Security Architecture

Designing secure systems. Four objectives covering architecture models (cloud IaaS/PaaS/SaaS, on-prem, hybrid, edge, containers, serverless, ICS/SCADA), infrastructure hardening (device placement, firewalls, IDS/IPS, 802.1X, VPN, SD-WAN, SASE), data protection strategies (classification, encryption at rest/transit/use, tokenization, DLP, rights management, data lifecycle), and resilience/recovery planning (HA, RAID, backup strategies, recovery sites, RTO/RPO).

Objective 3.2 (“Given a scenario, apply security principles to secure enterprise infrastructure”) is the PBQ target — device placement in security zones, firewall rule configuration, 802.1X authentication, IDS/IPS deployment decisions. Understanding how interception works offensively makes your defensive architecture decisions sharper.