Security appliances (for example, firewalls)

What is the primary role of a firewall in network security within an AWS environment?

The primary role of a firewall in network security within an AWS environment is to act as a barrier that controls the ingress and egress traffic based on an applied rule set. It protects the network by filtering traffic and ensuring that only authorized data passes in and out of the network. In AWS, services such as AWS Network Firewall and AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) provide these capabilities.

How does AWS Network Firewall differ from AWS Security Groups?

AWS Network Firewall is a managed service that provides network protections for your VPCs, offering stateful and stateless traffic filtering along with intrusion detection and prevention. AWS Security Groups, on the other hand, are an instance-level security feature that act as a virtual firewall for your EC2 instances, controlling inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level. Security Groups offer stateful filtering based on port and protocol.

What is the significance of a stateful firewall in network security on AWS?

A stateful firewall in network security on AWS can track the state of active connections and make decisions about which network packets to allow through based on the context of the traffic. It remembers the state of a connection between requesting and responding systems and can filter traffic more intelligently, not just based on predetermined static rules, but also considering the history of the connection.

Can you explain how AWS Shield differs from AWS WAF?

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency. AWS WAF, on the other hand, is a web application firewall service that helps protect web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources.

Describe a scenario where AWS Network Firewall’s stateful domain list filtering feature would be used.

AWS Network Firewall’s stateful domain list filtering feature would be utilized in scenarios where an organization needs to control access to specific domain names, not just IP addresses. For example, an organization might want to prevent access to certain social media platforms or external cloud storage services by specifying domain names in their firewall rules, thereby managing outgoing traffic heading to these domains from within their VPC.

How does AWS Firewall Manager assist in managing organization-wide security policies?

AWS Firewall Manager simplifies administration by allowing you to centrally configure and manage firewall rules across your accounts and applications in the AWS organization. It ensures that all the AWS WAF, AWS Shield, and AWS Network Firewall policies are consistently applied across your entire AWS environment, making it easier to maintain a strong and coherent security posture.

What features does AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager provide for security and monitoring?

AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager provides a centralized hub to monitor your global network across AWS and on-premises locations. For security and monitoring, it includes features such as visual topology viewer, route analyzer, and integration with CloudWatch for event logging, giving insights into traffic flow and security across the network which can help identify potential security threats or misconfigurations.

When would you use VPC endpoint services instead of an internet gateway or NAT gateway for connecting to AWS services?

You would use VPC endpoint services for private connectivity between your VPC and supported AWS services without requiring an internet gateway, NAT device, VPN connection, or AWS Direct Connect connection. VPC endpoints are often used when you want to keep all the traffic within the AWS network and avoid using the public internet for security reasons.

Explain the differences between AWS Direct Connect and VPN in terms of security and use cases.

AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS, offering greater bandwidth and potentially more consistent network performance compared to internet-based connections. In terms of security, Direct Connect is often paired with Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) or similar to create a private network. A VPN, on the other hand, uses the public internet to create a secure, encrypted tunnel for data transmission between your site and AWS. Use cases for Direct Connect typically involve high-volume, consistent workloads that require high throughput and low latency, while VPN is more suited for smaller volumes of traffic that need encryption over the internet.

What is the purpose of the AWS Certificate Manager in an AWS Networking context?

AWS Certificate Manager is a service that lets you easily provision, manage, and deploy public and private Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) certificates for use with AWS services and your internal connected resources. In an AWS Networking context, the purpose is to simplify the management of SSL/TLS certificates, ensuring secure communications for applications by encrypting data in transit.