Cloud management is likely to be onerous in the AWS cloud due to its scalability. Things can become even tougher if one is operating in multi-cloud or hybrid situations that are in use by the company.
Nevertheless, fine AWS security is possible by encouraging the understanding of the AWS shared responsibility model and the most significant security principles in the IT community among all employees.
This article is a knowledge hub on AWS and optimal security strategies and approaches to safeguarding cloud environments.
Engaging in this content will ensure that you learn more about how to optimize AWS cloud technologies and increase the protection of your firm. Let’s get started!
What is the AWS Security Service?
If your organisation is moving its workloads to cloud computing platforms, checking its security frameworks is also equally important.
Customers can view the security state and spot potential security issues within the AWS service thanks to the AWS Security Hub service.
Benefits of AWS Security Services:
Find out how AWS’s security services keep your cloud systems safe. Find out about important cloud data security services, best practices, and tactics.
Read: Top 5 Features of AWS Managed Services
#1. Core Position:
The AWS security service is a centralised service that helps in visualising threats to the safety of the data via alerts and also ensures compliance with the AWS environment by consolidating data from other sources.
#2. Automated Compliance Checks:
The list of automated compliance checks included industry standards and CIS benchmarks like the CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark and AWS Foundational Security Best Practices.
#3. Integrated Findings:
The Security Hub interacts with services like Amazon Guard Duty, Amazon Inspector, AWS Configuration, etc. and third-party security tools to offer an overall simplified view of the security findings.
#4. Custom Insights:
There are features that allow building your views and boards with an emphasis on certain security threats or compliance needs identified to address problem areas more effectively.
Read: Why AWS Consulting Services For Business Is Essential
How AWS Security Works:
AWS security service works according to the results or interpretations from various security tools like AWS web application firewall, AWS shield, AWS guard duty, AWS IDM, AWS Cloudtrail and many other tools.
It measures these insights with some pre-set security benchmarks and comes up with decision-making recommendations.
Once the analyser discovers some security threats, Security Hub assists with sorting them based on the criticality of the findings.
What Sets AWS Apart?
AWS cloud security refers to the measures, within the options that include protocols, features, and tools, that are used to protect the AWS services which are offered in the public cloud environment.
What sets AWS as one of the most secure public cloud services platforms available to companies today is its
- AWS is more special and different from its competitors as it provides a shared security model for customers, who can configure their settings as well.
- AWS was recognised as the top IaaS provider by the technological research and consultative firm Gartner for the eighth time—something that has also attributed to the company’s emphasis on security.
Also Read: Unlock the Power of AWS with our Managed Services
Why Does Every Business Need to Adapt to AWS?
AWS deserves special attention because it not only provides an exceptionally vast choice of cloud services but also boasts a high level of security service popularity, with more than one million active users in 190 countries.
AWS cloud security is quite important, akin to any broader cybersecurity processes. It is critical to safeguard data of your organization as well as that of your customers against adversity. A more profound change that has happened in recent years is that more of these workload and data have started migrating to cloud infrastructures like AWS, and this also means that the pressures to deliver high AWS security have also continued to rise.
AWS GuardDuty performs over 10 events per second for threat detection based on over four billion events per day On the other hand, AWS Shield Advanced proactively mitigates over a thousand DDoS attacks on an average basis while having an average response time of under one second.
Working in the AWS Cloud, AWS WAF analyzes more than 10 trillion web requests per month, filtering out criminals to block numerous types of web exploits.
Read: Understanding AWS Cloud Technologies
AWS Identity Management and Access Management IAMs process over 2 billion API requests for resources, while AWS Key Management Service KMS secures over 100 million encryption keys for data.
AWS Config observes over 500 billion resources for compliance and security reference and with over 1900 security products available from AWS Marketplace, there is a way to add improved security features.
AWS clients testify about the completeness and proactivity of its security measures to prevent cloud-related threats, which warrants making AWS the go-to cloud Host.
Let’s dive into the top AWS security tools that every AWS user should be aware of.
Related: Benefits, Tools, and the Role of AWS Consulting Partners
AWS Web Application Firewall
AWS Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF) is a cloud firewall that employs various, different security rules to safeguard web applications running on AWS.
