Auditing AWS Cloud Security

auditing aws cloud security amazon web services secure

Why An Audit Is Necessary 

It is important to ensure that your cloud services and cloud resources are securely configured to meet any required compliance standards when running infrastructure in the AWS Cloud. It is standard practice for most cloud platforms to operate on a Cloud Shared Responsibility Model, which dictates that the cloud customers, including AWS customers, are responsible for specific cloud security settings and configuration. 

To ensure no security issues or potential gaps go under the radar, the best way to ensure that all of the obligatory compliance standards and configurations are met is through security assessment via in-house staff, responsible for performing cloud security audits. 

Even though your organization may already have an established security program of its own, all existing cloud services must constantly be monitored by DevOps staff to confirm that all necessary security configurations, permissions, rules, and policies are met. 

The complexities of such a job can be greatly reduced with the use of AWS audit and security scanning tools, like Dash ComplyOps

Auditing  — What To Look For 

As mentioned, DevOps teams must pay special attention to cloud services to ensure that security protections are maintained, as it only takes one cloud misconfiguration to lead to a potential security breach of the cloud environment.  For this reason, it is paramount that your AWS cloud monitoring team identifies common threats, including the following: 

• Permissions / Access Related Issues: Privilege escalation and unauthorized access risks are heightened in teams with improper IAM users, roles, and permissions. 

• Availability Related Issues: Typically, an organization that manages production workloads on AWS, builds for high availability. Problems relating to load balancers, NAT gateways, and fail- over issues have been known to lead to potential service outages. 

• Issues Relating To Compliance: Teams must adhere to and maintain specific security standards for IT infrastructure, often encompassing compliance standards relating to HIPAA and cybersecurity frameworks, such as SOC 2. 

• Issues Relating To Networks: An AWS Cloud platform enables teams  to configure multiple network settings.  Insecure network settings for VPCs, security groups, and NACLs can easily lead to a vulnerable network. 

Issues Relating To Data Loss: Improper security controls can leave an individual network vulnerable to hackers and unauthorized third-party access. 

Performing An Audit 

In order to maintain cloud security, any organization that manages production applications in AWS must ensure all required configurations and security settings are setin order to maintain cloud security. DevOps and security team staff should ensure all security policies are put in place before conducting AWS cloud infrastructure auditing. Tools, such as Dash ComplyOps are widely available to lighten the load via automation of the security auditing process. 

Cloud Resources And Services Inventory 

An inventory of all cloud services and resources within your AWS cloud environment should be identified before evaluating your cloud security standards. 

Identifying Cloud Security Issues 

Cloud security scanning for issues within AWS resources, must be conducted after your cloud resources have been identified. Since each AWS service comes with its own security configuration, security issues specific to individual cloud services must be identified. 

Rectify And Resolve Cloud Security Issues 

Once all of the security issues regarding your AWS cloud environment have been identified, it’s time for your team, working together with the DevOps staff, to make any necessary changes to your cloud configurations and resolve any remaining security issues. 

Review And Update Existing Security Policies 

Be sure that your security policies and standard operating procedures are being periodically reviewed in order to ensure that they meet the new security standards and that all potential security gaps have been eliminated. 

Cloud Security Conclusion 

For more information about AWS Cloud Auditing, be sure to head on over to Dash. If you’re looking for software that is designed for building and monitoring security programs in Amazon Web Services, then be sure to check out Dash ComplyOps for a solution that creates robust cloud security policies and security programs and enforces them through a vigorous compliance monitoring. Dash ComplyOps features AWS security scanning that empowers your team to easily locate and resolve any potential security gaps and compliance issues.

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