New Training: Secure EC2 Workloads

In this 5-video skill, CBT Nuggets trainer Bart Castle teaches you common hardening and security practices for EC2 instances. Learn how to approach patching and security updating directly or by using an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) hardening routine and how to manage EC2 key pairs and the resulting authentication models it supports for EC2 workloads. Watch this new AWS training.

Learn AWS with one of these courses:

• AWS Certified Security – Specialty

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

• AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate

• AWS EC2

This training includes:

• 5 videos

• 30 minutes of training

You’ll learn these topics in this skill:

• Secure Starting Point: AMIs and UserData

• Secure Starting Point: Hardening your AMI

• Generating EC2 Key Pairs

• Extending EC2 Key Pairs to New Users

• EC2 Key Pair Rotation and Maintenance

What are EC2 Key Pairs and How Do They Enhance Cloud Security?

An EC2 Key pair consists of an AWS cloud-native public key and private key that provide access control to a user's AWS EC2 instance. This private and public key system works by validating access to an EC2 instance only when the public key can validate the private key, an extension of standard Secure Shell (SSH) authentication.

Importantly to note, the public key of the key pair is stored in the EC2 instance and can be exposed publicly, whereas the private key of the pair should be protected and hidden from other users as it provides access to the protected EC2 instance. These EC2 instance key pairs use a 2048-bit SSH RSA key and users can generate, store and manage up to 5,000 key pairs per region!

As organizations look to create security policies around their EC2 instances, it’s greatly encouraged to use EC2 pair keys. In doing so, organizations should take great caution in protecting the private key file such that it is hidden from malicious internal users or hackers.