Our mission at AWS Security Assurance Services is to assist with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance for Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers. We work closely with AWS customers to answer their questions about compliance on the…
Tag: AWS Security Blog
Discover duplicate AWS Config rules for streamlined compliance
Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers use various AWS services to migrate, build, and innovate in the AWS Cloud. To align with compliance requirements, customers need to monitor, evaluate, and detect changes made to AWS resources. AWS Config continuously audits, assesses,…
Maximize your cloud security experience at AWS re:Invent 2024: A comprehensive guide to security sessions
AWS re:Invent 2024, which takes place December 2–6 in Las Vegas, will be packed with invaluable sessions for security professionals, cloud architects, and compliance leaders who are eager to learn about the latest security innovations. This year’s event puts best…
Amazon Inspector suppression rules best practices for AWS Organizations
Vulnerability management is a vital part of network, application, and infrastructure security, and its goal is to protect an organization from inadvertent access and exposure of sensitive data and infrastructure. As part of vulnerability management, organizations typically perform a risk…
Implement effective data authorization mechanisms to secure your data used in generative AI applications
Data security and data authorization, as distinct from user authorization, is a critical component of business workload architectures. Its importance has grown with the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, with generative AI introducing new opportunities to use internal data…
Unauthorized tactic spotlight: Initial access through a third-party identity provider
Security is a shared responsibility between Amazon Web Services (AWS) and you, the customer. As a customer, the services you choose, how you connect them, and how you run your solutions can impact your security posture. To help customers fulfill…
New AWS Secure Builder training available through SANS Institute
Education is critical to effective security. As organizations migrate, modernize, and build with Amazon Web Services (AWS), engineering and development teams need specific skills and knowledge to embed security into workloads. Lack of support for these skills can increase the…
Adding threat detection to custom authentication flow with Amazon Cognito advanced security features
Recently, passwordless authentication has gained popularity compared to traditional password-based authentication methods. Application owners can add user management to their applications while offloading most of the security heavy-lifting to Amazon Cognito. You can use Amazon Cognito to customize user authentication…
Spring 2024 PCI DSS and 3DS compliance packages available now
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce that three new AWS services have been added to the scope of our Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and Payment Card Industry Three Domain Secure (PCI 3DS) certifications: Amazon…
How to implement trusted identity propagation for applications protected by Amazon Cognito
Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently released AWS IAM Identity Center trusted identity propagation to create identity-enhanced IAM role sessions when requesting access to AWS services as well as to trusted token issuers. These two features can help customers build custom…
How to mitigate bot traffic by implementing Challenge actions in your AWS WAF custom rules
If you are new to AWS WAF and are interested in learning how to mitigate bot traffic by implementing Challenge actions in your AWS WAF custom rules, here is a basic, cost-effective way of using this action to help you…
Amazon identified internet domains abused by APT29
APT29 aka Midnight Blizzard recently attempted to phish thousands of people. Building on work by CERT-UA, Amazon recently identified internet domains abused by APT29, a group widely attributed to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). In this instance, their targets were…
Exploring digital sovereignty: learning opportunities at re:Invent 2024
AWS re:Invent 2024, a learning conference hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the global cloud computing community, will take place December 2–6, 2024, in Las Vegas, Nevada, across multiple venues. At re:Invent, you can join cloud enthusiasts from around…
How to use the Amazon Detective API to investigate GuardDuty security findings and enrich data in Security Hub
Understanding risk and identifying the root cause of an issue in a timely manner is critical to businesses. Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers multiple security services that you can use together to perform more timely investigations and improve the mean…
How to use interface VPC endpoints to meet your security objectives
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) endpoints—powered by AWS PrivateLink—enable customers to establish private connectivity to supported AWS services, enterprise services, and third-party services by using private IP addresses. There are three types of VPC endpoints: interface endpoints, Gateway Load…
170 AWS services achieve HITRUST certification
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is excited to announce that 170 AWS services have achieved HITRUST certification for the 2024 assessment cycle, including the following 12 services that were certified for the first time: AWS AppFabric AWS Application Migration Service Amazon…
How to build a Security Guardians program to distribute security ownership
Welcome to the second post in our series on Security Guardians, a mechanism to distribute security ownership at Amazon Web Services (AWS) that trains, develops, and empowers builder teams to make security decisions about the software that they create. In…
Options for AWS customers who use Entrust-issued certificates
Multiple popular browsers have announced that they will no longer trust public certificates issued by Entrust later this year. Certificates that are issued by Entrust on dates up to and including October 31, 2024 will continue to be trusted until they…
