Graduate Certificate Programs: Cloud Security

3 Credit Hours

ISE 6610: Cloud Security Essentials will equip you to implement appropriate security controls in the cloud, often using automation to "inspect what you expect." Mature cloud service providers (CSPs) have created a variety of security services that can help customers use their products in a more secure manner, but much about cloud security still resides with the customer organization. This course covers real-world lessons using security services created by the CSPs as well as open-source tools. Each lesson features hands-on lab exercises to help you practice the lessons learned. You will progressively layer multiple security controls in order to end the course with a functional security architecture implemented in the cloud. The course begins by addressing one of the most crucial aspects of the cloud — Identity and Access Management (IAM). From there, you will learn to secure the cloud through discussion and practical, hands-on exercises related to several key topics to defend various cloud workloads operating in the different CSP models of: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).

You will be able to:

• Identify the risks and risk control ownership based on the deployment models and service delivery models of the various products offered by cloud service providers (CSPs)
• Evaluate the trustworthiness of CSPs based on their security documentation, service features, third-party attestations, and position in the global cloud ecosystem
• Create accounts and use the services of any one the leading CSPs and be comfortable with the self-service nature of the public cloud, including finding documentation, tutorials, pricing, and security features
• Articulate the business and security implications of a multi-cloud strategy
• Secure access to the consoles used to access the CSP environments
• Use command line interfaces to query assets and identities in the cloud environment
• Use hardening benchmarks, patching, and configuration management to achieve and maintain an engineered state of security for the cloud environment
• Evaluate the logging services of various CSPs and use those logs to provide the necessary accountability for events that occur in the cloud environment
• Configure the command line interface (CLI) and properly protect the access keys to minimize the risk of compromised credentials
• Use basic Bash and Python scripts to automate tasks in the cloud
• Implement network security controls that are native to both AWS and Azure
• Employ an architectural pattern to automatically create and provision patched and hardened virtual machine images to multiple AWS accounts
• Use Azure Security Center to audit the configuration in an Azure deployment and identify security issues
• Use Terraform to deploy a complete "infrastructure as code" environment to multiple cloud providers
• Leverage the Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Controls Matrix to select the appropriate security controls for a given cloud network security architecture and assess a CSP's implementation of those controls using audit reports and the CSP's shared responsibility model
• Follow the penetration testing guidelines put forth by AWS and Azure to invoke your "inner red teamer" to compromise a full stack cloud application
• Use logs from cloud services and virtual machines hosted in the cloud to detect a security incident and take appropriate steps as a first responder according to a recommended incident response methodology
• Perform a preliminary forensic file system analysis of a compromised virtual machine to identify indicators of compromise and create a file system timeline

3 Credit Hours

ISE 6612, Public Cloud Security: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) teaches students how the major cloud providers work and how to securely configure and use their services and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings. This course provides cloud security practitioners, analysts, and researchers with an in-depth understanding of the inner workings of the most popular public cloud providers: AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP. You will learn industry-renowned standards and methodologies, such as the MITRE ATT&CK Cloud Matrix and CIS Cloud Benchmarks, then apply that knowledge in hands-on exercises to assess a modern web application that leverages the cloud native offerings of each provider. Through this process you will learn the philosophies that undergird each provider and how these have influenced their services.

You will be prepared to:

• Understand the inner workings of cloud services and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings in order to make more informed decisions in the cloud
• Understand the design philosophies that undergird each provider and how these have influenced their services in order to properly prescribe security solutions for them
• Discover the unfortunate truth that many cloud services are adopted before their security controls are fully fleshed out
• Understand Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in depth
• Understand the intricacies of Identity and Access Management, one of the most fundamental concepts in the cloud and yet one of the last understood
• Understand cloud networking and how locking it down is a critical aspect of defense in depth in the cloud
• Analyze how each provider handles encryption at rest and in transit in order to prevent sensitive data loss
• Explore the service offering landscape to discover what is driving the adoption of multiple cloud platforms and to assess the security of services at the bleeding edge
• Understand the complex connections between cloud accounts, providers, and on-premise systems and the cloud
• Perform secure data migration to and from the cloud
• Understand Terraform Infrastructure-as-Code well enough to share it with your engineering team as a starting point for implementing the controls discussed in the course

3 Credit Hours

In ISE 6442: Enterprise Cloud Forensics and Incident Response, examiners will learn how each of the major cloud service providers (Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS and Google Cloud Platform) are extending analyst's capabilities with new evidence sources not available in traditional on-premise investigations. Incident response and forensics are primarily about following breadcrumbs left behind by attackers. This class is primarily a log analysis class to help examiners come up to speed quickly with cloud based investigation techniques. Numerous hands-on labs throughout the course will allow you to access evidence generated based on the most common incidents and investigations. You will learn where to pull data from and how to analyze it to find evil.

