🔐 End-to-End Cybersecurity Project Plan (High-Level)

Phase 1 – Application Deployment

  • Stack & Platform: Deploy your React + Node.js web service on AWS EKS using eksctl.

  • Ingress: Provision ALB + Target Group via eksctl/ALB Ingress Controller.

  • Application Logs → Vector → Kafka:

    • Run Vector to collect app logs from Pods/containers.

    • Publish to Kafka as the central streaming backbone.

  • Kafka Setup (high-level):

    • Choose Amazon MSK (managed) or Strimzi on EKS (self-managed).

    • Create core topics (e.g., app.logs.raw, security.logs.raw).

    • Keep JSON records with consistent fields (timestamp, service, env, cluster, pod, level, message).

    • Define high-level retention and partitions appropriate for expected volume.

Phase 2 – Security Operation

  • AWS Security Services: Enable CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Security Hub, WAF, VPC Flow Logs.

  • Central Log Lake: Store all security alerts/logs in S3 (security account).

  • Ticketing (Initial): Basic automation to create Jira tickets from critical AWS findings.

Phase 3 – SOC Environment Setup

  • SIEM: Stand up ELK/OpenSearch or Splunk.

  • Pipelines: Ingest from S3 and Kafka into the SIEM.

  • Normalization: Apply OCSF/ECS for consistent fields and entities.

  • SOC Visuals & Alerts: Build dashboards and alert rules; route alerts → Jira.

Phase 4 – Detection Engineering

  • Detections: Author rules mapped to MITRE ATT&CK (e.g., brute force, privilege escalation, data exfil, SQLi).

  • Playbooks: Define triage & escalation runbooks for each detection.

  • Adversary Simulation: Use OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite, Metasploit to validate detections end-to-end (alert → Jira workflow).

Phase 5 – Vulnerability Management (SOC-Centric)

  • Scanning: Run Inspector / Nessus / OpenVAS across workloads/nodes.

  • SIEM Correlation: Ingest VM findings; correlate vulnerabilities vs. attack attempts in logs.

  • Lifecycle in Jira: Track discover → remediate → rescan → close.

Phase 6 – Vulnerability Management (DevSecOps-Centric)

  • CI/CD Security: Integrate SAST (CodeQL/SonarQube), DAST (ZAP automation), dependency/container scans (Trivy/Snyk).

  • Exposure Visibility: Send DevSecOps assessment logs to SIEM; auto-ticket critical issues pre-deploy.

  • Trends: Monitor vulnerability trends across builds and releases.

Phase 7 – Unified SOC + VM Operations

  • Single Pane: Combine security logs, detections, and vulnerability findings in the SIEM.

  • Jira as System of Record: Incidents + vulnerabilities in one workflow.

  • Case Studies: Document scenarios (e.g., CVE discovered → exploit attempt seen in WAF/CloudTrail → correlated alert → Jira incident → patch → verified by rescan).

  • Portfolio Package: Final architecture diagram, playbooks & detections, screenshots, repo + write-up + short demo video.