May 30 2025

How Cybersecurity Experts Are Strengthening Defenses with AWS Tools

Category: AWS Security,cyber security,Security Toolsdisc7 @ 12:19 pm

The article “How cyber security professionals are leveraging AWS tools” from Computer Weekly provides an in-depth look at how organizations utilize Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enhance their cybersecurity posture. Here is a rephrased summary of the key points and tools discussed, followed by my feedback.

1. Centralized Cloud Visibility and Operations

AWS offers cybersecurity professionals a unified view of their cloud environments, facilitating smoother operations. Tools like AWS CloudTrail and AWS Config enable teams to manage access, detect anomalies, and ensure real-time policy compliance. Integration with platforms such as Recorded Future further enhances risk orchestration capabilities.

2. Foundational Tools for Multi-Cloud Environments

In multi- or hybrid-cloud setups, AWS CloudTrail and AWS GuardDuty serve as foundational tools. They provide comprehensive insights into cloud activities, aiding in the identification and resolution of issues affecting corporate systems.

3. Scalability for Threat Analysis

AWS’s scalability is invaluable for threat analysis. It allows for the efficient processing of large volumes of threat data and supports the deployment of isolated research environments, maintaining the integrity of research infrastructures.

4. Comprehensive Security Toolset

Organizations like Graylog utilize a suite of AWS tools—including GuardDuty, Security Hub, Config, CloudTrail, Web Application Firewall (WAF), Inspector, and Identity and Access Management (IAM)—to secure customer instances. These tools are instrumental in anomaly detection, compliance, and risk management.

5. AI and Machine Learning Integration

AWS’s integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) enhances threat detection capabilities. These technologies power background threat tracking and provide automated alerts for security issues, data leaks, and suspicious activities, enabling proactive responses to potential crises.

6. Interoperability and Scalable Security Architecture

The interoperability of AWS tools like GuardDuty, Config, and IAM Access Analyzer allows for the creation of a scalable and cohesive security architecture. This integration is crucial for real-time monitoring, security posture management, and prevention of privilege sprawl.

7. Enhanced Threat Intelligence

AWS’s advanced threat intelligence capabilities, supported by AI-driven tools, enable the detection of sophisticated cyber threats. The platform’s ability to process vast amounts of data aids in identifying and responding to emerging threats effectively.

8. Support for Compliance and Risk Management

AWS tools assist organizations in meeting compliance requirements and managing risks. By providing detailed logs and monitoring capabilities, these tools support adherence to regulatory standards and internal security policies.

Feedback

The article effectively highlights the multifaceted ways in which AWS tools bolster cybersecurity efforts. The integration of AI and ML, coupled with a comprehensive suite of security tools, positions AWS as a robust platform for managing modern cyber threats. However, organizations must remain vigilant and ensure they are leveraging these tools to their full potential, continuously updating their strategies to adapt to the evolving threat landscape.

For further details, access the article here

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Tags: AWS tools, cybersecurity


May 28 2025

What is Amazon Bedrock and how can Amazon bedrock assist in GRC field

Category: AWS Security,GRCdisc7 @ 3:40 pm

Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provides foundation models (FMs) from leading AI companies through a single API. It allows developers to build and scale generative AI applications without the need to manage the underlying infrastructure or train their own large language models.

In the context of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), Amazon Bedrock can assist in several ways:

  1. Policy Analysis and Creation:
    • Analyze existing policies and regulations with different standards and regulations
      • Generate drafts of new policies or updates to existing ones
      • Summarize complex regulatory documents
    • Risk Assessment:
      • Analyze data to identify potential risks
      • Generate risk reports and summaries
      • Assist in creating risk mitigation strategies
    • Compliance Monitoring:
      • Analyze large volumes of data to identify compliance issues
      • Generate compliance reports
      • Assist in creating action plans for addressing compliance gaps
    • Automated Auditing:
      • Analyze audit logs and generate reports
      • Identify patterns or anomalies that may indicate compliance issues
      • Assist in creating audit trails and documentation
    • Training and Education:
      • Generate training materials on GRC topics
      • Create quizzes or assessments to test employee knowledge
      • Provide personalized learning experiences based on individual needs
    • Document Management:
      • Classify and organize GRC-related documents
      • Extract key information from documents
      • Generate summaries of lengthy reports or regulations
    • Incident Response:
      • Analyze incident reports to identify trends or patterns
      • Generate incident response plans
      • Assist in root cause analysis
    • Regulatory Intelligence:
      • Monitor and analyze regulatory changes
      • Summarize new regulations and their potential impact
      • Assist in creating action plans to address new regulatory requirements
    • Stakeholder Communication:
      • Generate drafts of reports for different stakeholders
      • Assist in creating presentations on GRC topics
      • Summarize complex GRC issues for non-technical audiences
    • Predictive Analytics:
      • Analyze historical data to predict future risks or compliance issues
      • Assist in scenario planning and what-if analysis

