Top AWS Security Tools You Should Know

Despite the rapid growth of cybersecurity systems and safeguards, malicious attacks remain a prominent threat. Almost 80% of companies stated to have experienced at least one cloud data breach in 2020, while 43% reported 10+ breaches in the same period. The importance of security best practices is fairly obvious yet easier said than done. Luckily, AWS consulting services provides a set of tools and guidelines that aid businesses in adhering to the latest guidelines to avoid devastating data leaks. In this article, we will explore AWS security tools and discuss their features and advantages. 

Account vs Application Security

AWS provides various security sets to aid businesses in safeguarding both their accounts and applications within the AWS environment. Accessed through public APIs, AWS accounts are susceptible to a large array of attacks. Services like Identity and Access Management are designed to mitigate cybercrime by adopting security practices. For example, multi-factor authentication and the principle of least privilege help companies establish good hygiene and reduce cyber threats. 

Application security focuses on external attack methods such as DDoS, brute force, SQL injection, and others. The antidote to vulnerability exploitation is services like Amazon Inspector which enables vulnerability management and continuous monitoring. Both accounts and applications require robust security measures to keep your data safe. 

Top 6 AWS Account Security Tools

Amazon offers a suite of AWS security tools created to help businesses adhere to standard practices and safeguard their sensitive data and assets from malicious attacks. In this part, we’ll focus on account protection, discuss the functionality and benefits of each service, and explore how it might affect your overall cloud computing pricing.

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

AWS IAM is a service created to control access to the AWS resources restricting user roles to specific tools. The main idea of AWS Identity and Access Management is to adopt the principle of least privilege and minimize the impact of a data breach. Whenever an attacker gains access to a user account, they won’t be able to infiltrate the entire company as they’ll be limited to only a few functions. One of the best AWS security tools, AIM offers additional security by implementing multi-factor authentication and single sign-on. 

AWS security services provide a policy simulator to examine current access control and identify potential weaknesses and exploitations. As the least-privilege principle of least privilege dictates, users should only have permissions that allow them to fulfill their duties and nothing above that. If the system detects excess roles, duplications, orphaned accounts, etc., it will notify you to help you instill stronger security standards. 

AWS IAM Benefits

• Multifactor authentication support: IAM toolkit comes with multi-factor authentication support that offers an extra layer of protection. Aside from conventional credentials, users have to undergo additional steps before accessing their accounts such as one-time passwords over text messages.

• Compliance with regulations: Businesses must comply with various data protection laws to avoid legal implications. The outcomes of non-compliance can also negatively impact the company’s brand and reputation. AWS IAM practices help organizations maintain compliance as well as prove it in case of an audit. 
• IT cost reduction: Password reset makes up a big portion of IT desk administrators’ jobs. Gartner states that a single password reset activity costs the company up to $70. Automating and optimizing passcode management allows help desk employees to devote their time to more complex and urgent cases. 

Target users: IT departments and cloud administrators in charge of business resource management. 

Pricing: A built-in service in the AWS account console that doesn’t require additional payment.

AmazonCloudTrail

AWS CloudTrail is one of the most advanced AWS security tools that tracks all activities occurring in your AWS environment. A vast database of records, this service aggregates every action executed by a user and each API call. Later, you can view these events to monitor unexpected or suspicious entries. This extensive event history simplifies troubleshooting and security analysis along with resource change management. 

Having been a part of the AWS default set since 2017, AWS CloudTrail is automatically enabled in all AWS accounts. Through continuous monitoring of all account-related data, the service allows organizations to stay hypervigilant when it comes to safety. Aside from CloudTrail, you can also enable Cloudtrail Insights, an add-on that identifies unusual activity and informs you whenever it detects something suspicious or abnormal. 

AWS CloudTrail Benefits

• Log and event visibility: You can increase the visibility into your user and resource activity and maintain a continuous record. 
• Rapid troubleshooting: Using the service, businesses can discover security and operational roadblocks and troubleshoot them on the spot. 
• Security automation: Relying on a comprehensive history of entries and changes, you can automatically respond to the account. Users can create workflows that trigger event execution when a security vulnerability is detected. 

Target users: Security and compliance analysts and incident response teams. 

Pricing: Depends on the type and volume of events. 

Amazon GuardDuty

Amazon GuardDuty is an AWS service that aids organizations in monitoring multiple AWS accounts for suspicious and fraudulent behavior. By combining several services, including CloudTrail Event Logs, Virtual Private Cloud Flow Logs, and DNS Logs, GuardDuty identifies issues associated with privilege escalation, leaked credentials, and communication with bad actors. The machine learning algorithms allow you to swiftly detect suspicious activity and alert the company. 

