Cloud fundamentals: shared responsibility, regions, identities and cost

Skills you'll practise

• Classify a service as IaaS, PaaS or SaaS and state what the customer remains responsible for in each
• Explain what availability zones protect against and what still needs design, backup or a second region
• Choose least-privilege, group-based access with temporary credentials instead of shared or long-lived secrets
• Use the platform's audit log to find who changed what, and know which logs need to be switched on
• Set budgets, alerts and cost allocation tags and explain why a budget alert doesn't stop spending

Course outline

1. 1.Cloud fundamentals: who does what, and how to stay in controlVideo · 2 min
2. 2.What the cloud is, and who is responsible for whatLesson · 17 min
3. 3.Regions, zones, structure and identitiesLesson · 17 min
4. 4.Audit logs and cost controlLesson · 16 min
5. 5.Cloud fundamentals: shared responsibility, regions, identities and cost: knowledge checkKnowledge check · 20 questions
6. 6.A cloud access key in a public code repositoryScenario
7. 7.Final exam10 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out

Sources it draws on

The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.

• NIST SP 800-145: The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing (service and deployment models)
• NIST SP 800-145 (PDF): essential characteristics, service models and deployment models
• AWS: Shared Responsibility Model (security 'of' the cloud vs 'in' the cloud)
• Microsoft Learn: Shared responsibility in the cloud (responsibility matrix; responsibilities you always retain)
• Google Cloud Architecture Framework: Shared responsibilities and shared fate on Google Cloud
• Microsoft Learn: What are Azure availability zones? (zonal vs zone-redundant; zones don't protect against a region outage)
• Microsoft Learn: Activity log in Azure Monitor (control-plane operations; resource logs need a diagnostic setting)
• AWS IAM User Guide: Security best practices in IAM (temporary credentials, MFA, least privilege, remove unused credentials)
• AWS Billing User Guide: Organizing and tracking costs using AWS cost allocation tags
• Google Cloud Billing: Create, edit, or delete budgets and budget alerts (alerts-only budgets don't cap spending)
• Microsoft Learn: Manage emergency access admin accounts (Microsoft Entra ID)