    To leverage Amazon Bedrock for these GRC applications, organizations would need to:

    1. Choose appropriate foundation models available through Bedrock
    2. Fine-tune these models with domain-specific data if necessary
    3. Develop applications that integrate with Bedrock’s API
    4. Implement proper security and access controls
    5. Ensure compliance with data privacy regulations when using the service

    By utilizing Amazon Bedrock, GRC professionals can potentially increase efficiency, improve accuracy, and gain deeper insights into their governance, risk, and compliance processes. However, it’s important to note that while AI can assist in these areas, human oversight and expertise remain crucial in the GRC field.

    DISC can help you create an agent in Bedrock and integrate it with your S3 bucket.

    Analyzing data to identify potential risks is a crucial part of risk management. Here’s a step-by-step approach to this process:

    1. Data Collection:
      • Gather relevant data from various sources (financial reports, operational metrics, incident reports, external market data, etc.)
      • Ensure data quality and completeness
    2. Data Preparation:
      • Clean the data to remove errors or inconsistencies
      • Normalize data to ensure consistency across different sources
      • Structure the data for analysis (e.g., creating a unified database or data warehouse)
    3. Define Risk Categories:
      • Identify the types of risks you’re looking for (e.g., financial, operational, strategic, compliance)
      • Establish key risk indicators (KRIs) for each category
    4. Statistical Analysis:
      • Perform descriptive statistics to understand data distributions
      • Look for outliers or anomalies that might indicate potential risks
      • Use correlation analysis to identify relationships between variables
    5. Trend Analysis:
      • Analyze historical data to identify trends over time
      • Look for patterns that might indicate emerging risks
    6. Predictive Modeling:
      • Use techniques like regression analysis or machine learning to predict future risks
      • Develop models that can forecast potential risk scenarios
    7. Scenario Analysis:
      • Conduct “what-if” analyses to understand potential impacts of different risk scenarios
      • Use stress testing to assess how well the organization can withstand extreme events
    8. Data Visualization:
      • Create visual representations of the data (charts, graphs, heat maps)
      • Use dashboards to provide an overview of key risk indicators
    9. Text Analysis:
      • If dealing with unstructured data (like customer complaints or social media), use natural language processing techniques to extract insights
    10. Risk Mapping:
      • Map identified risks to business processes or objectives
      • Assess the potential impact and likelihood of each risk
    11. Comparative Analysis:
      • Compare your risk profile with industry benchmarks or historical data
      • Identify areas where your risk exposure differs significantly from peers or past performance
    12. Interdependency Analysis:
      • Identify connections between different risks
      • Assess how risks might compound or trigger each other
    13. Continuous Monitoring:
      • Set up systems for real-time or near-real-time risk monitoring
      • Establish alerts for when key risk indicators exceed predefined thresholds
    14. Expert Review:
      • Have subject matter experts review the analysis results
      • Incorporate qualitative insights to complement the data-driven analysis
    15. Feedback Loop:
      • Regularly review and refine your analysis methods
      • Update your risk identification process based on new data and learnings

    To implement this process effectively, you might use a combination of tools:

    • Statistical software (like R or Python with libraries such as pandas, scikit-learn)
    • Business intelligence tools (like Tableau or Power BI for visualization)
    • Specialized risk management software
    • Machine learning platforms for more advanced predictive analytics

    Remember, while data analysis is powerful for identifying potential risks, it should be combined with human expertise and judgment. Some risks may not be easily quantifiable or may require contextual understanding that goes beyond what the data alone can provide.

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    Tags: Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Bedrock Agents, AWS


    Oct 20 2022

    Datadog Details Most Common AWS Security Mistakes

    Category: AWS SecurityDISC @ 1:29 pm

    At its Dash 2022 conference, Datadog shared a report that found the primary security challenge organizations encounter in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud is lax management of credentials.

    Based on data collected from more than 600 organizations that rely on the Datadog platform to monitor their AWS cloud computing environments, the report also noted the complexity of the AWS identity and access management (IAM) service may lead organizations to publicly expose sensitive resources by accident.

