Introduction
Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a secure, isolated private cloud hosted within a public cloud. VPC customers can run code, store data, host websites, and do anything else they could do in an ordinary private cloud, but the private cloud is hosted remotely by a public cloud provider. VPCs combine the scalability and convenience of public cloud computing with the data isolation of private cloud computing.
Key Features of VPC Security
- Virtual Private Clouds (VPC): A VPC is a virtual network that closely resembles a traditional network that you’d operate in your own data center. It provides isolation within the cloud and is accompanied with a virtual private network (VPN) function that secures the remote access of the organization to its VPC resources.
- Subnets: A subnet is a range of IP addresses in your VPC. A subnet must reside in a single Availability Zone. When you add subnets to your VPC to host your application, create them in multiple Availability Zones for high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability.
- IP Addressing: You can assign IP addresses, both IPv4 and IPv6, to your VPCs and subnets. VPCs achieve high levels of security by creating virtualized replicas of the security features used to control access to resources housed in traditional data centers. These security features enable customers to define virtual networks in logically isolated parts of the public cloud and control which IP addresses have access to which resources.
- Routing: Use route tables to determine where network traffic from your subnet or gateway is directed.
- Gateways and Endpoints: A gateway connects your VPC to another network.
- Peering Connections: Use a VPC peering connection to route traffic between the resources in two VPCs.
- Transit Gateways: Use a transit gateway, which acts as a central hub, to route traffic between your VPCs, VPN connections, and AWS Direct Connect connections.
- VPC Flow Logs: A flow log captures information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in your VPC. Use VPC Flow Logs to monitor the IP traffic going to and from a VPC, subnet, or network interface.
- VPN Connections: Connect your VPCs to your on-premises networks using AWS Virtual Private Network (AWS VPN).
- Security Groups: Use security groups to control traffic to EC2 instances in your subnets.
- Network ACLs: Use network ACLs to control inbound and outbound traffic at the subnet level.
- Identity and Access Management (IAM): Manage access to AWS resources in your VPC using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) identity federation, users, and roles.
- Network Access Analyzer: Use Network Access Analyzer to identify unintended network access to resources in our VPCs.
- AWS Network Firewall: Use AWS Network Firewall to monitor and protect your VPC by filtering inbound and outbound traffic.
Conclusion
VPC security is a powerful tool that allows users to launch their virtual machines in a protected and isolated virtual environment defined by them. It provides full control over your virtual networking environment, including resource placement, connectivity, and security. Whether you’re looking to launch a simple website, host multi-tier web applications, or create hybrid connections, VPC security has got you covered.
