Category: Security

AWS Config Rules enables you to implement security policies as code for your organization and evaluate configuration changes to AWS resources against these policies. You can use Config rules to audit your use of AWS resources for compliance with external compliance frameworks such as CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark and with your internal security policies related […]

In June 2015, AWS Chief Information Security Officer Stephen Schmidt introduced AWS’s new Open Source implementation of the SSL/TLS network encryption protocols, Amazon s2n. s2n is a library that has been designed to be small and fast, with the goal of providing you with network encryption that is more easily understood and fully auditable. In […]

Today, we continue a series of AWS cloud compliance FAQs by focusing on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and protected health information (PHI). AWS’s Healthcare and Life Science customers are doing important things for their customers in the AWS cloud, and we are excited to work with our partners to help tackle […]

I’m very excited to share that AWS has received a DISA Provisional Authorization under the DoD Cloud Security Model’s impact levels 1-2 for all four of AWS’s Infrastructure Regions in the U.S., including AWS GovCloud (US). With this distinction, AWS has shown it can meet the DoD’s stringent security and compliance requirements; and as a […]

Yesterday the EC2 team announced fine grained controls for managing RunInstances. This release enables you to set fine-grained controls over the AMIs, Snapshots, Subnets, and other resources that can be used when creating instances and the types of instances and volumes that users can create when using the RunInstances API. This is a major milestone […]

In previous posts we’ve explained how to write S3 policies for the console and how to use policy variables to grant access to user-specific S3 folders. This week we’ll discuss another frequently asked-about topic: the distinction between IAM policies, S3 bucket policies, S3 ACLs, and when to use each. They’re all part of the AWS […]

We have just published an updated version of our AWS Security Best Practices whitepaper. You wanted us to provide a holistic and familiar approach to managing the overall information security posture of the organization that’s based on periodic risk assessments when you deploy applications and assets on AWS. Specifically, you asked for: How security responsibilities […]

We’re happy to announce the launch of the AWS Compliance Forum – a unique community designed for AWS customers interested in achieving compliance while using AWS services. The AWS Compliance Forum was developed based on discussions with customers who wanted a community to connect with fellow AWS customers, interact with AWS compliance specialists, and access […]

Check out the new IAM policy simulator, a tool that enables you to test the effects of IAM access control policies before committing them into production, making it easier to verify and troubleshoot permissions. Learn more at the AWS Blog. – Kai

I often get asked when to use different AWS accounts to enforce separation of duties versus using IAM users and groups within a single account. While the complete answer depends on what AWS services you use, the general guidelines in this post will point you in the right direction. As context for the guidelines, consider […]