SANS SEC510 Public Cloud Security AWS, Azure and GCP

As discussed in my previous post, I took SEC 510 shortly after taking 488. This class is an excellent extension to that. You can read all the class specifics at the site. Where 488 covered these cloud concepts and set up an environment using Terraform, 510 actually goes deeper, where you discuss what it takes to set up a cloud environment and create and modify similar Terraform scripts. If you are tasked with setting up your organization’s cloud infrastructure and being able to do so by focusing on automation and security across all three cloud providers, 510 is a great class.

In 510 there is a similar fake company you are working at the pre-work setup requires you to create an AWS account, Azure subscription and a GCP project. You can pick which cloud you want to use for most of the labs or do the same lab in all three clouds. This is really great and showcases what it takes to run an application or service in multiple clouds. I started doing each lab in all three but eventually ended up just rotating through to get good exposure in all of them.

As for the GIAC GPCS exam, it was similar to the practice tests and again straightforward. Something that helped me a lot was making sure I could easily pull up any of the slides with the Terraform configuration. I scored very well on this exam and felt I could have dug deeper into the Terraform aspects. If I were in a cloud engineering-type role rolling out cloud infrastructure, I would refer back to this and do some of the optional labs.

Overall, this was a really great course!