In Case You Missed These: AWS Security Blog Posts from June, July, and August

In case you missed any AWS Security Blog posts from June, July, and August, they are summarized and linked to below. The posts are shown in reverse chronological order (most recent first), and the subject matter ranges from a tagging limit increase to recording SSH sessions established through a bastion host.

August

August 16: Updated Whitepaper Available: AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency
We recently released the 2016 version of the AWS Best Practices for DDoS Resiliency Whitepaper, which can be helpful if you have public-facing endpoints that might attract unwanted distributed denial of service (DDoS) activity.

August 15: Now Organize Your AWS Resources by Using up to 50 Tags per Resource
Tagging AWS resources simplifies the way you organize and discover resources, allocate costs, and control resource access across services. Many of you have told us that as the number of applications, teams, and projects running on AWS increases, you need more than 10 tags per resource. Based on this feedback, we now support up to 50 tags per resource. You do not need to take additional action—you can begin applying as many as 50 tags per resource today.

August 11: New! Import Your Own Keys into AWS Key Management Service
Today, we are happy to announce the launch of the new import key feature that enables you to import keys from your own key management infrastructure (KMI) into AWS Key Management Service (KMS). After you have exported keys from your existing systems and imported them into KMS, you can use them in all KMS-integrated AWS services and custom applications.

August 2: Customer Update: Amazon Web Services and the EU-US Privacy Shield
Recently, the European Commission and the US Government agreed on a new framework called the EU-US Privacy Shield, and on July 12, the European Commission formally adopted it. AWS welcomes this new framework for transatlantic data flow. As the EU-US Privacy Shield replaces Safe Harbor, we understand many of our customers have questions about what this means for them. The security of our customers’ data is our number one priority, so I wanted to take a few moments to explain what this all means.

August 2: How to Remove Single Points of Failure by Using a High-Availability Partition Group in Your AWS CloudHSM Environment
In this post, I will walk you through steps to remove single points of failure in your AWS CloudHSM environment by setting up a high-availability (HA) partition group. Single points of failure occur when a single CloudHSM device fails in a non-HA configuration, which can result in the permanent loss of keys and data. The HA partition group, however, allows for one or more CloudHSM devices to fail, while still keeping your environment operational.

July

July 28: Enable Your Federated Users to Work in the AWS Management Console for up to 12 Hours
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) supports identity federation, which enables external identities, such as users in your corporate directory, to sign in to the AWS Management Console via single sign-on (SSO). Now with a small configuration change, your AWS administrators can allow your federated users to work in the AWS Management Console for up to 12 hours, instead of having to reauthenticate every 60 minutes. In addition, administrators can now revoke active federated user sessions. In this blog post, I will show how to configure the console session duration for two common federation use cases: using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 and using a custom federation broker that leverages the sts:AssumeRole* APIs (see this downloadable sample of a federation proxy). I will wrap up this post with a walkthrough of the new session revocation process.

July 28: Amazon Cognito Your User Pools is Now Generally Available
Amazon Cognito makes it easy for developers to add sign-up, sign-in, and enhanced security functionality to mobile and web apps. With Amazon Cognito Your User Pools, you get a simple, fully managed service for creating and maintaining your own user directory that can scale to hundreds of millions of users.

July 27: How to Audit Cross-Account Roles Using AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch Events
In this blog post, I will walk through the process of auditing access across AWS accounts by a cross-account role. This process links API calls that assume a role in one account to resource-related API calls in a different account. To develop this process, I will use AWS CloudTrail, Amazon CloudWatch Events, and AWS Lambda functions. When complete, the process will provide a full audit chain from end user to resource access across separate AWS accounts.

July 25: AWS Becomes First Cloud Service Provider to Adopt New PCI DSS 3.2
We are happy to announce the availability of the Amazon Web Services PCI DSS 3.2 Compliance Package for the 2016/2017 cycle. AWS is the first cloud service provider (CSP) to successfully complete the assessment against the newly released PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) version 3.2, 18 months in advance of the mandatory February 1, 2018, deadline. The AWS Attestation of Compliance (AOC), available upon request, now features 26 PCI DSS certified services, including the latest additions of Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS), AWS Config, and AWS WAF (a web application firewall). We at AWS are committed to this international information security and compliance program, and adopting the new standard as early as possible once again demonstrates our commitment to information security as our highest priority. Our customers (and customers of our customers) can operate confidently as they store and process credit card information (and any other sensitive data) in the cloud knowing that AWS products and services are tested against the latest and most mature set of PCI compliance requirements.

July 20: New AWS Compute Blog Post: Help Secure Container-Enabled Applications with IAM Roles for ECS Tasks
Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) now allows you to specify an IAM role that can be used by the containers in an ECS task, as a new AWS Compute Blog post explains.

