NGINX for Professionals: Security & Compliance Handbook

A security audit finding rarely looks like an incident. It's a line item in a spreadsheet, a control marked "not effective," a remediation deadline three weeks out - and it very often traces back to NGINX configured for functionality first, with security bolted on afterward. NGINX for Professionals: Security & Compliance Handbook treats security and compliance as the primary subject, not an afterthought chapter. Across 20 chapters, it moves from threat modeling and platform hardening through transport security, application-layer defense, identity and authorization, and - uniquely - a direct, practitioner-level mapping from PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, and GDPR requirements to actual, defensible NGINX configuration. Inside you'll find: - A clear-eyed threat model: what NGINX can and cannot actually defend against- Full TLS hardening for security reviews, not just compatibility checklists- Mutual TLS and zero-trust architecture, including certificate lifecycle management at scale- A complete ModSecurity and OWASP Core Rule Set deployment walkthrough, from detection-only to production blocking- Bot management, rate limiting as a genuine security control, and API-specific attack surfaces- Direct compliance mapping tables for PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, and GDPR - built for real audit preparation, not vague generalities- Incident response runbook templates and a full DDoS mitigation chapter Written for security engineers inheriting an NGINX estate they didn't design, platform engineers implementing controls a security team specifies, and engineering leads preparing for a real compliance audit. Includes a full appendix of ready-to-fill incident response runbook templates.