Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the biggest cloud provider platforms on the market. The company itself has been growing at a very impressive pace, which will likely continue well into the future. Therefore, if you're trying to be strategic about your career, having a good understanding of AWS will be very helpful if you want to get into any role related to the cloud. Now, if you're interested in having a cloud security specialty, the question is, how do I prove to an employer that I know what I'm doing? To address this, AWS has created 11 different certification courses for getting an understanding of it. To make it simple for you, here is a list of the top 3 most valuable AWS Certifications for someone interested in a cloud security position working with AWS:
AWS Security Specialist
This is the premier AWS security certification; studying for this certification will teach you about all the security features that exist in AWS. It includes compliance features, security automation, how to run scripts in your environment, security best practices for cloud security, and more. If you're someone who has worked with AWS before and wants to learn its security aspect, this is a good route to go. Importantly, this is not a beginner certification, so you may find it useful to study the material of one of the other certifications before going into this one if you're not confident with the platform.
Solutions Architect
This certification path is all about building an AWS environment for your company that is fully functioning and resilient. It goes over important concepts like redundancy, which teaches you how and why it's important to build your AWS infrastructure to be fault-tolerant. This way, if you ever have a failure or a hack that causes you to lose access to any instance on the cloud, your company will not be crippled by it. One important aspect of this certification vs. the AWS security specialist is that this teaches you how to build the environment, not just secure it, which is very important for being a cloud engineer.
DevOps Engineer
For those that don't know, DevOps is a combination of software development and IT operations. Poor DevOps security is one of the leading causes of security issues in cybersecurity. Developers work on the core of many businesses, especially when it comes to internet-facing projects such as web applications. Often, poor security practices among developers can introduce security vulnerabilities in the source code, misuse production data, or result in the posting of confidential information to public platforms such as Github. Therefore, companies must have people that understand how to secure and maintain good DevOps practices properly. This certification teaches candidates how to understand DevOps within the AWS environment, which is important if you're in any administrative role or if you're overseeing a group of developers. You need to understand what administrative features AWS has and how this can be used or misused.
Conclusion
AWS is a great platform and has a very promising future; it's worth investing in if you're looking to get into the cloud security area. These certifications will go a long way in teaching you the different aspects of the platforms and give employers confidence that you understand AWS thoroughly. It's important to remember that the best certification for you will depend on your exact situation. Still, these three certifications offer the best overall value for someone interested in a security-focused role within AWS.