5 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using AWS

Table of Content

Introduction

In today’s fast-paced technological landscape, businesses are afforded the opportunity to test out new business models for their clientele and witness immediate outcomes. Thanks to cutting-edge cloud technologies, such as AWS Cloud, both established corporations and startups are able to utilize these advancements to their fullest potential. This article aims to impart valuable knowledge regarding common pitfalls to avoid when utilizing AWS Cloud.

What is AWS Cloud?

The AWS Cloud is a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It offers a highly scalable and flexible infrastructure that enables businesses and individuals to leverage on-demand computing resources, storage, and applications via the Internet. The AWS Cloud provides a variety of services, including virtual servers (EC2), managed databases (RDS), object storage (S3), content delivery networks (CloudFront), and serverless computing (Lambda), among others. These services allow organizations to quickly provision and scale resources based on their needs, eliminating the need for upfront infrastructure investments and providing cost-effective solutions. The AWS Cloud offers high reliability, security, and global availability, which empowers businesses to innovate and deploy applications and services with ease.

Avoid using a root account

Once you have set up your AWS account, you can access basic cloud services through your root account. While most users tend to use their root account to manage their resources, it is recommended to use it only for managing AWS Organization and AWS IAM in the console. The reason behind this is that the root account has default access to all resources and can accidentally delete mission-critical resources. Instead, it is advisable to create an admin user with account credentials to manage your cloud resources. Additionally, it is highly recommended to enable multi-factor authentication for your root user to ensure maximum security.

Attention! Price Alert

When using AWS, it’s easy to overlook the daily check of your AWS Bills. Developers often create expensive resources that they forget to stop or terminate after completing their work. To prevent unexpected billing costs, we strongly suggest setting up a Billing Alert for your AWS account from the beginning. You can easily set up a billing alarm for individual services or daily billing quotas for all services in your AWS Billing console.

Forgotten IAM Basics

When using any AWS service, the AWS IAM service is involved in the task at hand. As a crucial aspect of AWS, users must remember to rotate their AWS IAM user’s password and account credentials, detach temporary permissions once the task is completed, and delete the account of a user who has left the company. To ensure the security of your AWS, the AWS IAM console guides admin users in setting up password and access key rotation rules, attaching temporary policies for short-term use, and setting alarms based on the user’s last console sign-in time.

Using VPCs with Public CIDR Blocks

If you’re using AWS VPC, it’s important to understand how to set up the network service to communicate with both your internal AWS cloud resources and outside networks on the public internet. When creating a VPC, choose an available CIDR block for your AWS region, but be aware that using a public CIDR block may cause issues with peer connections between your VPC and other services. To avoid future problems, consider using private CIDR blocks from the start. This way, if needed, you can easily connect to other networks locally. For example, if you have a high workload and use multiple AWS services but want to use a third-party database solution outside of AWS, you can use the VPC peering option to connect your internal network to the outside network. By using AWS VPC Peering, you can avoid database response time latency. We highly recommend creating AWS VPC CIDR blocks using only private IP blocks to ensure smooth and efficient communication between your resources.

S3 Bucket Policy Permissions

Amazon S3 is a crucial service for AWS Cloud, whether you’re a beginner or an established company. It allows you to store and provide data to your users. However, many cloud users often overlook the permissions of their Amazon S3 bucket, which can unintentionally make sensitive data publicly accessible. To prevent this, we recommend creating custom IAM policies that include deny action policy statements alongside allow actions. These policies can help manage bucket accessibility options for all AWS cloud users and even restrict editing of Amazon S3 bucket permissions by users with admin roles.

For developing your cloud resources, we recommend using an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solution instead of creating them on the AWS Console. This is because it lets you easily set up your cloud resources for another AWS account or organization anytime. Additionally, the AWS Console can be complicated for viewing all in-use resources or what is inside your AWS account. Infrastructure code enables you to easily read your resource setup options and the services connected with each other. To fully utilize the AWS Cloud, it is important to steer clear of common mistakes that could negatively affect your business. Following these best practices can help you achieve optimal performance, improve cost efficiency, and enhance the security of your AWS environment. By avoiding common mistakes, you can ensure that your organization is utilizing AWS to its fullest potential and maximizing the benefits of cloud computing.