Techniques for Securing an Application in AWS

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Cloud
Security

Techniques for Securing an Application in AWS

As a newly hired DevOps Engineer, you have been given objectives to strengthen the security posture around a high-profile application. You are given three specific tasks: 1) Move secrets from a CloudFormation template to Secrets Manager and reference them from the template, 2) Configure a web access control list to guard against specific OWASP Top Ten items, and 3) Configure an EC2 instance to be managed by Amazon Inspector.

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Lab Info

Level

Intermediate

Last updated

Sep 24, 2025

Duration

1h 0m

Challenge

Create Secrets in Secrets Manager
1. View the CF template to move the username/password to Secrets Manager.
2. Create a secret in Secrets Manager named dbsecret (make sure to get the name exactly right for grading).
Challenge

Update the CloudFormation Template
1. Edit the template to reference secrets in Secrets Manager.
2. Update the template using the reference to Secrets Manager.
  
  Hint: Don't struggle with the syntax on this. Check out this AWS page.
Challenge

Configure the Web ACL
1. From the WAF Console, select Create Web ACL.
2. Add the AWS Managed Rules: Core rule set, SQL database rule set, and known bad inputs.
Note: This Web ACL is being created to protect an Application Load Balancer (which we won't create in this lab) in the Northern Virginia Region.
Challenge

Configure an EC2 Instance to be Managed by Systems Manager
1. In IAM, select Create Role.
2. Attach the AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore policy to the role.
3. Launch an EC2 Instance with the size t3.micro and the name instance4ssm1 and attach the role.

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