Category: How-To

August 15, 2021: This blog post is under construction. Please refer back to this post in a day or two for the most accurate and helpful information. In a July 2016 AWS Blog post, I discussed how to integrate Amazon Inspector with third-party ticketing systems by using Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) and AWS Lambda. […]

Note: By default, an instance type that includes an NVMe instance store encrypts data at rest using an XTS-AES-256 block cipher. See this FAQ about NVMe-supported instance types. If you’re using an NVMw instance type, then data at rest is encrypted by default, and this post doesn’t apply to your situation. Encrypting data at rest […]

Update on October 24, 2018: Note that if you do not author the Lambda function correctly, this setup can create an infinite loop (in this case, a rule that is fired repeatedly, which can impact your AWS resources and cause higher than expected charges to your account). The example Lambda function I provide in Step […]

You can use AWS security controls to detect and mitigate risks to your AWS resources. The purpose of each security control is defined by its control objective. For example, the control objective of an Amazon VPC security group is to permit only designated traffic to enter or leave a network interface. Let’s say you have […]

Some Active Directory (AD) integrated applications require custom changes to the directory schema. Today, we have added the ability for an administrator to extend the schema of AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (Enterprise Edition), also known as Microsoft AD. Specifically, you can modify the AD schema and enable many more applications. This feature […]

Today, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) made 10 AWS managed policies available that align with common job functions. AWS managed policies enable you to set permissions using policies that AWS creates and manages, and with a single AWS managed policy for job functions, you can grant the permissions necessary for network or database administrators, […]

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) provides an additional layer of security for sensitive API calls, such as terminating Amazon EC2 instances or deleting important objects stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. In some cases, you may want to require users to authenticate with an MFA code before performing specific API requests, and by using AWS Identity and […]

Web and application users and organizations have expressed a growing desire to conduct most of their HTTP communication securely by using HTTPS. At its 2016 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced that starting in January 2017, apps submitted to its App Store will be required to support App Transport Security (ATS). ATS requires all connections to […]

August 31, 2021: AWS KMS is replacing the term customer master key (CMK) with AWS KMS key and KMS key. The concept has not changed. To prevent breaking changes, AWS KMS is keeping some variations of this term. More info. An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) provides the information required to launch an instance (a virtual […]

Amazon CloudWatch Events enables you to react selectively to events in the cloud as well as in your applications. Specifically, you can create CloudWatch Events rules that match event patterns, and take actions in response to those patterns. CloudWatch Events lets you process both AWS-provided events and custom events (those that you create and inject […]