AWS Security Audit: The Basics

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AWS Security Audit: The Basics

Kanishk Tagade

@kanishk

October 16, 2021

Marketing Trends

AWS security audits are a critical part of AWS security. When an enterprise decides to use the cloud, they sign up for many benefits but also inherit some risks. The risk is that someone can gain access to your data without you knowing about it. That's where AWS security audits come in! In this post, we will discuss how these audits work and why they're so important.

What is an AWS security audit?

AWS security audit is a process of doing security checks on your AWS environment to ensure your data and applications are safe in the cloud. The AWS security audits vary based on different factors such as what services you use, AWS Regions where you run tasks, etc. These can also include misconfigurations of AWS IAM policies or VPC configurations.

Why is the AWS security audit important?

It's important to perform AWS security audits because they help you monitor your AWS account for unusual activity. If someone breaks into your AWS environment, it may not be immediately obvious so AWS Security Audit helps ensure everything is in order by scanning the entire cloud infrastructure on an ongoing basis. This allows you to get alerts if something isn't configured correctly or there are other issues that could affect performance and even the availability of services running in AWS.

Why do you need AWS security audits?

You can perform AWS security audits for many different reasons including:

Discovery of vulnerability in your environment that could allow unauthorized users into your account. This is done by pentesting AWS resources using different open-sourced commercial tools.
Policies or processes you have implemented aren't following AWS best practices and need to be adjusted accordingly.
Your public image has been negatively affected by someone else's data breach, which means AWS wants to take proactive measures before it happens with their customers as well! Of course, this is just a high-level list of examples of when you should perform an audit on your system. There are lots more scenarios where these actions might be taken so make sure you're prepared beforehand.

How often should I audit my AWS environment?

Since you can audit your environment at any time, it's important to be prepared all the time. A typically scheduled security assessment is based on many different factors including how long you've been an AWS customer and what services you use in the cloud.

How does an AWS Security Audit by AWS work?

First, AWS will perform an automated security assessment on your systems. If any issues are found, AWS will contact the appropriate team (cloud support for cloud infrastructures like VMs or Storage; cloud engineering if it's related to development work) within teams with details of what needs to be fixed before they'll continue onto the next step in their process.

The second phase of AWS security audit is where AWS engineers go through a more manual review looking at all aspects of your environment including hardware and software configurations across regions as well as account access & permissions/IAM users within each region that have been configured via AWS Organizations. They check everything against best practices set out by AWS themselves so you know there won't ever be anything missed!

If AWS engineers find any AWS security issues, they'll work with ECG on a remediation plan and provide an estimated time-frame for when the issue will be resolved. AWS Security Audit is key to ensuring that all AWS resources configured within your environment are secure and operating as intended.

How do I prepare?

For best results when conducting a security audit, make sure all ECG accounts linked with AWS are using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Also, use strong passwords across ALL services including root-level credentials for access via the command-line interface (CLI). Finally, review any credential files used for AWS access to ensure the keys are not publicly viewable.

AWS security audit checklist

Make sure all IAM users have MFA enabled and use strong passwords for their accounts, especially the root account! Also, scan any credential files used via CLI or SDKs regularly for "bad" keys that shouldn't be publicly viewable.
Review who has access to your resources in AWS using the AWS Organization Hierarchy Report. This report provides a detailed list of what's been configured on AWS under an organization so you can see clearly if everything is working as intended.
Use AWS Config to keep track of all AWS resource configurations over time. This is useful if you need to compare the state of AWS resources before and after a security audit has taken place.
Ensure your account is configured correctly with MFA for access via CLI, SDKs or web console.
Make sure AWS Trusted Advisor is enabled and configured to your needs. This will help you catch security issues before they happen automatically!
Enable AWS CloudTrail for all regions where resources are used so you can track who is accessing what data, when it's accessed, etc.
AWS Security Center is AWS's resource for all things related to AWS security. Make sure you're using it regularly so you know what the latest updates are!
AWS CloudWatch Logs can help monitor activity within your AWS environment and may be able to provide additional insight into who or what has been accessing resources in AWS.

You should also make sure that when a new team member joins your team, they have access only to certain regions of AWS where their work will affect data. This ensures no one person has complete control over ALL cloud infrastructure from one account which could lead to misuse or unauthorized changes being made without anyone else knowing about them until it's too late!

Summing Up...

AWS security is a hot topic these days. With the rise of cyberattacks, and risk of data breaches, it’s more important than ever to keep your data safe and secure from any undue access or intrusion. In order to do so, you need an effective way of monitoring all activity on your network and applications running in AWS environments. This means not only securing your environment but also being able to analyze what goes on inside that environment at scale without slowing down performance.

AWS #cybersecurity #cloudcomputing

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Kanishk Tagade

Marketing Manager

Kanishk Tagade is a Marketing Manager at Astra Security. Having a hawk-eyed view on the cybersecurity threat landscape, market-shifts, and hacktivism activities, Kanishk is a community member of the Nasscom and corporate contributor at many technology magazines and security awareness platforms. Editor-in-Chief at "QuickCyber.news", his work is published in more than 50+ news platforms. He is also a social micro-influencer for the latest cybersecurity defense mechanisms, Digital Transformation, Machine Learning, AI and IoT products.

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