in order to prepare for certification examinations. You can also refer to amazon white papers if you want to refer to reading materials. Some of them are mentioned below –
- Security Pillar – AWS Well Architected Framework
- Amazon Web Services: Overview of Security Processes
- AWS Security Best Practices
4. Online Study Groups
When studying for examinations, candidates might benefit from online study groups. In other words, joining study groups will help you to keep in touch with experts and professionals who are already on this path. You can also refer to instructor-led training and online classes in order to clear the concepts and develop strong understanding. More focus should be paid to the theoretical aspect and hands-on training which can be made strong by getting trained from experts or by getting classes by a reliable organization.
5. Referring to Practice Tests
It is important to take practice tests in order to improve your preparedness. By testing yourself with the AWS Security Specialist exam, you will learn about your weak and strong points. You will also be able to enhance your response abilities, allowing you to save a substantial amount of time during the test. This is the most important part of your preparation, solve as many sample papers and practice tests as you can. This will help you improve your weak parts and also will clear your conceptual portions. You will feel more confident by practicing as much as you can. Try the free test now!
6. Gain hands-on experience
This is a critical step in obtaining a decent and well-paying job in the market. That is, provided you have the required experience as well as an AWS certification, no firm can turn you down. The most efficient way to do so, though, is to start working on a project. Begin working on your own project with the skills and knowledge you obtained from passing the AWS Security Specialist test. Additionally, this might be utilised as an assignment to analyse your talents, as well as a benefit during the interview to exhibit your abilities to the firm.
7. Preparing for the job interview
After obtaining the AWS certification and gaining hands-on experience, the next step is to get a top job in the industry. You should also know that obtaining an AWS Security Specialist certification is the most efficient approach to develop your networking profession. When it comes to the interview process, the first and most crucial thing to remember is to remain confident throughout the interview. Second, in order to prepare, you must look over the theoretical portion as well as the project you worked on. Furthermore, some of the top firms to check for if you want to apply for the Security Specialist job role are:
- Amazon
- Accenture
- Deloitte
- IBM
- nVent
- amdocs
- HP
- NTT Data.
Final Words
Even a single qualification has the ability to change your life. It has the potential to open the door to new opportunities. It is up to you, though, to seize such opportunities and run with them. And, in an increasingly DevOps era, you can’t truly expect someone else to handle all the minutiae you don’t understand. Specialization and cooperation are crucial, but you must still be capable of running systems on your own.
Given this, it’s a good idea to pursue the AWS Security Specialist certification to build a solid foundation for utilizing AWS efficiently on a daily basis. This will teach you how to design, create, set up, monitor, and maintain AWS-based security systems.