3 Credit Hours

ISE 6615 covers the OWASP Top 10 and provides students with a better understanding of web application vulnerabilities, enabling them to properly defend organizational web assets. Mitigation strategies from an infrastructure, architecture, and coding perspective are discussed alongside real-world implementations that really work. The testing aspect of vulnerabilities is also covered so students can ensure their application is tested for the vulnerabilities discussed in class.

3 Credit Hours

ISE 6630 dives into the latest in penetration testing techniques focused on the cloud, how to assess cloud environments, as well as other new topics that appear in the cloud like microservices, in-memory data stores, files in the cloud, serverless functions, Kubernetes meshes, and containers. The course also specifically covers Azure and AWS penetration testing, which is particularly important given that Amazon Web Services and Microsoft account for more than half of the market. The goal is not to demonstrate these technologies, but rather to teach you how to assess and report on the true risk that the organization could face if these services are left insecure.

Students will be able to:

• Conduct cloud-based penetration tests
• Assess cloud environments and bring value back to the business by locating vulnerabilities
• Understand how cloud environments are constructed and how to scale factors into the gathering of evidence
• Assess security risks in Amazon and Microsoft Azure environments

3 Credit Hours

ISE 6650 provides development, operations, and security professionals with a methodology to build and deliver secure infrastructure and software using DevOps and cloud services. Students will explore how DevOps principles, practices, and tools of DevOps can improve the reliability, integrity, and security of on-premise and cloud-hosted applications. You will gain hands-on experience using popular tools such as Jenkins, GitLab, Puppet, Vault, and Grafana to automate Configuration Management ("Infrastructure as Code"), Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), cloud infrastructure, containerization, micro-segmentation, Functions as a Service (FaaS), Compliance as Code, and Continuous Monitoring.

You will be prepared to:

• Recognize how DevOps works and identify keys to success
• Utilize Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment workflows, patterns, and tools
• Identify the security risks and issues associated with DevOps and Continuous Delivery
• Use DevOps practices to secure DevOps tools and workflows
• Conduct effective risk assessments and threat modeling in a rapidly changing environment
• Design and write automated security tests and checks in CI/CD
• Understand the strengths and weaknesses of different automated testing approaches in Continuous Delivery
• Implement self-serve security services for developers
• Inventory and patch your software dependencies
• Threat model and secure your build and deployment environment
• Automate configuration management using Infrastructure as Code
• Secure container technologies (such as Docker and Kubernetes)
• Build continuous monitoring feedback loops from production to engineering
• Securely manage secrets for continuous integration servers and applications
• Automate compliance and security policy scanning
• Understand how to automate cloud architecture components
• Use CloudFormation and Terraform to create Infrastructure as Code
• Build CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and CodePipeline
• Wire security scanning into Jenkins and CodePipeline workflows
• Containerize applications with Elastic Container Service and Azure Kubernetes Service
• Integrate cloud logging and metrics with Grafana
• Create Slack alerts from CloudWatch metrics
• Manage secrets with Vault, KMS, and the SSM Parameter store
• Protect static content with CloudFront Signatures
• Leverage Elastic Container Service for blue/green deployments
• Secure REST APIs with API Gateway
• Implement an API Gateway custom authorization Lambda function
• Deploy the AWS WAF and build custom WAF rules
• Perform continuous compliance scans with CloudMapper
• Enforce cloud configuration policies with Cloud Custodian

3 Credit Hours

ISE 6655 focuses on cloud threat detection, covering various attack techniques used against cloud infrastructure and teaching the observation, detection, and analysis of cloud telemetry. With 20 hands-on labs and CTF, this course equips security analysts, detection engineers, and threat hunters with practical skills and knowledge to safeguard their organization's cloud infrastructure against potential threats.