Avoiding Common Mistakes in Cloud Architecture Design Interviews
Tags: cloud, security, azure, aws
Published: 2023-08-03 00:15:54

Designing a resilient and secure cloud architecture is a critical skill for solution architects. During interviews, candidates often face questions about building secure cloud infrastructures to withstand potential threats like DDoS attacks and data breaches. However, some common mistakes can hinder their ability to present a comprehensive and effective solution. Let's explore these pitfalls and how to avoid them.

When faced with such questions in an interview or while designing a real-world cloud architecture, it's essential to take a step back and analyze the entire system from a solution architect's perspective. Here are some key points to consider while building the system:

**- Understanding the Use Case**

: Before designing any architecture, it's crucial to understand the specific use case, business requirements, and potential threats or risks. This understanding will shape the design decisions and the selection of appropriate security layers.

**- Defense-in-Depth Strategy:**
 Adopt a defense-in-depth approach that includes multiple layers of security controls. This means having security measures at various levels to protect against different types of threats.

**- Identity and Access Management (IAM):**
 Establish robust IAM policies to control access to resources. This ensures that only authorized personnel can access the services and data within the architecture.

**- Network Segmentation:**
 Implement network segmentation to isolate critical components and minimize the potential impact of a breach or attack.

**- Encryption:**
 Utilize encryption mechanisms to protect data at rest and in transit. This ensures that even if an attacker gains access to the data, it remains unreadable without proper decryption keys.

**- Logging and Monitoring:**
 Implement comprehensive logging and monitoring solutions to detect potential security incidents and provide insights for incident response.

**- Automated Scaling:**
 Consider automated scaling mechanisms to handle sudden spikes in traffic, including DDoS attacks, by automatically provisioning additional resources.

**- Disaster Recovery and Redundancy:**
 Design the architecture with disaster recovery and redundancy in mind to ensure high availability and resilience.

**- Regular Security Audits and Updates:**
 Conduct regular security audits and keep all components up-to-date with the latest security patches and best practices.

- Collaboration and Communication:
 Foster collaboration and communication between teams responsible for different aspects of security, ensuring a cohesive security strategy across the architecture.

By taking this approach and carefully considering all the elements of the cloud architecture, including security group per instance and identity and access management, you can build a more robust and resilient system that can withstand various threats and attacks. Remember, the goal is not just to count the number of security layers but to create a comprehensive and well-thought-out security strategy.

Let's talk about the no. of security layers in below architecture: 


![Azure Architecture](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/26fkupgvktkbxmdabf61.png)


![AWS Architecture](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/qqfwsf6jevb4kz90p9he.png)


Let's carefully reevaluate the security layers in the architecture to ensure we account for all aspects:

**1. Network Security Group (NSG) / AWS Shield Advanced:** This is the first security layer, protecting the entire setup from DDoS attacks and other network-level threats.

**2. Azure WAF / AWS WAF:** This is the second security layer, providing web application firewall capabilities to protect the VMs/EC2 instances from web-based attacks.

**3. Security Group per Instance:** This is an additional security layer for each VM/EC2 instance, defining its specific network access rules and controlling traffic at the instance level.

**4. Azure Load Balancer / Elastic Load Balancing (ELB):** This is the fourth security layer, responsible for distributing incoming traffic to the VMs/EC2 instances and providing some basic load-balancing-related security features.

**5. Azure Front Door / AWS Global Accelerator:** This is the fifth security layer, serving as a global entry point for the traffic, providing additional DDoS protection, and improving the application's availability and performance.

**6. IAM / Azure AD:** This is the sixth security layer, handling access control and identity management for the Azure/AWS services, ensuring only authorized users can access and interact with the resources.

**7. Azure/AWS Cloud Security:** This is the seventh security layer, encompassing various security controls and features offered by the cloud providers to safeguard the entire cloud environment, including services like encryption, monitoring, logging, and auditing.