Category: Security, Identity, & Compliance

In this blog post, we show you how to import PFX-formatted certificates into AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) using OpenSSL tools. Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) certificates are small data files that digitally bind a cryptographic key pair to an organization’s details. The key pair is used to secure network communications and establish […]

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. One of the top security methodologies is the principle of least privilege, which is the […]

This post will help you make privacy-conscious cloud migration decisions by mapping the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Privacy Framework: A Tool for Improving Privacy Through Enterprise Risk Management (NIST Privacy Framework) to the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF). AWS Professional Services created the AWS CAF to help organizations successfully migrate to […]

In this post, I explain how you can use attribute-based access controls (ABAC) in Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help provision simple, maintainable access controls to different projects, teams, and workloads as your organization grows. ABAC gives you access to granular permissions and employee-attribute based authorization. By using ABAC, you need fewer AWS Identity and […]

I’m excited to share that the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has authorized 19 additional AWS services at Impact Level (IL) 5 and four services at IL 4 in the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. With these additional 19 services, a total of 80 AWS services and features at IL4 and IL 5 are authorized and […]

In this post, I use the new Cross-Account feature of AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) Private Certificate Authority (CA) to create a CA in one account and then use ACM in a second account to issue a private certificate that automatically renews the following year. This newly available workflow expands the usability of ACM Private CA […]

Just over a year ago, on July 1, 2019, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s (APRA’s) Prudential Standard CPS 234 Information Security became effective. This standard is a set of legally enforceable information security requirements for APRA-regulated entities. CPS 234 aims to: “…ensure that an APRA regulated entity takes measures to be resilient against information security […]

In this post, we discuss how to implement the operating system security requirements defined by the Defence Information Systems Agency (DISA) Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs). As an Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer, you can use Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) published by AWS or APN partners. These AMIs, which are owned and published by AWS, […]

In this post, I will show you how to use AWS Lambda to automate PCI DSS (v3.2.1) evidence generation, and daily log review to assist with your ongoing PCI DSS activities. We will specifically be looking at AWS CloudTrail Logs stored centrally in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) (which is also a Well-Architected Security […]

In November 2019, Amazon launched a new version of AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) that offers a richer and easier to use set of features. In this post, we show you some of the changes and how to migrate from AWS WAF Classic to the new AWS WAF. AWS Managed Rules for AWS WAF is […]