Cloud network security groups in Cybersecurity - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Understanding Cloud Network Security Groups

📖 Scenario: You are managing a cloud environment where you need to control access to virtual machines. Cloud network security groups help you allow or block traffic based on rules.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple list of security group rules, add a configuration for allowed ports, apply filtering logic to select allowed rules, and finalize the security group setup.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list called security_rules with specific inbound rules

Add a variable allowed_ports listing ports to allow

Filter security_rules to keep only rules with ports in allowed_ports

Add a final confirmation variable security_group_ready set to True

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Cloud network security groups are used by system administrators to protect virtual machines by allowing or blocking network traffic based on rules.

💼 Career

Understanding how to configure and manage security groups is essential for cloud engineers, security analysts, and network administrators to maintain secure cloud environments.

1

Create initial security rules list

Create a list called security_rules with these dictionaries exactly: {'protocol': 'tcp', 'port': 22, 'action': 'allow'}, {'protocol': 'tcp', 'port': 80, 'action': 'allow'}, {'protocol': 'tcp', 'port': 443, 'action': 'allow'}, and {'protocol': 'udp', 'port': 53, 'action': 'allow'}.

Cybersecurity

# Create the list security_rules with the specified dictionaries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list with dictionaries inside. Each dictionary has keys: 'protocol', 'port', and 'action'.

2

Add allowed ports configuration

Create a list called allowed_ports containing the integers 22, 80, and 443.

Cybersecurity

security_rules = [
    {'protocol': 'tcp', 'port': 22, 'action': 'allow'},
    {'protocol': 'tcp', 'port': 80, 'action': 'allow'},
    {'protocol': 'tcp', 'port': 443, 'action': 'allow'},
    {'protocol': 'udp', 'port': 53, 'action': 'allow'}
]
# Create the list allowed_ports with 22, 80, and 443
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list with the exact port numbers as integers.

3

Filter rules by allowed ports

Create a new list called filtered_rules that includes only the dictionaries from security_rules where the port value is in the allowed_ports list.

Cybersecurity

security_rules = [
    {'protocol': 'tcp', 'port': 22, 'action': 'allow'},
    {'protocol': 'tcp', 'port': 80, 'action': 'allow'},
    {'protocol': 'tcp', 'port': 443, 'action': 'allow'},
    {'protocol': 'udp', 'port': 53, 'action': 'allow'}
]
allowed_ports = [22, 80, 443]
# Create filtered_rules with rules from security_rules where port is in allowed_ports
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list comprehension to filter rules by checking if rule['port'] is in allowed_ports.

4

Finalize security group setup

Create a variable called security_group_ready and set it to True to indicate the security group is configured.

Cybersecurity

security_rules = [
    {'protocol': 'tcp', 'port': 22, 'action': 'allow'},
    {'protocol': 'tcp', 'port': 80, 'action': 'allow'},
    {'protocol': 'tcp', 'port': 443, 'action': 'allow'},
    {'protocol': 'udp', 'port': 53, 'action': 'allow'}
]
allowed_ports = [22, 80, 443]
filtered_rules = [rule for rule in security_rules if rule['port'] in allowed_ports]
# Set security_group_ready to True
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign True to the variable security_group_ready.