An unexpected discovery: Automated reasoning often makes systems more efficient and easier to maintain
During a recent visit to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), I mentioned a trend that piqued their interest: Over the last 10 years of applying automated reasoning at Amazon Web Services (AWS), we’ve found that formally verified code…
Strengthening security in the era of generative AI: Must-attend sessions at re:Invent 2024
/ Generative AI is transforming industries in new and exciting ways every single day. At Amazon Web Services (AWS), security is our top priority, and we see security as a foundational enabler for organizations looking to innovate. As you prepare…
How AWS uses active defense to help protect customers from security threats
AWS is deeply committed to earning and maintaining the trust of customers who rely on us to run their workloads. Security has always been our top priority, which includes designing our own services with security in mind at the outset,…
Improve security incident response times by using AWS Service Catalog to decentralize security notifications
Many organizations continuously receive security-related findings that highlight resources that aren’t configured according to the organization’s security policies. The findings can come from threat detection services like Amazon GuardDuty, or from cloud security posture management (CSPM) services like AWS Security…
Summer 2024 SOC 1 report now available in Japanese, Korean, and Spanish
Japanese | Korean | Spanish At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we continue to listen to our customers, regulators, and stakeholders to understand their needs regarding audit, assurance, certification, and attestation programs. We are pleased to announce that the AWS System…
Customer compliance and security during the post-quantum cryptographic migration
Amazon Web Services (AWS) prioritizes the security, privacy, and performance of its services. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud and the services it offers, and customers own the security of the hosts, applications, and services they deploy in…
Enhancing data privacy with layered authorization for Amazon Bedrock Agents
Customers are finding several advantages to using generative AI within their applications. However, using generative AI adds new considerations when reviewing the threat model of an application, whether you’re using it to improve the customer experience for operational efficiency, to…
How to perform a proof of concept for automated discovery using Amazon Macie
Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers of various sizes across different industries are pursuing initiatives to better classify and protect the data they store in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Amazon Macie helps customers identify, discover, monitor, and protect sensitive…
Keep your firewall rules up-to-date with Network Firewall features
AWS Network Firewall is a managed firewall service that makes it simple to deploy essential network protections for your virtual private clouds (VPCs) on AWS. Network Firewall automatically scales with your traffic, and you can define firewall rules that provide fine-grained…
How to implement relationship-based access control with Amazon Verified Permissions and Amazon Neptune
Externalized authorization for custom applications is a security approach where access control decisions are managed outside of the application logic. Instead of embedding authorization rules within the application’s code, these rules are defined as policies, which are evaluated by a…
How to migrate 3DES keys from a FIPS to a non-FIPS AWS CloudHSM cluster
On August 20, 2024, we announced the general availability of the new AWS CloudHSM hardware security module (HSM) instance type hsm2m.medium, referred to in this post as hsm2. This new type comes with additional features compared to the previous CloudHSM…
Managing identity source transition for AWS IAM Identity Center
AWS IAM Identity Center manages user access to Amazon Web Services (AWS) resources, including both AWS accounts and applications. You can use IAM Identity Center to create and manage user identities within the Identity Center identity store or to connect…
2024 H1 IRAP report is now available on AWS Artifact for Australian customers
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is excited to announce that a new Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) report (2024 H1) is now available through AWS Artifact. An independent Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) certified IRAP assessor completed the IRAP assessment of AWS in August 2024. The…
How AWS WAF threat intelligence features help protect the player experience for betting and gaming customers
The betting and gaming industry has grown into a data-rich landscape that presents an enticing target for sophisticated bots. The sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) that is collected and the financial data involved in betting and in-game economies is especially…
Six tips to improve the security of your AWS Transfer Family server
AWS Transfer Family is a secure transfer service that lets you transfer files directly into and out of Amazon Web Services (AWS) storage services using popular protocols such as AS2, SFTP, FTPS, and FTP. When you launch a Transfer Family…
Automate detection and response to website defacement with Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics
Website defacement occurs when threat actors gain unauthorized access to a website, most commonly a public website, and replace content on the site with their own messages. In this blog post, we show you how to detect website defacement, and…
AWS renews its GNS Portugal certification for classified information with 66 services
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announces that it has successfully renewed the Portuguese GNS (Gabinete Nacional de Segurança, National Security Cabinet) certification in the AWS Regions and edge locations in the European Union. This accreditation confirms that AWS cloud infrastructure, security…
Refine unused access using IAM Access Analyzer recommendations
