Edge locations – Introduction to AWS Security Concepts and the Shared Responsibility Model

Edge locations

Edge locations are sites that are deployed in major cities and highly populated areas worldwide to deliver content to end users with lower latency. While edge locations don’t host AWS services, they play a crucial role in the security and performance of services such as Amazon CloudFront, AWS WAF, and AWS Shield.

Edge locations are the endpoints for CloudFront, the content delivery network (CDN) of AWS. They are designed to cache content, reducing the load on your application and improving the user experience by delivering content from locations closer to the end user. But beyond performance and latency, edge locations also play a significant role in security, and in particular in mitigating distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. By using CloudFront, traffic to your application is routed through the edge locations, where the traffic can be inspected before reaching the application. Any sudden surge in traffic can be absorbed and distributed across the entire network of edge locations. This means that even during a DDoS attack, your application remains mostly available to your users.

However, for more advanced and larger-scale DDoS protection, the paid option, AWS Shield Advanced, can be used to provide more enhanced rate limiting and anomaly detection algorithms to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks.

In conclusion, while edge locations are primarily designed for performance, they also provide significant security benefits. By understanding and leveraging these benefits, you can enhance the security and resilience of your AWS applications.

AWS security best practices – general guidelines

When it comes to securing your AWS environment, there are several best practices that you should consider following to help you protect your resources, data, and applications in the AWS cloud. By following them, you can significantly enhance the security of your AWS environment. However, remember that security best practices can vary depending on the specific AWS services you are using and the unique requirements of your applications and workloads.