Among the best security tools in AWS designed and optimized for the cloud, Amazon GuardDuty partners up with industry-leading security companies to continuously expand the depository of potential vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the systems. Its excellent machine learning algorithms can identify patterns to flawlessly detect and prioritize threats. Using GuardDuty’s capabilities, you can create custom rules to mitigate risks associated with your company and product. 

Amazon GuardDuty Benefits

• Multi-faceted protection: Combining several services and data sources in conjunction with advanced machine learning algorithms makes GuardDuty an ultimate protector. 
• Vigilant monitoring through every stage: Even during application development, you’ll be monitoring your AWS resources to make sure your sensitive data and intellectual property remain safe. 
• Prioritization: Using three categories of severity, GuardDuty assigns a risk level to each threat, thus helping companies prioritize their responses. 

Target users: Security analysts and operations. 

Pricing: A 30-day free trial period during which you can assess the monthly costs. 

Amazon Macie 

Amazon Macie is another AWS security application that identifies sensitive data in S3 buckets and evaluates its safety. Using machine learning techniques, it analyzes data access and alerts businesses in case of poor security posture—for example, if a file is left unencrypted or is shared outside of your organization. 

Among the most robust security tools in AWS, Amazon Macie can detect financial information, intellectual property, and personally identifiable information that needs to be safeguarded. The latest update includes an automated discovery feature that continuously monitors S3 bucket items in the background. This function is enabled by default and helps organizations stay alert at all times. 

Amazon Macie Benefits

• Ease of use: You can enable Macie across all your AWS accounts in just one click, including the automated feature. Instead of manually flagging sensitive data, your IT department can focus on more ambitious tasks. 
• Customizability: Macie allows users to create custom-defined data types to tailor the security service to your particular system. 
• Data visibility: By capturing and analyzing S3 buckets, you can receive a comprehensive list of data that includes metadata like size, creation date, and type of content. 

Target users: Compliance managers and cloud security specialists. 

Pricing: Offers a 30-day free trial during which companies can gauge their monthly expenses in the future. 

AWS Config

AWS Config is one of the most powerful AWS security tools for assessing and auditing the configurations of a company’s AWS resources. By creating and maintaining a historical record of every resource and its updates, businesses can streamline compliance with legal and organizational policies. The system scans all resources, identifies problematic spots like unencrypted sensitive files, and informs the company. On top of that, it can act on itself and encrypt or remove datasets when needed. 

AWS Config is a location-dependent service and needs to be enabled in all regions of resource creation and usage. Its customization features allow organizations to set up alerts whenever certain AWS resource configurations deviate from the norm. AWS Config streamlines compliance auditing, change management, and troubleshooting, as well as simplifies security analysis. 

AWS Confit Benefits

• Change management: Before making any edits, you can rely on AWS Config to assess how a configuration change will affect other resources to minimize potentially dangerous outcomes. 
• Compliance across accounts: AWS Config captures data from multiple sources to consolidate compliance statuses across the AWS accounts and locations. 
• Troubleshooting and security analysis: Tether a recent issue to concrete AWS resource configurations or deployment changes to immediately remedy the problem before it escalates. 

Target users: Cloud security analysts and administrators. 

Pricing: Depends on the organization type and their cloud deployment needs. 

AWS Security Hub

AWS Security Hub is a tool that complements all the above-listed services by compiling data in a single location. Besides the Amazon Web Services suite, it also supports third-party products, thus allowing users a unified source of security-related information. Among the most effective AWS security tools, the service adheres to security standards such as the AWS Services Foundational Security Best Practices. Based on these guidelines, Security Hub identifies the areas that lack security best practices and offers ways to fix them. 

AWS Security Hub Benefits

• Data collection: Using AWS Security Hub, users can gather and prioritize security bottlenecks from multiple accounts, including external services. 
• Consolidation and automation: The service enables a single source of truth by compiling all security issues in one place. Automation features allow for immediate remediation of flawed findings by applying custom actions. 
• Best practices adoption: By continuously checking your findings against the cybersecurity guidelines, organizations can ensure adherence across the company. 

Target users: Cloud security analysts. 

Pricing: For the first 100,000 security checks, the price starts at $0.001 per check. 

Top 4 AWS Application Security Tools

This section will examine technologies for data security in cloud computing that focus on protecting applications across the AWS environment.

Amazon Inspector

Another item on the list of AWS security tools, Amazon Inspector is designed to measure the security of applications deployed on EC2. It helps businesses discover vulnerabilities and exposures within EC2 instances by providing continuous security testing. Amazon Inspector offers regular reports showcasing every security finding detected during the scan alongside its severity level. 

