General best practices to protect your data on AWS
In this section, we will go over some general best practices. However, before we do, we should understand some security basics. Let's start with what I call the five general pillars of security. They are as follows:
- Authentication: Can the user or principal prove who they are? Access to AWS resources depends on IAM authentication through AWS credentials, which are like logins and passwords. These credentials can be long-lived, such as IAM user credentials, or short-lived, such as the AWS credentials that are provided when an IAM role is assumed. Throughout this chapter, we will assume that AWS IAM is the only authentication mechanism that users can use. However, we will also look at other ways to authenticate in Chapter 7, Ad Hoc Analytics.
- Authorization: Is the user or principal provided permission to access a resource? When an action is requested against an AWS resource, the IAM credentials that are used are checked...
