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Security management on AWS can be an arduous undertaking for businesses using this cloud service provider, particularly due to their growing dependency on IaaS (infrastructure as a service), PaaS, and SaaS offerings.
Difficulties arise due to the possibility that these resources will be employed alongside on-premise and cloud systems that require secure data integration and transfer for secure hybrid or multi-cloud operations.
However, managing security on AWS should be straightforward, provided internal and external policies, standards, and procedures are consistently observed and followed.
Effectively securing AWS environments requires creating industry-accepted AWS Security best practices as well as understanding your organization's AWS shared responsibility model. This article will discuss the AWS shared responsibility model, security strategy, and the top AWS Security best practices to protect data, code, and cloud workloads.
What Is AWS Security?
AWS cloud security refers to an automated series of protocols and tests installed upon the cloud infrastructure you use.
AWS and customers both share responsibility for protecting both sides of their respective cloud-based activities - AWS protects itself. In contrast, the customer safeguards activities occurring within their cloud environment.
AWS's cloud security strategy safeguards the infrastructure required to run AWS services, including networking, hardware, and software infrastructure components.
AWS security procedures include:
- Patch management and device configuration management.
- Bug fixes within cloud infrastructure.
- Making sure its devices are configured appropriately.
Read More: Maximize Your Workload Efficiency with AWS Compute: How Much Can You Save?
AWS Shared Responsibility Model
Businesses often assume their cloud provider provides comprehensive protection. Security professional teams should become familiar with the AWS shared responsibility concept; under this paradigm, clients are accountable for safeguarding any content stored within the infrastructure while AWS handles infrastructure security.
What exactly does this entail? This means your company has complete control of the configuration of S3 buckets, access control, network traffic security, and code assurance throughout the development lifecycle.
While AWS provides ample protection to ensure infrastructure runs smoothly and safely for its clients, proactive precautions should be taken to make sure everything runs as expected.
Setting Up An AWS Security Strategy
As part of your top AWS security strategy, keep this in mind when developing it - cloud security posture is unlike that found on-premise systems and thus must be considered when formulating AWS security strategies.
Cloud infrastructure allows for elastic scaling that makes creating resources quickly more complex than on-premise solutions.
Implement And Enforce Cloud Security Controls
Access controls are among the most essential and fundamental security measures you must implement within AWS environments.
Identity Access Management (IAM), for example, relies on providing limited and unprivileged cloud resource access only when needed by individuals within your company or outsiders such as third parties who do not require it - while restricting or withdrawing it when not.
Threat And Incident Response Planning
An effective incident response plan should outline when and where breaches are likely to take place, how quickly you'll identify any incidents when they do arise, what needs to be done in response, as well as a strategy for recovering--even if preventative measures prove ineffective.
Detection, Monitoring, And Alerting
Installation of reliable detection, continuous monitoring and alerting processes and solutions is integral for AWS application security concerns, as cyber threats take various forms.
A number of tools exist within AWS that you could leverage when devising your strategy:
- Amazon GuardDuty
- Amazon Macie
- AWS Configuration Rules
- Amazon CloudWatch
Twelve AWS Security Best Practices
Here is a list of the top twelve AWS Security best practices:
Make Your AWS Security Policies Accessible
Implementing an effective cybersecurity plan relies on everyone being on board and sharing an updated document outlining security rules and procedures with staff, stakeholders, external collaborators, and third-party vendors via an internal drive.
Create A Cybersecurity Strategy
To safeguard the AWS environment, you must implement a robust cybersecurity plan. Newcomers to AWS should understand that traditional security solutions may not provide adequate protection of cloud assets.
Therefore, creating a migration security strategy tailored specifically to their specific concerns is needed.
Put In Place And Enforce Cloud Security Measures
Remember, AWS does not assume responsibility for ensuring the security requirements of your cloud workloads; that responsibility lies solely with you and requires taking proactive measures to shield client and business data from malicious attackers.
To lower the risk of data breach incidents and minimize potential data breach risks, follow AWS security best practices while considering the complete cloud security tool measures and processes:
- Clearly define the user roles.
- Conduct privilege audits.
- Create a strong password policy.
Backup Your Data
Recurring data backups are highly recommended because you never know when data restoration may become necessary after a breach.
AWS Backup is a simple method of automating backups across your AWS environment, relieving concerns over potential data loss while providing smooth restoration when required.
Use Encryption
Encrypting data according to AWS security best practices cannot be understated in terms of importance and significance.
Not only will it assist with meeting regulatory compliance obligations for sensitive data, but it will also add an extra layer of protection that enhances overall security posture.
Develop A Prevention And Response Plan
Although it may appear counter-intuitive, part of maintaining the security risk of cloud platforms computing systems entails accepting that attacks might happen at some point - one of Amazon Web Services' security best practices recommended here is accepting this possibility as part of keeping them safe.
This should always remain at the top of your mind!
Update Your AWS Systems Continually
Your AWS cloud servers should always be updated. Failing to follow AWS security assessments and best practices and update your cloud infrastructure could leave your company vulnerable to security team flaws that could result in urgent and expensive disasters.
Assessment Of Administrator Credentials
For organizations using AWS to reduce anomalies and protect data security, AWS organizations should strictly control and manage administrator accounts according to AWS Security's best practices.
Users should refrain from excessive usage as this can be potentially risky; only use necessary functions with restricted access rights daily for optimal results.
Businesses must protect the vast array of permissions assigned to administrator credentials on AWS in order to reduce malicious external threats.
AWS administrators could consider adding extra safeguards - for instance, encryption and separate account logins could provide extra layers of defense against breaches.
Make Use Of Cloud-Native Security Solutions
Security measures designed specifically to manage physical assets cannot adequately secure cloud assets. Additionally, several effective cloud security solutions can assist you with meeting various compliance requirements, and it will make the task of adhering to AWS security best practices listed here easier by improving your security posture.
By employing controls designed specifically for cloud environments, you can overcome their unique obstacles while protecting the assets that matter most - your valuable ones!
Use Temporary Credentials
As part of an AWS Security best practice, always use temporary credentials when possible. Access keys provide long-term access and may increase unnecessary risk.
Rotate Access Tokens
Rotating access tokens according to AWS Security best practices can reduce the risk of hackers accessing your AWS account.
Every time you change applications or delete old ones (for instance, passwords), new access tokens may become necessary.
Discover And Inventory All Identities
Protect and manage only those accounts, identities, roles, and assets you can see with CIEM following AWS Security best practices.
With scripts and automation used throughout an organization's toolchain, tracking down machine and human identities may prove challenging; cataloging machine- and human identities and entitlements is often hard due to hardcoding into executables or runtimes, but this is necessary as organizations need an overview of which automation tools they are employing and what permissions have been granted; both can be inventoried by following AWS best practices with CIEM for discovery of human and machine identities inventoried using AWS Security best practices!
Conclusion
Understanding and implementing AWS security is vitally important for organizations using Amazon Web Services cloud services.
Amazon emphasizes a shared responsibility model where both they and customers must play roles in protecting data and applications stored on AWS servers.
The essential security domains, ranging from data privacy and governance to incident response and business continuity, provide an in-depth view of cloud security.
Each presents different challenges and opportunities when it comes to safeguarding an AWS environment. These twelve AWS security best practices should help improve it further.
