Education is critical to effective security. As organizations migrate, modernize, and build with Amazon Web Services (AWS), engineering and development teams need specific skills and knowledge to embed security into workloads. Lack of support for these skills can increase the likelihood of security incidents.

AWS has partnered with SANS Institute to create SEC480: AWS Secure Builder—a new training course that can help you confidently build and deploy secure workloads in the AWS Cloud.

The training, authored and delivered by the experts at SANS Institute, is designed to equip architects, engineers, and developers with the ability to implement and enhance security controls, and strengthen your security posture with a secure by design approach to product development.

What you’ll learn

The course features eight comprehensive modules that focus on different aspects of AWS security. Each is accompanied by a hands-on lab to provide practical experience and boost confidence in building secure AWS environments.

1. Responsibility to, for, and of security: Understand the shared responsibility model, the difference between cloud and on-premises security, AWS security architecture, compliance requirements, and how to apply effective security controls.
2. Identification and authorization: Implement best practices for AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), explore workforce identity management, address common authentication failures, and apply secure access controls.
3. Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD): Learn how to configure and use CI/CD pipelines, automate code deployment with AWS CodePipeline, integrate security tools, and help prevent misconfigurations through hands-on labs and real-world demos.
4. Workload and services: Manage AWS workloads and services such as Amazon API Gateway, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), address misconfigurations, and align configurations to your risk profile through practical labs and real-world examples.
5. Security monitoring: Implement comprehensive security monitoring with logging at all levels, use monitoring tools, enhance alerting with artificial AI, and set up early warning systems.
6. Exposure and attack vectors: Identify and mitigate exposure and attack vectors through open source intelligence (OSINT), understand the anatomy of exploitations, and minimize threat surfaces using threat modeling and compliance tools.
7. Incident response: Master the six-step incident response process, implement best practices with roles, playbooks, and technology, and prepare with tools and exercises.
8. Trust, control, and the supply chain: Evaluate vendor reliance and onboarding processes, implement Zero Trust principles, and defend against supply chain attacks to ensure secure vendor interactions.

Anyone technical who will be building in, operating in, configuring, or managing AWS cloud environments can benefit from the training, including AWS customers and partners. The training is offered online, and learnings are validated by an associated GIAC exam.

Arming your teams with the insight provided by this training can help your organization design, build, and maintain applications in the cloud with a security-first mindset, increase product development velocity, and enhance business agility through secure cloud practices.

We encourage you to learn more about SEC480: AWS Secure Builder through SANS Institute.

Notes

• This course will be offered online. SANS provides in-person training only for private, high-volume trainings.
• GIAC is providing a micro-credential for the AWS Secure Builder certification. It will be the first course to have this designation by GIAC. Micro-certifications are short, competency-based courses that demonstrate mastery in a particular area.

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