Description

This curriculum spans the equivalent of a multi-workshop technical engagement, covering the same vulnerability management rigor and cross-functional coordination required in enterprise cloud migrations, from pre-migration risk assessment to audit-ready compliance reporting.

Module 1: Pre-Migration Risk Assessment and Asset Inventory

Identify and classify on-premises systems based on data sensitivity, compliance requirements, and business criticality to prioritize migration sequencing.
Conduct network-level vulnerability scans of legacy systems to detect exposed services, unpatched software, and weak configurations prior to migration.
Map interdependencies between applications, databases, and third-party integrations to avoid breaking critical workflows during migration.
Document existing firewall rules, access control lists (ACLs), and segmentation policies to replicate or redesign in the cloud environment.
Establish a baseline of known vulnerabilities from internal and external scanning tools to measure security posture pre- and post-migration.
Engage stakeholders from security, operations, and compliance to define acceptable risk thresholds for migrated workloads.

Module 2: Cloud Provider Selection and Landing Zone Design

Evaluate cloud provider security controls, compliance certifications, and shared responsibility model implications for vulnerability management.
Design a landing zone with mandatory logging, centralized identity federation, and network segmentation aligned with zero-trust principles.
Implement automated guardrails using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to enforce secure configurations for new resources.
Configure centralized logging and monitoring pipelines to ingest vulnerability scanner outputs and security events from all accounts.
Negotiate access to cloud-native vulnerability scanning tools and assess integration requirements with existing security information and event management (SIEM) systems.
Define account structure and organizational unit (OU) hierarchy to support security isolation and delegated administration.

Module 3: Secure Workload Rehosting and Replatforming

Modify legacy application configurations to remove hardcoded credentials and insecure defaults before lifting and shifting to cloud instances.
Apply host-based firewall rules and minimal OS packages to reduce attack surface on rehosted virtual machines.
Integrate automated vulnerability scanning into CI/CD pipelines for container images and serverless functions during replatforming.
Validate that encrypted storage and transit are enforced for all migrated databases and storage buckets.
Adjust vulnerability scanner policies to account for cloud-specific services such as managed Kubernetes or serverless runtimes.
Implement runtime protection agents on migrated workloads to detect exploitation attempts targeting known vulnerabilities.

Module 4: Continuous Vulnerability Management in Cloud Environments

Configure scheduled and on-demand vulnerability scans across public, private, and hybrid subnets using agent and agentless methods.
Normalize scanner outputs from multiple tools (e.g., Qualys, Tenable, AWS Inspector) into a unified vulnerability database.
Establish severity adjustment rules based on exploit availability, asset criticality, and exposure to internet-facing surfaces.
Integrate vulnerability data with ticketing systems to trigger remediation workflows with SLA-based escalation paths.
Define scan windows and performance throttling to avoid impacting production workloads during scanning operations.
Validate scanner coverage by comparing active assets in CMDB with scanned assets to detect blind spots.

Module 5: Identity, Access, and Privilege Governance

Enforce least-privilege access for cloud roles and service accounts using just-in-time (JIT) elevation and approval workflows.
Conduct regular access reviews for cross-account roles and federated identities to prevent privilege creep.
Implement detection rules for anomalous privilege escalation attempts that may indicate exploitation of vulnerable services.
Integrate identity analytics tools to correlate excessive permissions with known vulnerabilities in associated workloads.
Migrate and centralize secrets management using cloud-native secret stores with automatic rotation policies.
Disable or restrict legacy authentication protocols (e.g., IMDSv1, basic auth) that increase exploitability of cloud instances.

Module 6: Network Security and Exposure Control

Replace flat network architectures with micro-segmentation policies to limit lateral movement from exploited vulnerabilities.
Enforce DNS filtering and egress proxy controls to prevent command-and-control communication from compromised instances.
Implement automated exposure reviews to detect publicly accessible storage buckets, databases, or management interfaces.
Deploy cloud-native firewalls and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) with signatures tuned to known exploit patterns.
Use network flow logs to validate that vulnerability scanners can reach all target assets without being blocked.
Restrict administrative access to cloud workloads via bastion hosts or zero-trust network access (ZTNA) solutions.

Module 7: Incident Response and Remediation Orchestration

Define automated response playbooks for critical vulnerabilities, including instance isolation, snapshot preservation, and notification triggers.
Integrate vulnerability data with endpoint detection and response (EDR) platforms to prioritize host investigations.
Conduct tabletop exercises simulating exploitation of high-risk vulnerabilities in migrated workloads.
Establish patching cadence policies based on vulnerability severity, change windows, and rollback procedures.
Use infrastructure automation tools to redeploy patched instances from golden images when hotfixes are unavailable.
Document post-remediation validation steps to confirm vulnerability closure and prevent recurrence.

Module 8: Compliance Reporting and Audit Readiness

Generate time-series vulnerability reports showing open, remediated, and recurring issues for internal audit reviews.
Map vulnerability management controls to regulatory frameworks such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, or SOC 2.
Preserve scanner configuration settings, scan logs, and exception approvals as evidence for compliance audits.
Implement automated compliance scoring based on vulnerability exposure duration and critical system coverage.
Coordinate with external auditors to validate cloud scanning scope and methodology for certification purposes.
Maintain an exception management process for vulnerabilities requiring compensating controls or risk acceptance.