AWS web application firewall, also known as WAF, acts as a shield for your web applications, protecting them from common exploits and vulnerabilities It monitors and filters HTTP and keeps your applications secure and moving.
These rules are either
- AWS predefined or customisable, depending on your needs and general preferences. It is formatted in a way that you can choose to make them individual per application to accommodate your needs.
Based on the brief descriptions presented above, AWS WAF was developed to be used with EC2, CloudFront, Application Load Balancer, and API Gateway.
AWS is very easy to implement because because it is a fully managed service that takes on all of your responsibilities.
There is no mandatory deployment of any sort, no software needs to be installed, and you do not need to update the firewall to force more frequent updates. But all you are expected to do is apply the rules you want to apply.
Another added advantage of AWS WAF is in the area of pricing, since its pricing plan is relatively easy to understand. The pricing model varies depending on the Web ACLs that you initiate ($5. 00/month/Web ACL, billed at $5. 00 per hour), individual rules you have configured for the Web ACLs ($1. 00/month/rule), and the number of Web requests you handle ($0. 60 per 1 million requests).
AWS WAF can be used as an effective tool for mitigating various attack vectors on your AWS architecture. The first type, as previously mentioned, is the known IP address type, which an IP match condition can block or eliminate.
Other prominent among them are SQL injection attacks, which can be addressed through the use of SQL injection match conditions and cross-site scripting attacks, commonly known as XSS attacks, which are addressed through cross-site scripting match conditions.
AWS WAF also lets you set up a rate-based rule to block HTTP horizontal mass scattering attacks.
Related: Best strategy for AWS Consulting
AWS Shield
AWS WAF is a firewalled rate that can guard you against several types of attacks and has numerous options to whitelist, whereas AWS Shield is a single service.
Your applications or websites running on AWS infrastructure are safe from attacks thanks to AWS Shield, a DDoS protection service.
DDoS attacks are defined as an unlawful attack on servers or network structure that strives to interrupt regular and lawful traffic.
Additional Features of AWS:
- Safeguard Your Applications Against high-scale and sophisticated DDOS Attacks
- By using Shield, You Can Ensure The Availability Of Your Applications Even During Intense Attacks
- Enhance The Security Of Your AWS Infrastructure
Related: Database, Server, Application, Cloud Migration services
AWS guard Duty
AWS guard duty is a threat detection service that uses Advanced machine learning algorithms to analyse event logs, network traffic and other data sources.
- It detects potential security threats in real time, helping you stay one step ahead of attackers.
- Uses AWS CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs to monitor for threats continuously.
- Can work collaboratively with other AWS security services, including AWS Lambda for automated response.
There are other complimentary AWS security services that need to be well utilised:
AWS Identity Management
AWS identity access and management or IAM,. IAM is a powerful tool for managing user identities and controlling access to your AWS resources It ensures secure authentication and authorization, giving you control over who can access what
AWS Cloudtrail
AWS Cloudtrail provides detailed logs of all API calls made within your AWS account With Cloudtrail, you can track user activity investigate security incidents and ensure compliance with auditing requirements
AWS Inspector
AWS Inspector automatically accesses the security vulnerabilities and compliance of your ec2 instances. It analyses your instances, provides a detailed report of any security findings and suggests remediation steps
AWS Secrets manager
Secrets manager helps you securely store and manage sensitive information, such as database credentials API keys and passwords With Secrets Manager, you can easily rotate and manage your secrets without compromising security.
Related: Why AWS Consulting Services For Business Is Essential
Conclusion:
To the IT industry in general, AWS has been a blessing due to the unique advantages it brought: flexibility, speed and the ability to cut costs.
Still, it goes well with other cloud security endeavours since AWS, despite possessing infrastructure for innovation, can need a reasonable amount of improvement to become more efficient.
Related Posts:
- Why AWS Consulting Services For Business Is Essential
- Best Ways to Find Reliable AWS Consulting Partners Online
- Understanding AWS: Benefits, Tools, and the Role of AWS Consulting Partners
For more data engineering updates, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.