July 14: New Whitepaper Now Available: The Security Perspective of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework
Today, AWS released the Security Perspective of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF). The AWS CAF provides a framework to help you structure and plan your cloud adoption journey, and build a comprehensive approach to cloud computing throughout the IT lifecycle. The framework provides seven specific areas of focus or Perspectives: business, platform, maturity, people, process, operations, and security.

July 14: New Amazon Inspector Blog Post on the AWS Blog
On the AWS Blog yesterday, Jeff Barr published a new security-related blog post written by AWS Principal Security Engineer Eric Fitzgerald. Here’s the beginning of the post, which is entitled, Scale Your Security Vulnerability Testing with Amazon Inspector:

July 12: How to Use AWS CloudFormation to Automate Your AWS WAF Configuration with Example Rules and Match Conditions
We recently announced AWS CloudFormation support for all current features of AWS WAF. This enables you to leverage CloudFormation templates to configure, customize, and test AWS WAF settings across all your web applications. Using CloudFormation templates can help you reduce the time required to configure AWS WAF. In this blog post, I will show you how to use CloudFormation to automate your AWS WAF configuration with example rules and match conditions.

July 11: How to Restrict Amazon S3 Bucket Access to a Specific IAM Role
In this blog post, I show how you can restrict S3 bucket access to a specific IAM role or user within an account using Conditions instead of with the NotPrincipal element. Even if another user in the same account has an Admin policy or a policy with s3:*, they will be denied if they are not explicitly listed. You can use this approach, for example, to configure a bucket for access by instances within an Auto Scaling group. You can also use this approach to limit access to a bucket with a high-level security need.

July 7: How to Use SAML to Automatically Direct Federated Users to a Specific AWS Management Console Page
In this blog post, I will show you how to create a deep link for federated users via the SAML 2.0 RelayState parameter in Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS). By using a deep link, your users will go directly to the specified console page without additional navigation.

July 6: How to Prevent Uploads of Unencrypted Objects to Amazon S3
In this blog post, I will show you how to create an S3 bucket policy that prevents users from uploading unencrypted objects, unless they are using server-side encryption with S3–managed encryption keys (SSE-S3) or server-side encryption with AWS KMS–managed keys (SSE-KMS).

June

June 30: The Top 20 AWS IAM Documentation Pages so Far This Year
The following 20 pages have been the most viewed AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) documentation pages so far this year. I have included a brief description with each link to give you a clearer idea of what each page covers. Use this list to see what other people have been viewing and perhaps to pique your own interest about a topic you’ve been meaning to research.

June 29: The Most Viewed AWS Security Blog Posts so Far in 2016
The following 10 posts are the most viewed AWS Security Blog posts that we published during the first six months of this year. You can use this list as a guide to catch up on your blog reading or even read a post again that you found particularly useful.

June 25: AWS Earns Department of Defense Impact Level 4 Provisional Authorization
I am pleased to share that, for our AWS GovCloud (US) Region, AWS has received a Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Provisional Authorization (PA) at Impact Level 4 (IL4). This will allow Department of Defense (DoD) agencies to use the AWS Cloud for production workloads with export-controlled data, privacy information, and protected health information as well as other controlled unclassified information. This new authorization continues to demonstrate our advanced work in the public sector space; you might recall AWS was the first cloud service provider to obtain an Impact Level 4 PA in August 2014, paving the way for DoD pilot workloads and applications in the cloud. Additionally, we recently achieved a FedRAMP High provisional Authorization to Operate (P-ATO) from the Joint Authorization Board (JAB), also for AWS GovCloud (US), and today’s announcement allows DoD mission owners to continue to leverage AWS for critical production applications.

June 23: AWS re:Invent 2016 Registration Is Now Open
Register now for the fifth annual AWS re:Invent, the largest gathering of the global cloud computing community. Join us in Las Vegas for opportunities to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS solutions. This year we are offering all-new technical deep-dives on topics such as security, IoT, serverless computing, and containers. We are also delivering more than 400 sessions, more hands-on labs, bootcamps, and opportunities for one-on-one engagements with AWS experts.

June 23: AWS Achieves FedRAMP High JAB Provisional Authorization
We are pleased to announce that AWS has received a FedRAMP High JAB Provisional Authorization to Operate (P-ATO) from the Joint Authorization Board (JAB) for the AWS GovCloud (US) Region. The new Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High JAB Provisional Authorization is mapped to more than 400 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) security controls. This P-ATO recognizes AWS GovCloud (US) as a secure environment on which to run highly sensitive government workloads, including Personally Identifiable Information (PII), sensitive patient records, financial data, law enforcement data, and other Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI).

