Effective AWS Security Tools That Help You Become a Lifesaver of Your Company

Amazon Web Services or AWS is a revolutionary tool that has allowed the companies to dynamically scale their infrastructure and applications. It has also included some of the necessary security features in their systems. When it comes to infrastructure protection, AWS takes full responsibility. But at the same time, it also asks its users to make sure that they configure AWS services according to the industry standards. Amazon Web Services mainly works on layered security and gives the administrators a number of tools to make their AWS deployments as safe as possible. For this reason, there are a lot of instruments that you can use, and here we are going to talk about some of the best ones.

Scoutsuite

This is an auditing tool, and one thing that sets it apart from others is that it is a multi‑Cloud platform instrument. Scoutsuite is supported by Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and AWS. It collects configuration data and highlights all the areas that are at risk. This tool helps inspect all this information manually later.

For most people, auditing tools don’t sound very exciting, but this doesn’t mean that they are less important. Many data breaches on Amazon Web Services have been the result of misconfiguration. In 2017, a company known as Accenture left four S3 buckets publically available. As a result, over 137 GB of data was leaked, including the AWS credentials and client passwords. That is why it is important that you use Scoutsuite to manage all of these things.

Prowler

Another tool that you can use is Prowler, and it is best described as a hardening and forensic instrument. Written by Toni de la Fuente, this open-source security tool consists of 89 pages with the information about configuration areas such as networking and identity management. There is no denying the fact that security is one of the main things to worry about when you are working with AWS. Making sure that all of your data is secure is very important and sometimes it is very difficult. Prowler consists of a lot of documentation, and if you need to do something, you will have to go through this documentation.

AWS Inspector

The next tool that we are going to discuss in this blog post is AWS Inspector. It is described as a security assessment service that does vulnerability scanning for AWS applications. After the assessment, the program develops a list with detailed information about security findings and places them by the level of severity. One of the greatest things about AWS Inspector is that the administrators get constant improvements. When an organization builds security standards into its infrastructure, it gives them a head start in staying secure. The very reason this tool always remains up-to-date is what makes people lean towards it.

Macie

This is a tool that is mainly focused on data protection. It is a machine learning service that monitors data access trends and then tries to spot any unauthorized data access and data leaks. If it finds anything out of the ordinary, it sends alerts to CloudWatch. The thing that makes Macie so special is the fact that it is a fully managed service. As of now, it monitors only S3 buckets. On paper, you might think that Macie is a simple service, however, when it comes to its working, it is quite intense. This tool can detect anomalies and risks of data leaks. Identifying unusual data access can be imperative when you are trying to limit data breaches.

CloudWatch

This is an AWS monitoring tool that you can use with almost everything. You can use it to intake metrics, events, and logs from your AWS infrastructure. It also makes sure that it gives you complete visibility when it comes to everything that is going on in your environment. At this stage, having a tool that can gather tons of data and easily make it accessible is very important. CloudWatch can be easily integrated with other tools such as GuardDuty and that is why it makes it easier to troubleshoot security breaches.

GuardDuty

This is a managed threat detector, and one of the main highlights of this service is that it scales with your infrastructure and is easy to deploy. GuardDuty will go across all your accounts and services to analyze everything to make sure that it is properly protected. According to Amazon, this tool efficiently analyzes billions of events in AWS and uses the latest machine learning techniques to keep alerts accurate. GuardDuty mainly works to detect activities such as compromise and reconnaissance. It also consists of things, such as data exfiltration, malware, port scanning, and more.

AWS Shield

The last tool that we have on this list is AWS Shield, and the main purpose of this service is to provide DDoS protection. You might think that DDoS protection is not that revolutionary, and it may be true to some extent. However, sometimes the attackers only try to stop the company from doing business, and if this happens, it can cost a lot of loss to this organization. DDoS attacks can occur at any time, and that is why it is always nice to have a tool that gives you a competitive advantage over such threats.

Conclusion

These were some of the main security tools that you need to know when it comes to Amazon Web Services. A lot of companies have started to use AWS, and that is why it is important to make sure that everything remains nice and secure. When you do business, you cannot afford any kind of lapses. Thus, it is important to make sure that security is given the topmost priority.