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Serverless

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How to Design a Secure Serverless Architecture 2021

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Serverless

What is serverless?

Serverless computing is an execution model for the cloud. It gives users/developers the ability to build and run applications and services without thinking about servers. Applications are built faster, launched only as needed, and the management of the infrastructure is no longer required. Servers do continue to exist in serverless, but they are abstracted away from the application development procedure. The infrastructure is handled and maintained by the cloud provider, while developers simply package the deployment of their code in containers.

Why is it important?

Serverless brings quite some promising benefits for application developers. Because of automatic scalability, provisioning, and other such characteristics done by the cloud provider, that eliminate the infrastructure concerns from the developers’ focus, the deployment of applications becomes easy, faster and at a lower cost. This way, serverless architecture aims at changing the economic model of cloud computing.

If you are interested in learning how to better secure serverless applications, we recommend you start by reading these recommendations from CSA.

Serverless Application Containers and Microservices DevSecOps

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Cloud Security Research for Serverless

CSA Research crowd-sources the knowledge and expertise of security experts and helps address the challenges and needs they’ve experienced, or seen others experience, within the cybersecurity field. Each publication is vendor-neutral and follows the peer review process outlined in the CSA Research Lifecycle. We recommend getting started by reading the following documents.

How to Design a Secure Serverless Architecture

Like any solution, serverless computing brings with it a variety of cyber risks. This paper covers security for serverless applications, focusing on best practices and recommendations. It offers an extensive overview of the different threats, focusing on the application owner risks that serverless platforms are exposed to and suggesting the appropriate security controls.

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The 12 Most Critical Risks for Serverless Applications

As many organizations are still exploring serverless architectures or just taking their first steps in the serverless world, Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) believes this guide is critical for their success in building robust, secure and reliable applications. The 12 Most Critical Risks for Serverless Applications 2019 document is meant to serve as a security awareness and education guide. This report was curated and maintained by top industry practitioners and security researchers with vast experience in application security, cloud, and serverless architectures.

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