13 AWS Security Best Practices to Follow

AWS Security Best Practices

Achieving strong cybersecurity in the cloud can seem daunting, but it is not impossible. By following this AWS security best practices checklist, it is possible to improve the security of an AWS deployment.

• Identify Security Requirements

1. Define and Categorize Assets in AWS: It is impossible to secure systems that you don’t know exist. The first step in improving the security of your AWS deployment is identifying the assets that you have and organizing them into categories based upon their purpose.

2. Create Classifications for Data and Applications: After all AWS assets have been identified, each asset or category of assets should be assigned a security classification based upon the sensitivity and importance of the associated data and capabilities. These classifications help to determine the level of protection and specific security controls that each asset requires.

• Deploy Solutions Designed to Solve Cloud Security Challenges

Cloud-based infrastructure requires different security approaches and tools than traditional, on-premises environments. Deploying security solutions designed for the cloud is essential to effectively protecting an organization’s AWS deployment:

3. Manage Cloud Access: Limiting access to cloud-based infrastructure is essential since cloud-based resources can be accessed directly without sending traffic through an organization’s existing network perimeter (and the security stack deployed there).

4. Use Cloud-Native Security Solutions: In a recent cloud security report, 82% of respondents think that traditional security solutions either don’t work at all or have limited functionality. Cloud-native security solutions are most suitable for securing cloud assets. Additionally, deploying cloud-native security solutions places security functionality next to the assets that they are intended to protect and guarantees that the security solutions will work optimally within their deployment environment.

5. Protect All Your Perimeters and Segment Everything: On-premises security has a single perimeter: the network connection with the outside world. Cloud security has multiple perimeters: one or more for each cloud-native service. Organizations need to ensure that all perimeters are protected, including North-South and East-West traffic. Additionally, the better cloud workloads are segmented and separated, the easier it is to contain the impact of a breach.

• Maintain a Consistent Security Posture Throughout AWS Deployments

Amazon offers a number of different built-in security configurations and tools to help protect their AWS customers against cyber threats. Properly configuring these settings is an important part of ensuring a consistent cloud security posture throughout an organization’s AWS deployments:

6. Manage AWS accounts, IAM Users, Groups, and Roles: Identity and access management (IAM) is a priority for cloud computing since cloud-based infrastructure is accessible directly from the public Internet. Implementing the principle of least privilege – where users are only granted the access and permissions needed to do their jobs – is essential to minimizing the potential of a data breach or other cybersecurity incident within an organization’s cloud-based infrastructure.

7. Manage Access to Amazon EC2 Instances: An attacker with access to an organization’s EC2 instancescould attempt to access sensitive data or functionality within existing applications or to introduce new, malicious applications such as cryptocurrency miners that waste or abuse the organization’s leased computing power. Controlling access to EC2 based upon the principle of least privilege is necessary to minimize cybersecurity risk within an organization’s AWS deployment.

• Protect AWS Workloads

Organizations are increasingly implementing cloud-based microservices using serverless and containerized deployments. These unique architectures require security tailored to their needs, such as cloud workload protection:

8. Implement Cloud Workload Protection for Serverless and Containers: Microservice workloads in cloud infrastructure require different security solutions than traditional applications. Deploying cloud workload protection – including observability, least privilege enforcement, and threat prevention functionality – is essential to minimizing potential cyber threats to containerized, serverless, and other microservices.

• Implement Proactive Cloud Security

Many organizations implement a reactive cybersecurity strategy of detection, only responding once a cyber threat is active within their network. However, this puts the organization at risk by delaying incident response activities. An organization can take several steps to implement more proactive security prevention within their cloud-based infrastructure:

9. Subscribe to Threat Intelligence Feeds: Threat intelligence provides valuable information and indicators of compromise for current and ongoing cyber threats. Subscribing to a threat intelligence feed and integrating it into the organization’s cloud-based security solutions can help with early identification and blocking of potential cyber threats.

10. Perform Threat Hunting in AWS: A fully reactive cybersecurity policy, based on identifying and responding to in-progress attacks, places the organization at risk. By the time an attack has been identified, the attacker likely already has access to the organization’s cloud-based infrastructure and is stealing data or causing other harm. Performing proactive threat hunts, where cybersecurity analysts look for signs of potential incursions into their network, enables an organization to identify and remediate threats that slipped past their cybersecurity defenses without detection. This requires deep visibility into the organization’s cloud infrastructure and requires access to threat intelligence feeds and automated data analytics to be scalable and effective.

11. Define Incident Response Policies and Procedures: Many organizations have existing cybersecurity policies and procedures in place. However, these policies and procedures are likely designed for on-premises environments where they have complete visibility into and control over every component of their network infrastructure. Updating and adapting these policies to address the differences between on-premises and cloud-based deployments is essential to effectively responding to cybersecurity threats within an organization’s cloud-based deployment.

• Ensure Regulatory Compliance

Most organizations are subject to a number of regulations that define how they need to protect sensitive customer data in their possession. These regulations also apply to an organization’s cloud infrastructure, so organizations should take steps to help ensure continuous compliance with these regulations in the cloud:

12. Ensure Visibility of Security Controls: Data protection regulations commonly specify that an organization has an array of security controls in place to provide protection of sensitive data against particular attack vectors. Regulatory compliance requires the ability to ensure that security controls are continuously visible and to verify that they are working correctly; this will also improve the organization’s security posture and reduce cybersecurity risk.

13. Continuously Verify Regulatory Compliance: In addition to ensuring that the organization maintains visibility into required security controls, it is also important to verify that the organization’s security deployment meets the needs of applicable regulations. This includes reviewing applicable regulations and the organization’s cloud-based infrastructure, and identifying and closing any identified security gaps.