Cloud Computing Security (Coursera)

We then introduce AWS Load balancing feature, create load balancing cluster for scalability and reliability. We also demonstrate how to diagnose the problem introduced by the health check and firewall restriction conflicts. By the end of this course, you should be able to create your own web cluster with mysql databases, setup your users with credentials to manage your AWS resources/virtual machines either through their management control interface or using AWS CLI API using scripts. You will also learn the best practice in cloud security and debugging service interaction issues may arise in the cloud systems.
Course 1 of 4 in the Advanced System Security Design Specialization.

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Cloud Computing Basics
In this module, we learn about the basics of cloud computing using AWS EC2 as an example, including the resources provided by the public cloud, the pricing structures related to the resource usages in computing, storage, and networking services, and their trade-offs, the basic operations of setting up account.

WEEK 2
Secure Server Configuration and Integrated Access Management
In this module, we learn how to sign up AWS account, create/configure/manage AWS EC2 instances, access them and configure the Linux operating system, Apache web server, MySQL database, and PHP server side scripting support. We also learn how to follow the best security practice to create user accounts with different privileges using AWS IAM service. We learn how to use AWS Command Line Interface to create AWS EC2 instances and control AWS Resources. It allows for programming control of the EC2 instances.

WEEK 3
Utilize Route53 DNS
In this module, we learn AWS' highly available and scalable cloud DNS web service and how to set up a domain for an organization/company using AWS Route53 service, create DNS entries for an instance, and understand the advanced Geoproximity Routing With Traffic Biasing.

WEEK 4
AWS Load Balancer
In this module, we learn how to utilize the AWS load balancer support to create load balancing clusters to provide high available services based on round robin and customize rules with header content. We learn how to create application load balancer to distribute http requests to target groups with instances, and configure the health check mechanism so that the load balancing can avoid unhealthy or unresponsive instances. We also learn show to debug the common mistake of AWS load balancing configuration due to the misconfiguration of the security group in the target instances. The cost formula related to the usage of AWS load balancing service are also covered.