Course Code: bskcloudtech
Duration: 21 hours
Prerequisites:

A good grasp of basic networks and computer use.

Overview:

This is a bespoke course for the RDI to cover the fundamentals of cloud technology.

Course Outline:

1. Introduction to Cloud and the Cloud Native Model

  • IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS
  • Characteristics of cloud-native environments
  • Scalability, resilience, automation
  • Major providers and models (AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes)

 

2. Microservice Architecture vs Monolith

  • Principles of microservice design
  • Benefits and challenges from an audit/risk perspective
  • Common patterns: API Gateway, Service Mesh, DB-per-service

 

3. Containerization and Orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)

  • What are containers and how do they work?
  • Dockerfiles and images — audit-relevant sources
  • Intro to Kubernetes: Pod, Deployment, Namespace
  • Concepts: autoscaling, rollouts, liveliness/readiness probes

 

4. Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery/Deployment

  • What is CI/CD and why it matters
  • Common tools (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Tekton)
  • Pipelines as code — what can be audited?
  • Example: reviewing a basic CI pipeline

 

5. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

  • Terraform, Pulumi, Helm, Kustomize — roles and differences
  • Code repositories as sources of evidence
  • Idempotency, version control, auditability

 

6. Logging, Monitoring and Observability

  • Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK stacks
  • Log retention, data locality, access
  • Tracing and metrics — audit value

 

7. Security in Cloud Native Environments

  • Kubernetes RBAC
  • Secret management (Secrets, HashiCorp Vault)
  • Image scanning, digital signatures, SBOMs
  • Supply chain security — SLSA, in-toto, co