AWS Certified Security – Why it’s worth getting Specialty

Yeah, it’s a little surreal. However, having the SCS-C01 is valuable!

Let’s be honest: Public cloud technology hasn’t just become mainstream. It has become commonplace. According to Gartner, more than 80% of organizations use multiple cloud providers (compared to 49% in 2017), and 75% of organizations use a multicloud environment by default. As a result, being proficient with multiple cloud providers is a “unicorn” skill in the job market.

Cloud computing has forced us to rethink how we design and deploy architectures. So why should security be any different? This, of course, also leads to some business challenges.

Let’s discuss some of these challenges in action before we explain how studying and earning the AWS Certified Cloud Security – Specialty can help you solve them. Below are the top five cloud security challenges most businesses face.

1. Data challenges

Many businesses find it difficult to properly protect their data in the cloud. If you want an example, search Amazon S3 public data breaches. wait…

Crazy, right? Although straightforward, ensuring data security can be difficult. Especially if you have to worry about new and upcoming data sovereignty laws, compliance requirements, data geolocation regulations, and other issues. All it takes is a single misconfiguration and a company can face huge lawsuits and fines.

2. Securing infrastructure

Designing a truly secure cloud architecture is complex and there are many considerations. It requires a lot of time and knowledge. What’s even more difficult is that there is no “one size fits all” approach either.

3. AuthN and AuthZ

Let’s be honest: Implementing authorization and authentication within the public cloud can be a nightmare. If you have 10 employees, it’s not a big deal from the end user’s point of view. But what about services in the cloud? You need to consider those as well.

And guess what? Any AWS service that needs to perform some action within your workflow must have the appropriate permissions to make the necessary API calls. Therefore, don’t give it too many permissions. You need to find exactly the right amount, but anyone who has worked with AWS IAM for any length of time knows the headaches that come with it.

Administrators often slap AWS managed policies like AmazonS3FullAccess in there and claim it’s a good thing. I can see you shaking your head from here and I agree.

4. Automation (the right way)

There has also been an explosion in the use of infrastructure as a code tool for deploying architectural components to the cloud. With things like AWS CloudFormation and HashiCorp Terraform, you can now maintain an SDLC approach to deploying resources for your operations team.

This adds even more complexity. How can you make your deployment as secure as possible? Who can deploy and update what? How do you share the current state of your configuration? What happens when resources drift? • This is a hassle, but following good security best practices can make it a little easier.

5. Reporting and auditing

Finally, everyone’s favorite topic: auditing. If you’ve been lucky enough to go through a full audit process (ironically), you know how much documentation and reporting is required to get through it. If you don’t have one yet, consider yourself lucky. Please take our word for it. That’s a lot of documentation. Seriously, tons.

Of course, all these problems are just the biggest problems. Trust me when I say the list of security challenges is almost endless.

How studying SCS-C01 can help you solve real-world problems

It would be great if, like in the story above, we could get certification and the cybersecurity issues would resolve themselves. However, the qualifications don’t actually get you anything (other than an interview or a raise), it’s the knowledge you gain while studying for the exam that allows you to solve real business problems.

Here are some of the things you will learn to pass the AWS Certified Security – Specialty exam.

• How to effectively protect your AWS data, including encrypting data in transit and at rest

• How to use different KMS keys for encryption to separate permissions, or leverage complex Amazon S3 bucket policies to restrict non-HTTPS traffic and non-organizational access to objects.

• Options for identity provider management, including AWS IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO), Amazon Cognito, and AWS Managed Microsoft AD.

• What tools to use on AWS to deploy resources and how to securely orchestrate workflows using serverless technology

• The right VPN solution to access your VPC from an on-premises location, how to inject custom HTTP security headers using Lambda@Edge, and how to connect to managed compute without requiring SSH or RDP.

• How to conduct a passing audit (without tearing your hair out) using AWS tools like AWS Security Hub, Amazon Macie, and AWS Artifact

AWS Certified Security – Specialty Meets Three Technical Demands

No matter which report you open (Gartner, StackOverflow, or Pluralsight), there are three major technology themes for 2023: cloud, cybersecurity, and data. SCS-C01 supports all of these. However, there are some other statistics worth mentioning as well.

Study AWS Certified Security – Expertise is beneficial to everyone involved

AWS Certified Security – Earning the Specialist certification helps you solve real-world problems and maximize your personal value. So if you’re up for a challenge, go for it! Someday, you might even try to save your company from an AI monster.

AWS Certified Security – Looking for a specialty?

ACloudGuru and Pluralsight have released a fully updated version of the AWS Certification Security – Specialty Exam Prep course. This preparation course takes you through all the important tasks for teams looking to protect their AWS infrastructure and resources.

This course will walk you through real-world scenarios in each of the following domains, so you can prepare for the exam itself and with real-world use cases that you can implement in your daily work.

• Domain 1: Incident Response (12%)

• Domain 2: Logging and Monitoring (20%)

• Domain 3: Infrastructure Security (26%)

• Domain 4: Identity and Access Management (20%)

• Domain 5: Data Protection (22%)

Okay, enough story. If you’re ready for the challenge of this epic exam, check out the newly released AWS Certification Security – Specialty Exam Prep Course on Pluralsight. Please join us. Please continue to be great, Master!