IaC for Secure Serverless: A Comprehensive Approach to Deployment and Configuration Management

Suresh, Hrishin Padikkaparambil (2024) IaC for Secure Serverless: A Comprehensive Approach to Deployment and Configuration Management. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

Serverless computing has started to be adopted by more and more organizations in the last decade, but this widespread adoption has also introduced a slew of security challenges. Human error, a common cause of security vulnerabilities, can be significantly reduced by using Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform to provision and manage infrastructure. This study evaluates the impact of using such tools to deploy a simple serverless application built on AWS Lambda. Potential threats will be identified using threat modeling frameworks and the Iac tools will be appraised on their ability to effectively minimize these threats. The experimental results show that security tools embedded in a pipeline identified 100% of intentional vulnerabilities, significantly outperforming manual inspection. The experiments also found that IaC tools reduced deployment time by over 80%. The research aims to establish a framework for secure IaC deployments in cloud-native environments, and also establish practical guidelines for developers to enhance security in their serverless applications.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Supervisors:	Name Email Jaswal, Shivani UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Infrastructure as Code; Serverless; Security; Automation; Pipelines
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > Electronic computers. Computer science T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Electronic computers. Computer science T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Cloud computing Q Science > QA Mathematics > Computer software > Computer Security T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Computer software > Computer Security
Divisions:	School of Computing > Master of Science in Cloud Computing
Depositing User:	Ciara O'Brien
Date Deposited:	17 Jul 2025 12:32
Last Modified:	17 Jul 2025 12:32
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/8158

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