As a security team lead, your goal is to manage security for your organization at scale and ensure that your team follows AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) security best practices, such as the principle of least privilege. As your…
Using Amazon Detective for IAM investigations
Uncovering AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) users and roles potentially involved in a security event can be a complex task, requiring security analysts to gather and analyze data from various sources, and determine the full scope of affected resources.…
Get to know Amazon GuardDuty Runtime Monitoring for Amazon EC2
In this blog post, I take you on a deep dive into Amazon GuardDuty Runtime Monitoring for EC2 instances and key capabilities that are part of the feature. Throughout the post, I provide insights around deployment strategies for Runtime Monitoring…
Methodology for incident response on generative AI workloads
The AWS Customer Incident Response Team (CIRT) has developed a methodology that you can use to investigate security incidents involving generative AI-based applications. To respond to security events related to a generative AI workload, you should still follow the guidance…
Create security observability using generative AI with Security Lake and Amazon Q in QuickSight
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is now a household topic and popular across various public applications. Users enter prompts to get answers to questions, write code, create images, improve their writing, and synthesize information. As people become familiar with generative AI,…
Introducing the APRA CPS 230 AWS Workbook for Australian financial services customers
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has established the CPS 230 Operational Risk Management standard to verify that regulated entities are resilient to operational risks and disruptions. CPS 230 requires regulated financial entities to effectively manage their operational risks, maintain…
Podcast: Empowering organizations to address their digital sovereignty requirements with AWS
Developing strategies to navigate the evolving digital sovereignty landscape is a top priority for organizations operating across industries and in the public sector. With data privacy, security, and compliance requirements becoming increasingly complex, organizations are seeking cloud solutions that provide…
Reduce risks of user sign-up fraud and SMS pumping with Amazon Cognito user pools
If you have a customer facing application, you might want to enable self-service sign-up, which allows potential customers on the internet to create an account and gain access to your applications. While it’s necessary to allow valid users to sign…
New whitepaper available: Building security from the ground up with Secure by Design
Developing secure products and services is imperative for organizations that are looking to strengthen operational resilience and build customer trust. However, system design often prioritizes performance, functionality, and user experience over security. This approach can lead to vulnerabilities across the…
AWS achieves HDS certification in four additional AWS Regions
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce that four additional AWS Regions—Asia Pacific (Hong Kong), Asia Pacific (Osaka), Asia Pacific (Hyderabad), and Israel (Tel Aviv)—have been granted the Health Data Hosting (Hébergeur de Données de Santé, HDS) certification, increasing the…
Build a mobile driver’s license solution based on ISO/IEC 18013-5 using AWS Private CA and AWS KMS
A mobile driver’s license (mDL) is a digital representation of a physical driver’s license that’s stored on a mobile device. An mDL is a significant improvement over physical credentials, which can be lost, stolen, counterfeited, damaged, or contain outdated information, and…
Automatically replicate your card payment keys across AWS Regions
In this blog post, I dive into a cross-Region replication (CRR) solution for card payment keys, with a specific focus on the powerful capabilities of AWS Payment Cryptography, showing how your card payment keys can be securely transported and stored.…
2024 ISO and CSA STAR certificates now available with three additional services
Amazon Web Services (AWS) successfully completed an onboarding audit with no findings for ISO 9001:2015, 27001:2022, 27017:2015, 27018:2019, 27701:2019, 20000-1:2018, and 22301:2019, and Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) STAR Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM) v4.0. Ernst and Young CertifyPoint auditors conducted the…
Summer 2024 SOC report now available with 177 services in scope
We continue to expand the scope of our assurance programs at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and are pleased to announce that the Summer 2024 System and Organization Controls (SOC) 1 report is now available. The report covers 177 services over the 12-month…
Encryption in transit over external networks: AWS guidance for NYDFS and beyond
On November 1, 2023, the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) issued its Second Amendment (the Amendment) to its Cybersecurity Requirements for Financial Services Companies adopted in 2017, published within Section 500 of 23 NYCRR 500 (the Cybersecurity…
Making sense of secrets management on Amazon EKS for regulated institutions
Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers operating in a regulated industry, such as the financial services industry (FSI) or healthcare, are required to meet their regulatory and compliance obligations, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) or Health…
Announcing AWS KMS Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) support
When using cryptography to protect data, protocol designers often prefer symmetric keys and algorithms for their speed and efficiency. However, when data is exchanged across an untrusted network such as the internet, it becomes difficult to ensure that only the…
Using Amazon GuardDuty Malware Protection to scan uploads to Amazon S3
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a widely used object storage service known for its scalability, availability, durability, security, and performance. When sharing data between organizations, customers need to treat incoming data as untrusted and assess it for malicious…