Moreover, the security tool breaks down each finding to provide extensive information about it. Looking at the report, you will learn the location, priority level, and resolution tips for each vulnerability. All in all, this service is used to check the application security before deploying it to production, where the cost of bugs rises significantly. 

Amazon Inspector Benefits

• Continuous check-ups: Amazon Inspector is an automated system that provides ongoing evaluation to help businesses eliminate errors and exploitations before the application goes into production. 
• Amazon Web Services expertise: The Inspector checks your security against common best practices. Based on AWS’s extensive knowledge and experience, they help companies step up and safeguard their assets. 
• DevOps integration: AWS Inspector facilitates the DevOps practices by building assessments into your existing processes, empowering development and operations. 

Target users: Security analysts and DevOps specialists. 

Pricing: $1.25 per EC2 instance and $0.09 per container image. 

AWS Shield

AWS Shield is one of the most commonly used when it comes to DDoS protection. The service comes with two tiers: a free standard package and a paid advanced one. AWS Shield Standard offers protection against layers 3 and 4, the network layer, and the transport layer. The system works automatically and defends your Elastic Load Balancers, CloudFront distributions, and Amazon Route 53. 

For more coverage, you can opt for AWS Shield Advanced, which delivers additional DDoS security and smart attack detection, as well as protects you at the application and network layers. Companies dealing with more sophisticated DDoS attacks will certainly benefit from employing the advanced tier.

AWS Shield Benefits

• Automated services: This AWS security tool is automatically enabled for AWS users to protect their assets from DDoS attacks.
• Customization: This tool allows for custom rules to defend the resources against more complicated attacks at the application layer. The rules are automatically triggered when required to mitigate attacks before any data breach occurs. 
• Cost effectiveness: The standard package will protect your assets at no additional cost, making it one of the more economical security tools for AWS services.

Target users: DevOps and DevSecOps specialists, cloud security administrators. 

Pricing: The Standard tier is free of charge, the pricing structure for the Advanced package depends on your needs. 

AWS Web Application Firewall

The AWS Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF) is one of the best AWS security tools to safeguard web applications, including web portals, enterprise apps, business automation solutions, and more. By monitoring HTTP and HTTPS requests, the service defends web apps from cyberattacks on layer 7. Users can define criteria such as IP address, location, etc., and block access to sensitive data. 

The range of protection is vast and includes all common malicious attacks that web applications are susceptible to. From SQL injection and cross-site scripting to remote file inclusion, AWS WAF is a reliable security partner. 

AWS Web Application Benefits

• Customization: Users can set up various rules that help them tailor the protection service and defend themselves against attacks. 
• Traffic visibility: As rules monitor the source of traffic, you receive detailed information concerning requests, their origins, and intentions. 
• Integration with AWS services: AWS Web Application Firewall provides seamless integration with numerous AWS services like EC2, CloudFront, Load Balancer, and others. 

Target users: Cloud and network administrators, security specialists.

Pricing: $1 for each rule and $0.6 per one million web requests. 

AWS Secrets Manager

AWS Secrets Manager is one of the most beloved AWS security tools to safely store sensitive information such as database credentials, certificates, and tokens. A fully-fledged manager, it allows users to control permissions and limit the actions employees can perform with the stored data, including creating, editing, removing, and accessing secrets. 

AWS Secrets Manager can also work through Lambda functions to automatically pull the secrets. One of AWS Lambda’s benefits, it allows users to rotate secrets without making API calls to the Secrets Manager. The service enables protection across AWS environments while managing database credentials, keys, tokens, and other secrets. 

AWS Secrets Manager Benefits

• Key and access control: These services are a centralized hub for sensitive information that requires the utmost level of security. Using the tool, you can effortlessly rotate keys and disable access all in one place. 
• Encryption: The system automatically encrypts secrets and manages access rights to prevent unauthorized data access. 
• Scalability: This AWS cloud tool can be accessed by various applications, even if they run on different containers and servers. This allows you to expand and grow without creating multiple managers for each application. 

Target users: Database administrators and software developers.

Pricing: $0.4 per secret monthly. 

Final Words

Cybersecurity is a great challenge to many companies worldwide. In the ever-increasing risk of cyberattacks, organizations strive to adopt the most potent tools to protect their valuable assets. If you’re looking for a reliable partner to provide your business with fortified cybersecurity, get in touch with NIX. A certified partner with industry-leading cloud vendors, we help businesses migrate to the cloud, build cloud-native applications, and instill security best practices. We can answer all your questions pertaining to cloud computing, and explain the differences between AWS vs GCP vs Azure pricing, features, benefits, and more. Reach out to us to discuss your needs and secure your sensitive data across the AWS environment.