Introduction
At Amazon, cloud security remains our utmost priority. We offer a comprehensive suite of over 200 security, compliance, and governance tools. This extensive range is why diverse customers—from large enterprises to startups—trust us to safeguard their workloads.
In this series of articles, we will detail the security controls available within AWS Serverless services and demonstrate how their inherent features can fulfill security and compliance requirements.
In this post, I will highlight the benefits of serverless architectures, emphasizing the shared security model that applies to these applications. Additionally, I will identify key stakeholders—such as Developers, DevOps professionals, and Compliance teams—who must ensure the secure deployment and management of serverless applications.
What is Serverless?
Serverless computing is the cloud-native architecture that allows you to delegate many operational responsibilities to your cloud provider, like AWS. This shift enhances both agility and innovation. Serverless enables you to create and run applications without the need to manage servers. It eliminates the usual infrastructure management tasks, including server provisioning, patching, operating system upkeep, and capacity scaling. You can leverage serverless architectures for virtually any application type or backend service, ensuring high availability and seamless scaling.
The four primary benefits of serverless include:
- No server management
- Flexible scaling
- Pay for actual usage
- Automated high availability
Shared Security Model
In the realm of serverless computing, security and compliance are a collaborative effort between AWS and the customer. While AWS provides a robust data center and network architecture suited for even the most security-conscious organizations, the responsibility of securing the application code and managing sensitive data falls to you. AWS also offers services that you can use securely, and independent auditors frequently evaluate our security as part of the AWS compliance framework. Your specific responsibilities will vary based on the AWS services you utilize, as well as factors such as data sensitivity and legal requirements—this is what we refer to as “security in the cloud.”
In the serverless paradigm, customers can concentrate on securing their application code, managing sensitive data, monitoring application behavior, and handling identity and access management (IAM) for respective services.
It’s crucial to note the dotted box encompassing Platform management, Code encryption, Network traffic, Firewall configuration, and Operating system/network configuration. While AWS assumes these duties for serverless architectures, they remain your responsibility in non-serverless environments.
Security Personas
For those accustomed to designing and managing server-based applications, it’s essential to recognize how serverless impacts security protocols:
- Compliance teams must grasp how AWS takes on increased security responsibilities in serverless applications, whether a service aligns with compliance standards, and what configurations are necessary for compliance.
- DevOps teams should implement available protective and detective controls to securely manage serverless applications.
- Developers and their teams need to understand how to apply the principle of least privilege and responsibly handle sensitive data in their applications.
For additional insights on serverless security, check out another blog post on ChanciTurnervgt2.
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