    Access keys are a static type of credential that do not expire. The Datadog report found 75% of AWS IAM users have an active access key that’s older than 90 days, while 25% have an active access key that’s older than one year and hasn’t been used in the past 30 days.

    A total of 40% have also not used their credentials in the past 90 days, while 40% of organizations have at least one IAM user that has AWS Console access without multifactor authentication (MFA) enabled.

    Andrew Krug, lead technical evangelist for security at Datadog, said managing cloud credentials is challenging because organizations often lack any offboarding processes to limit access when, for example, an employee leaves the company. As a result, cybercriminals that steal credentials are then able to easily gain access to cloud environments simply because organizations don’t rotate access keys, he added.

    Datadog also noted that, by default, AWS provisions users at a root level that provides them with unlimited administrative permissions. Datadog found approximately 10% of organizations have an active root user access key. Some of these keys are up to 13 years old. A quarter of organizations (25%) had someone use root user credentials in the 30 days prior to the Datadog study. There may be a legitimate need for that level of access, but Krug noted the best practice is to employ least-privilege access whenever possible.

    Other issues surfaced by Datadog pertain to how organizations configure cross-account access by using a resource-based IAM policy attached to the resource itself. The report found 18% of organizations that use the Amazon Simple Queue Service, for example, have at least one publicly exposed queue that enables anyone to receive or publish messages to those queues. More than a third of organizations that use the AWS S3 cloud storage service have at least one publicly exposed bucket.

    Krug said it needs to be less complex to create secure IAM policies that grant least-privilege, granular permissions. It’s simply too easy to make a mistake, he added.

    A fourth cloud security issue that’s widely overlooked is continued reliance on the first version of a EC2 Instance Metadata Service (IMDS) service that has known vulnerabilities. AWS has made available a more secure version, but Datadog found the vast majority of EC2 instances (93%) are not enforcing the usage of IMDSv2. Overall, 95% of organizations that use EC2 have at least one vulnerable instance. The second version of IMDS should be the default configuration, said Krug.

    Finally, Datadog found at least 41% of organizations have adopted a multi-account strategy in AWS, with 6% of organizations using more than 10 AWS accounts. Datadog recommended centralizing accounts to make it easier to monitor who has gained access to a cloud computing environment.

    Despite these issues, cloud platforms are still fundamentally more secure than on-premises IT environments. However, it’s also clear there is plenty of opportunity for mistakes to be made.

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    Tags: AWS security


    Jul 26 2022

    AWS Adds More Tools to Secure Cloud Workloads

    Category: AWS SecurityDISC @ 2:16 pm

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) today expanded its portfolio of cloud security tools as part of an ongoing effort to make it simpler to secure application environments running on its infrastructure.

    The additional services, announced at the AWS re:Inforce event, include support for Amazon EBS Volumes within the Amazon GuardDuty Malware Protection service and the ability to automatically share security findings between Amazon GuardDuty and AWS Security Hub.

    In addition, the Amazon Macie data security service can now review and validate sensitive data found in an Amazon S3 cloud storage service, while Amazon Detective can now analyze logs generated by the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).

    AWS is also making it possible to assign a numeric compliance measurement value to Conformance Packs to make it easier to identify major deviations in security posture and is making available in preview an encrypted collaboration service dubbed AWS Wickr.

    Finally, AWS is making available in preview tools to assess the security of third-party applications in its marketplace and revealed that the AWS Single Sign-On service (AWS SSO) has been rebranded AWS IAM Identity Center to better reflect the expanded role of the platform.

    CJ Moses, CISO and vice president of security engineering for AWS, reminded conference attendees that they should be encrypting everything in the cloud and that they should only be providing external access to data and applications when required. Organizations should especially block access to cloud storage services, he noted.

    The rollout of the latest AWS security services comes at a time of intense focus on cloud security as part of a larger effort to better secure software supply chains after a series of high-profile breaches. In general, cloud platforms are more secure than on-premises IT environments; however, the processes used to build and deploy cloud applications are often problematic and can introduce risk. Developers routinely employ open source tools like Terraform to provision cloud infrastructure and accelerate application development. Most of those developers have limited cybersecurity expertise so, inevitably, mistakes are made. The chronic shortage of cybersecurity expertise means most organizations are not able to keep pace with the rate at which workloads are being deployed in the cloud.

    AWS contends its platform is more secure than rival platforms because of what it describes as automated reasoning technology that employs mathematical logic to, for example, detect entire classes of misconfigurations. As a result, AWS said it is able to empirically prove a cloud environment is secure. The issue that organizations encounter is that every cloud service provider assumes the organization using its service assumes responsibility for both configuring the infrastructure correctly and then securing the applications deployed on it. Developers, unfortunately, tend to assume more automation is being applied to secure workloads.

