🔐 AWS Secure Cloud VPC – Security Architecture Project

📌 Project Overview

This project demonstrates the design and implementation of a secure AWS cloud environment using industry best practices for network segmentation, access control, compute security, and monitoring.

The objective was to simulate a real-world enterprise cloud security architecture while maintaining visibility, least privilege access, and strong isolation between public and private resources.

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🏗️ Architecture Summary

The environment is built on a custom AWS VPC and includes:

• Custom Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
• Public and private subnet segmentation
• Internet Gateway with controlled routing
• EC2 instance deployed in a public subnet
• Security Groups enforcing least-privilege network access
• IAM roles to eliminate hardcoded credentials
• Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring
• VPC Flow Logs for network traffic visibility

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🔐 Security Controls Implemented

🔹 Network Security

• Public and private subnet isolation
• Internet-facing access restricted to HTTP/HTTPS
• Private backend accessible only from trusted security groups
• Reduced attack surface through layered network design

🔹 Compute Security (EC2)

• EC2 instance deployed using AWS Free Tier resources
• Key-based SSH authentication (no password login)
• IAM role attached to EC2 instead of static credentials
• Controlled inbound and outbound security group rules

🔹 Identity & Access Management (IAM)

• Root account avoided for daily operations
• IAM user used for administrative access
• EC2 instance assigned a dedicated IAM role
• Least privilege permissions enforced

🔹 Monitoring & Logging

• Amazon CloudWatch enabled for log collection
• VPC Flow Logs capturing network traffic metadata
• Centralized visibility for security validation and auditing

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🧪 Security Validation

The environment was validated by reviewing:

• Active CloudWatch log groups and streams
• VPC Flow Log records
• Security group configurations
• IAM role permissions

These controls confirm secure access management, controlled traffic flow, and continuous monitoring.

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🛠️ Tools & Technologies Used

• AWS VPC
• EC2 (Amazon Linux)
• IAM
• Security Groups
• CloudWatch
• VPC Flow Logs
• SSH (Key-based authentication)

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🎯 Skills Demonstrated

• Cloud security architecture design
• Network segmentation & isolation
• IAM least-privilege implementation
• Secure compute deployment
• Cloud monitoring & logging
• Security documentation & reporting

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📄 Documentation

A detailed security architecture report is available in the /Report directory:

• AWS_Secure_Cloud_VPC_Security_Report.pdf

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👤 Author

Krish Patel
Cybersecurity & Cloud Security Enthusiast