How to centrally manage secrets with AWS Secrets Manager
In today’s digital landscape, managing secrets, such as passwords, API keys, tokens, and other credentials, has become a critical task for organizations. For some Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers, centralized management of secrets can be a robust and efficient solution…
Cloud infrastructure entitlement management in AWS
Customers use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to securely build, deploy, and scale their applications. As your organization grows, you want to streamline permissions management towards least privilege for your identities and resources. At AWS, we see two customer personas working…
Network perimeter security protections for generative AI
Generative AI–based applications have grown in popularity in the last couple of years. Applications built with large language models (LLMs) have the potential to increase the value companies bring to their customers. In this blog post, we dive deep into…
Spring 2024 SOC 2 report now available in Japanese, Korean, and Spanish
Japanese | Korean | Spanish At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we continue to listen to our customers, regulators, and stakeholders to understand their needs regarding audit, assurance, certification, and attestation programs. We are pleased to announce that the AWS System…
Hardening the RAG chatbot architecture powered by Amazon Bedrock: Blueprint for secure design and anti-pattern mitigation
This blog post demonstrates how to use Amazon Bedrock with a detailed security plan to deploy a safe and responsible chatbot application. In this post, we identify common security risks and anti-patterns that can arise when exposing a large language…
Hardening the RAG chatbot architecture powered by Amazon Bedrock: Blueprint for secure design and anti-pattern migration
This blog post demonstrates how to use Amazon Bedrock with a detailed security plan to deploy a safe and responsible chatbot application. In this post, we identify common security risks and anti-patterns that can arise when exposing a large language…
SaaS authentication: Identity management with Amazon Cognito user pools
Amazon Cognito is a customer identity and access management (CIAM) service that can scale to millions of users. Although the Cognito documentation details which multi-tenancy models are available, determining when to use each model can sometimes be challenging. In this…
How AWS tracks the cloud’s biggest security threats and helps shut them down
Threat intelligence that can fend off security threats before they happen requires not just smarts, but the speed and worldwide scale that only AWS can offer. Organizations around the world trust Amazon Web Services (AWS) with their most sensitive data.…
OSPAR 2024 report now available with 163 services in scope
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce the completion of our annual Outsourced Service Provider’s Audit Report (OSPAR) audit cycle on July 1, 2024. The 2024 OSPAR certification cycle includes the addition of 10 new services in scope, bringing…
Federated access to Amazon Athena using AWS IAM Identity Center
Managing Amazon Athena through identity federation allows you to manage authentication and authorization procedures centrally. Athena is a serverless, interactive analytics service that provides a simplified and flexible way to analyze petabytes of data. In this blog post, we show…
AWS completes the first GDV joint audit with participant insurers in Germany
We’re excited to announce that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has completed its first German Insurance Association (GDV) joint audit with GDV participant members, which provides assurance to customers in the German insurance industry for the security of their workloads on AWS. This is…
How to deploy an Amazon OpenSearch cluster to ingest logs from Amazon Security Lake
Many customers use Amazon Security Lake to automatically centralize security data from Amazon Web Services (AWS) environments, software as a service (SaaS) providers, on-premises workloads, and cloud sources into a purpose-built data lake in their AWS accounts. With Security Lake,…
AWS revalidates its AAA Pinakes rating for Spanish financial entities
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce that we have revalidated our AAA rating for the Pinakes qualification system. The scope of this requalification covers 171 services in 31 global AWS Regions. Pinakes is a security rating framework developed…
Accelerate incident response with Amazon Security Lake – Part 2
This blog post is the second of a two-part series where we show you how to respond to a specific incident by using Amazon Security Lake as the primary data source to accelerate incident response workflow. The workflow is described…
How to build a CA hierarchy across multiple AWS accounts and Regions for global organization
Building a certificate authority (CA) hierarchy using AWS Private Certificate Authority has been made simple in Amazon Web Services (AWS); however, the CA tree will often reside in one AWS Region in one account. Many AWS customers run their businesses…
How to use the AWS Secrets Manager Agent
AWS Secrets Manager is a service that helps you manage, retrieve, and rotate database credentials, application credentials, OAuth tokens, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycles. You can use Secrets Manager to replace hard-coded credentials in application source code…
Patterns for consuming custom log sources in Amazon Security Lake
As security best practices have evolved over the years, so has the range of security telemetry options. Customers face the challenge of navigating through security-relevant telemetry and log data produced by multiple tools, technologies, and vendors while trying to monitor,…
AWS renews TISAX certification (Information with Very High Protection Needs (AL3)) across 19 regions
We’re excited to announce the successful completion of the Trusted Information Security Assessment Exchange (TISAX) assessment on June 11, 2024 for 19 AWS Regions. These Regions renewed the Information with Very High Protection Needs (AL3) label for the control domains…