    On the plus side, more organizations are also starting to embrace DevSecOps best practices to make software supply chains more secure. The challenge is that no matter how much time and effort is made to educate developers, there will always be a development team that makes a mistake— and cybercriminals will find a way to exploit it.

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    Tags: AWS security, AWS Security Cookbook, AWS tools


    Jan 03 2022

    SEGA Europe left AWS S3 bucket unsecured exposing data and infrastructure to attack

    Category: AWS Security,Cloud computingDISC @ 10:43 am

    At the end of the year, gaming giant SEGA Europe inadvertently left users’ personal information publicly accessible on Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 bucket, cybersecurity firm VPN Overview reported.

    The unsecured S3 bucket contained multiple sets of AWS keys that could have allowed threat actors to access many of SEGA Europe’s cloud services along withMailChimp and Steam keys that allowed access to those services. in SEGA’s name.

    “Researchers found compromised SNS notification queues and were able to run scripts and upload files on domains owned by SEGA Europe. Several popular SEGA websites and CDNs were affected.” reads the report published by VPN Overview.

    sega vulnerabilities-hack-infographic-updated 2

    The unsecured S3 bucket could potentially also grant access to user data, including information on hundreds of thousands of users of the Football Manager forums at community.sigames.com.

    Below is the list of bugs in SEGA Europe’s Amazon cloud reported by the company:

    FINDINGSEVERITY
    Steam developer keyModerate
    RSA keysSerious
    PII and hashed passwordsSerious
    MailChimp API keyCritical
    Amazon Web Services credentialsCritical

    Set up a virtual lab and pentest major AWS services, including EC2, S3, Lambda, and CloudFormation

    Tags: AWS S3 bucket unsecured


    May 18 2021

    Detecting attackers obfuscating their IP address inside AWS

    Category: AWS SecurityDISC @ 9:14 am

    The feature and its exploitation potential

    “Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) is a service that lets you launch AWS resources in a logically isolated virtual network that you define,” AWS explains.

    Customers have complete control over their virtual networking environment, and can select their own IP address range, create subnets, and configure route tables and network gateways.

    Unfortunately, the feature that allows customers to control their IP addresses also allows attackers to control the IP address written to AWS CloudTrail logs when accessing a compromised account via a newly created VPC endpoint.

    “This can potentially enable an attacker to fool various security protections that rely on the Cloudtrail logs, such as SIEMs and cloud security tools. In addition, analysts looking for evidence of an attack might miss it,” Hunters researchers noted.

    Attackers can obfuscate their IP address by making it look like an “organizational” public IP address, an employee “home” external IP address, a (potentially whitelisted) third party service provider public IP address, or a special private, reserved, testing or documentation-only IPv4 subnet block.

    They could thus make it seem that a malicious action has been performed by an employee, or make it fly under the radar of threat intelligence and reputation services.

    What attackers can’t do with this technique is to change the IAM permissions the attacker has when using victims’ compromised AWS API credentials, nor bypass IP-based IAM policies.

    There is a solution

    This technique may allow attackers to bypass security measures that rely solely on AWS CloudTrail, an AWS web service that allows customers to log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across their AWS infrastructure (including AWS API activity).

    Defenders should not rely on the contents of the “sourceIPAddress” field in the logs to detect attackers inside AWS, making API requests/calls, the researchers noted. Instead, they should review the “vpcEndpointID” field.

    “If you use VPC endpoints in your environment, the only significant difference between the logs created by legitimate actions and the attacker’s actions is the specific VPC endpoint IDs logged. We recommend addressing this use-case with more anomalous-based detection logic, detecting usage of a new VPC endpoint ID never seen before in the organization,” the researchers advised.

    They also recommended AWS CloudTrail users to cross-reference their cloud events with other sensors on endpoints, on-premises, email, identity, etc, to trace inconsistent logging and missed threats.

    Tags: obfuscating their IP address


    Nov 24 2020

    Zero Trust architectures: An AWS perspective

    Category: AWS Security,Zero trustDISC @ 11:23 am

    Our mission at Amazon Web Services (AWS) is to innovate on behalf of our customers so they have less and less work to do when building, deploying, and rapidly iterating on secure systems. From a security perspective, our customers seek answers to the ongoing question What are the optimal patterns to ensure the right level of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of my systems and data while increasing speed and agility? Increasingly, customers are asking specifically about how security architectural patterns that fall under the banner of Zero Trust architecture or Zero Trust networking might help answer this question.

