Creating Amazon AWS Security Credentials

Before continuing with a development environment setup, a set of security credentials were first created using the Amazon AWS Console.  From the user menu in the toolbar, select the Security Credentials option.

There are options for generating various types of identity credentials:

Not really knowing what I will need first (and ignoring the basic security tenet of only generating what you need when you need it), I generated credentials in all three categories, and saved them off to a safe place.  Finally, I used the PUTTYGEN tool to convert the Key Pair into something that will work with the PUTTY suite of tools.  Its a fairly simple matter to import the *.pem file you created and convert it to a PUTTY-friendly *.ppk file (also saved off to a safe place).

Now equipped with an account and a plethora of security credentials, I think I have the bare minimum requirements in place for moving forward.