Category: Security, Identity, & Compliance

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 […]

Starting today, you can use AWS CloudTrail to track the activity of your federated users (web identity federation and Security Assertion Markup Language [SAML]). For example, you can now use CloudTrail to identify a SAML federated user who terminated an Amazon EC2 instance in your AWS account, or to identify a mobile application user who […]

Update: The video and slides from the webinar are now available. As part of the AWS Webinar Series, AWS will present Best Practices for Managing Security Operations in AWS on Wednesday, March 30. This webinar will start at 10:30 A.M. and end at 11:30 A.M. Pacific Time (UTC-7). AWS Security Solutions Architect Henrik Johansson will share […]

The AWS Cryptography team is happy to announce the AWS Encryption SDK. This new SDK makes encryption easier for developers while minimizing errors that could lessen the security of your applications. The new SDK does not require you to be an AWS customer, but it does include ready-to-use examples for AWS customers. Developers using encryption […]

To celebrate 10 years of AWS, qwikLABS is offering 95 free online labs through the end of March 2016. Here are some of the labs related to security and compliance that you can take for free while the offer is live: Introduction to AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) Introduction to AWS Key Management Service Performing […]

Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) is a common identity provider that many AWS customers use to give federated users access to the AWS Management Console. AD FS uses multiple certificates to ensure secure communication between servers and to act as authentication mechanisms. One such mechanism is called the token-signing certificate. When the token-signing certificate expires, […]

Note from July 3, 2017: The solution in this post has been integrated into AWS WAF Security Automations, and AWS maintains up-to-date solution code in the companion GitHub repository.   Some Internet operations trust that clients are “well behaved.” As an operator of a publicly accessible web application, for example, you have to trust that the clients […]

Back in September, I wrote about How to Help Lock Down a User’s Amazon EC2 Capabilities to a Single VPC. In that blog post, I highlighted what I have found to be an effective approach to the virtual private cloud (VPC) lockdown scenario. Since that time, I have worked on making the related information easier […]

Today, we’re happy to release the AWS Config Rules repository, a community-based source of custom AWS Config Rules. This new repository gives you a streamlined way to automate your assessment and compliance against best practices for security of AWS resources. AWS Config Rules is a service that provides automated, periodic security and compliance checking of […]

In case you missed any of the AWS Security Blog posts from January and February, they are summarized and linked to below. The posts are shown in reverse chronological order (most recent first), and the subject matter ranges from using AWS WAF to automating HIPAA compliance. February February 29, AWS Compliance Announcement: Announcing Industry Best Practices […]