June 22: AWS IAM Service Last Accessed Data Now Available for South America (Sao Paulo) and Asia Pacific (Seoul) Regions
In December, AWS IAM released service last accessed data, which helps you identify overly permissive policies attached to an IAM entity (a user, group, or role). Today, we have extended service last accessed data to support two additional regions: South America (Sao Paulo) and Asia Pacific (Seoul). With this release, you can now view the date when an IAM entity last accessed an AWS service in these two regions. You can use this information to identify unnecessary permissions and update policies to remove access to unused services.

June 20: New Twitter Handle Now Live: @AWSSecurityInfo
Today, we launched a new Twitter handle: @AWSSecurityInfo. The purpose of this new handle is to share security bulletins, security whitepapers, compliance news and information, and other AWS security-related and compliance-related information. The scope of this handle is broader than that of @AWSIdentity, which focuses primarily on Security Blog posts. However, feel free to follow both handles!

June 15: Announcing Two New AWS Quick Start Reference Deployments for Compliance
As part of the Professional Services Enterprise Accelerator – Compliance program, AWS has published two new Quick Start reference deployments to assist federal government customers and others who need to meet National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) SP 800-53 (Revision 4) security control requirements, including those at the high-impact level. The new Quick Starts are AWS Enterprise Accelerator – Compliance: NIST-based Assurance Frameworks and AWS Enterprise Accelerator – Compliance: Standardized Architecture for NIST High-Impact Controls Featuring Trend Micro Deep Security. These Quick Starts address many of the NIST controls at the infrastructure layer. Furthermore, for systems categorized as high impact, AWS has worked with Trend Micro to incorporate its Deep Security product into a Quick Start deployment in order to address many additional high-impact controls at the workload layer (app, data, and operating system). In addition, we have worked with Telos Corporation to populate security control implementation details for each of these Quick Starts into the Xacta product suite for customers who rely upon that suite for governance, risk, and compliance workflows.

June 14: Now Available: Get Even More Details from Service Last Accessed Data
In December, AWS IAM released service last accessed data, which shows the time when an IAM entity (a user, group, or role) last accessed an AWS service. This provided a powerful tool to help you grant least privilege permissions. Starting today, it’s easier to identify where you can reduce permissions based on additional service last accessed data.

June 14: How to Record SSH Sessions Established Through a Bastion Host
A bastion host is a server whose purpose is to provide access to a private network from an external network, such as the Internet. Because of its exposure to potential attack, a bastion host must minimize the chances of penetration. For example, you can use a bastion host to mitigate the risk of allowing SSH connections from an external network to the Linux instances launched in a private subnet of your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). In this blog post, I will show you how to leverage a bastion host to record all SSH sessions established with Linux instances. Recording SSH sessions enables auditing and can help in your efforts to comply with regulatory requirements.

June 14: AWS Granted Authority to Operate for Department of Commerce and NOAA
AWS already has a number of federal agencies onboarded to the cloud, including the Department of Energy, The Department of the Interior, and NASA. Today we are pleased to announce the addition of two more ATOs (authority to operate) for the Department of Commerce (DOC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Specifically, the DOC will be utilizing AWS for their Commerce Data Service, and NOAA will be leveraging the cloud for their “Big Data Project.” According to NOAA, the goal of the Big Data Project is to “create a sustainable, market-driven ecosystem that lowers the cost barrier to data publication. This project will create a new economic space for growth and job creation while providing the public far greater access to the data created with its tax dollars.”

June 2: How to Set Up DNS Resolution Between On-Premises Networks and AWS by Using Unbound
In previous AWS Security Blog posts, Drew Dennis covered two options for establishing DNS connectivity between your on-premises networks and your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) environments. His first post explained how to use Simple AD to forward DNS requests originating from on-premises networks to an Amazon Route 53 private hosted zone. His second post showed how you can use Microsoft Active Directory (also provisioned with AWS Directory Service) to provide the same DNS resolution with some additional forwarding capabilities. In this post, I will explain how you can set up DNS resolution between your on-premises DNS with Amazon VPC by using Unbound, an open-source, recursive DNS resolver. This solution is not a managed solution like Microsoft AD and Simple AD, but it does provide the ability to route DNS requests between on-premises environments and an Amazon VPC–provided DNS.

June 1: How to Manage Secrets for Amazon EC2 Container Service–Based Applications by Using Amazon S3 and Docker
In this blog post, I will show you how to store secrets on Amazon S3, and use AWS IAM roles to grant access to those stored secrets using an example WordPress application deployed as a Docker image using ECS. Using IAM roles means that developers and operations staff do not have the credentials to access secrets. Only the application and staff who are responsible for managing the secrets can access them. The deployment model for ECS ensures that tasks are run on dedicated EC2 instances for the same AWS account and are not shared between customers, which gives sufficient isolation between different container environments.

If you have comments  about any of these posts, please add your comments in the “Comments” section of the appropriate post. If you have questions about or issues implementing the solutions in any of these posts, please start a new thread on the AWS IAM forum.

– Craig