Cloud Security & AWS Concepts

Vocabulary flashcards covering core AWS cloud services, service models, identity management, and security architecture concepts from the lecture.

Control plane

The collection of user interfaces, web consoles, and command-line tools that an administrator uses to configure, manage, and control cloud services.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

A cloud computing model where the provider supplies physical hardware, networking, and virtual servers (such as a Virtual Private Server), leaving the customer responsible for configuring software and OS-level settings.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

A cloud service model where the user provides application code and the provider hosts and manages the underlying execution platform.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

A cloud service model where fully functional applications (such as Google Docs or webmail clients) are hosted centrally and accessed by users via a web browser.

EC2

Elastic Compute Cloud; Amazon Web Services' (AWS) service for creating and running virtual servers in the cloud.

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

A cloud security framework that defines entities (users, services, or hardware) and uses assigned roles and fine-grained policies to control what resources those entities can access.

Blast radius

The potential extent of damage or level of resource exposure that can occur if a specific cloud user account, service, or identity is compromised.

Bucket

The term used in AWS for a shared storage location that contains data files or objects accessible by configured cloud services.

S3

Simple Storage Service; the AWS service used for managing object and file storage in buckets.

Simple Notification Service (SNS)

An AWS notification service that routes triggers and messages to targeted outputs, such as sending alert emails to administrators.

EventBridge

An AWS service used to monitor specific system events (such as bucket policy changes) using custom patterns and automatically trigger target workflows.

CloudTrail

An AWS service that logs and records all account activity and metadata, allowing administrators to audit events and perform security investigations during breaches.

Zero Trust

A cloud security model that assumes no network is implicitly trusted, requiring fine-grained permissions, strict identity authentication for all interactions, and continuous logging.