AWS achieves third-party attestation of conformance with the Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce the successful attestation of our conformance with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF), Special Publication 800-218. This achievement underscores our ongoing commitment to the security…
Strategies for achieving least privilege at scale – Part 1
Least privilege is an important security topic for Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers. In previous blog posts, we’ve provided tactical advice on how to write least privilege policies, which we would encourage you to review. You might feel comfortable writing…
Strategies for achieving least privilege at scale – Part 2
In this post, we continue with our recommendations for achieving least privilege at scale with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). In Part 1 of this two-part series, we described the first five of nine strategies for implementing least privilege…
Top four ways to improve your Security Hub security score
AWS Security Hub is a cloud security posture management (CSPM) service that performs security best practice checks across your Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts and AWS Regions, aggregates alerts, and enables automated remediation. Security Hub is designed to simplify and…
Context window overflow: Breaking the barrier
Have you ever pondered the intricate workings of generative artificial intelligence (AI) models, especially how they process and generate responses? At the heart of this fascinating process lies the context window, a critical element determining the amount of information an…
Centrally manage VPC network ACL rules to block unwanted traffic using AWS Firewall Manager
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) provides two options for controlling network traffic: network access control lists (ACLs) and security groups. A network ACL defines inbound and outbound rules that allow or deny traffic based on protocol, IP address range,…
Announcing initial services available in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, backed by the full power of AWS
English | French | German | Italian | Spanish Last month, we shared that we are investing €7.8 billion in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, a new independent cloud for Europe, which is set to launch by the end of…
ACM will no longer cross sign certificates with Starfield Class 2 starting August 2024
AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) is a managed service that you can use to provision, manage, and deploy public and private TLS certificates for use with Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Amazon CloudFront, Amazon API Gateway, and other integrated AWS services. Starting August…
Access AWS services programmatically using trusted identity propagation
With the introduction of trusted identity propagation, applications can now propagate a user’s workforce identity from their identity provider (IdP) to applications running in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and to storage services backing those applications, such as Amazon Simple Storage…
CISPE Data Protection Code of Conduct Public Register now has 113 compliant AWS services
We continue to expand the scope of our assurance programs at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and are pleased to announce that 113 services are now certified as compliant with the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) Data Protection Code of Conduct. This alignment…
AWS HITRUST Shared Responsibility Matrix v1.4.3 for HITRUST CSF v11.3 now available
The latest version of the AWS HITRUST Shared Responsibility Matrix (SRM)—SRM version 1.4.3—is now available. To request a copy, choose SRM version 1.4.3 from the HITRUST website. SRM version 1.4.3 adds support for the HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) v11.3…
SaaS tenant isolation with ABAC using AWS STS support for tags in JWT
As independent software vendors (ISVs) shift to a multi-tenant software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, they commonly adopt a shared infrastructure model to achieve cost and operational efficiency. The more ISVs move into a multi-tenant model, the more concern they may have about…
How to create a pipeline for hardening Amazon EKS nodes and automate updates
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) offers a powerful, Kubernetes-certified service to build, secure, operate, and maintain Kubernetes clusters on Amazon Web Services (AWS). It integrates seamlessly with key AWS services such as Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, and…
AWS completes Police-Assured Secure Facilities (PASF) audit in the Europe (London) Region
We’re excited to announce that our Europe (London) Region has renewed our accreditation for United Kingdom (UK) Police-Assured Secure Facilities (PASF) for Official-Sensitive data. Since 2017, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Europe (London) Region has been assured under the PASF…
Implementing a compliance and reporting strategy for NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5
Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides tools that simplify automation and monitoring for compliance with security standards, such as the NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 Operational Best Practices. Organizations can set preventative and proactive controls to help ensure that noncompliant resources…
Passkeys enhance security and usability as AWS expands MFA requirements
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is designed to be the most secure place for customers to run their workloads. From day one, we pioneered secure by design and secure by default practices in the cloud. Today, we’re taking another step to…
How to securely transfer files with presigned URLs
Securely sharing large files and providing controlled access to private data are strategic imperatives for modern organizations. In an era of distributed workforces and expanding digital landscapes, enabling efficient collaboration and information exchange is crucial for driving innovation, accelerating decision-making,…