    Given the surge in interest in technology that uses the Zero Trust label, as well as the variety of concepts and models that come under the Zero Trust umbrella, we’d like to provide our perspective. We’ll share our definition and guiding principles for Zero Trust, and then explore the larger subdomains that have emerged under that banner. We’ll also talk about how AWS has woven these principles into the fabric of the AWS cloud since its earliest days, as well as into many recent developments. Finally, we’ll review how AWS can help you on your own Zero Trust journey, focusing on the underlying security objectives that matter most to our customers. Technological approaches rise and fall, but underlying security objectives tend to be relatively stable over time. (A good summary of some of those can be found in the Design Principles of the AWS Well-Architected Framework.)

    Definition and guiding principles for Zero Trust

    Let’s start out with a general definition. Zero Trust is a conceptual model and an associated set of mechanisms that focus on providing security controls around digital assets that do not solely or fundamentally depend on traditional network controls or network perimeters. The zero in Zero Trust fundamentally refers to diminishing—possibly to zero!—the trust historically created by an actor’s location within a traditional network, whether we think of the actor as a person or a software component. In a Zero Trust world, network-centric trust models are augmented or replaced by other techniques—which we can describe generally as identity-centric controls—to provide equal or better security mechanisms than we had in place previously. Better security mechanisms should be understood broadly to include attributes such as greater usability and flexibility, even if the overall security posture remains the same. Let’s consider more details and possible approaches along the two dimensions.

    Source: Zero Trust architectures: An AWS perspective | Amazon Web Services

    SANS Webcast – Zero Trust Architecture
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sFOdpMLXQg




    Tags: Zero Trust, Zero Trust architectures, Zero Trust Network, Zero Trust Security


    Nov 22 2020

    Nearly Two Dozen AWS APIs Are Vulnerable to Abuse

    Category: AWS SecurityDISC @ 4:07 pm

    Attackers can conduct identity reconnaissance against an organization at leisure without being detected, Palo Alto Networks says.

    Nearly two dozen application programming interfaces (APIs) across 16 different Amazon Web Services offerings can be abused to allow attackers to obtain the roster and internal structure of an organization’s cloud account in order to launch targeted attacks against individuals.

    All that a threat actor would require in order to carry out the attack is the target organization’s 12-digit AWS ID — something that is used and shared publicly — Palo Alto Networks said this week.

    Source: Nearly Two Dozen AWS APIs Are Vulnerable to Abuse


    Testing and Monitoring APIs on AWS – AWS Online Tech Talks
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQM38CZyjFY



    API Security in Action teaches you how to create secure APIs for any situation. By following this hands-on guide you’ll build a social network API while mastering techniques for flexible multi-user security, cloud key management, and lightweight cryptography.





    Jun 15 2020

    Dating Apps Exposed 845 GB of Explicit Photos, Chats, and More

    Category: AWS Security,Security BreachDISC @ 2:37 pm

    3somes, Gay Daddy Bear, and Herpes Dating are among the nine services that leaked the data of hundreds of thousands of users. Researchers find a developer running multiple dating services left 845GB of explicit photos, chats, and more exposed in AWS buckets

    Source: Dating Apps Exposed 845 GB of Explicit Photos, Chats, and More

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    Jun 11 2020

    The importance of encryption and how AWS can help | Amazon Web Services

    Category: AWS SecurityDISC @ 10:13 pm

    Encryption is a critical component of a defense-in-depth strategy, which is a security approach with a series of defensive mechanisms designed so that if one security mechanism fails, there’s at least one more still operating. As more organizations look to operate faster and at scale, they need ways to meet critical compliance requirements and improve […]

    Source: The importance of encryption and how AWS can help | Amazon Web Services



    Why is Encryption Important? – Why is Cybersecurity Important Episode 1
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZSjs8A7lmA



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    Tags: encryption


    May 19 2019

    AWS Security Profiles: Tracy Pierce, Senior Consultant, Security Specialty, Remote Consulting Services | Amazon Web Services

    Category: AWS SecurityDISC @ 1:00 pm

    In the weeks leading up to re:Inforce, we’ll share conversations we’ve had with people at AWS who will be presenting at the event so you can learn more about them and some of the interesting work that they’re doing. You’ve worn a lot of hats at AWS. What do you do in your current role, […]

    Source: AWS Security Profiles: Tracy Pierce, Senior Consultant, Security Specialty, Remote Consulting Services | Amazon Web Services


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    Tags: AWS, AWS security