Recap to security, identity, and compliance sessions at AWS re:Invent 2022

AWS re:Invent returned to Las Vegas, NV, in November 2022. The conference featured over 2,200 sessions and hands-on labs and more than 51,000 attendees over 5 days. If you weren’t able to join us in person, or just want to revisit some of the security, identity, and compliance announcements and on-demand sessions, this blog post is for you.

Key announcements

Here are some of the security announcements that we made at AWS re:Invent 2022.

• We announced the preview of a new service, Amazon Security Lake. Amazon Security Lake automatically centralizes security data from cloud, on-premises, and custom sources into a purpose-built data lake stored in your AWS account. Security Lake makes it simpler to analyze security data so that you can get a more complete understanding of security across your entire organization. You can also improve the protection of your workloads, applications, and data. Security Lake automatically gathers and manages your security data across accounts and AWS Regions.
• We introduced the AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge—our commitment to offering the most advanced set of sovereignty controls and features available in the cloud. As part of this pledge, we launched a new feature of AWS Key Management Service, External Key Store (XKS), where you can use your own encryption keys stored outside of the AWS Cloud to protect data on AWS.
• To help you with the building blocks for zero trust, we introduced two new services:
  • AWS Verified Access provides secure access to corporate applications without a VPN. Verified Access verifies each access request in real time and only connects users to the applications that they are allowed to access, removing broad access to corporate applications and reducing the associated risks.
  • Amazon Verified Permissions is a scalable, fine-grained permissions management and authorization service for custom applications. Using the Cedar policy language, Amazon Verified Permissions centralizes fine-grained permissions for custom applications and helps developers authorize user actions in applications.
• We announced Automated sensitive data discovery for Amazon Macie. This new capability helps you gain visibility into where your sensitive data resides on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) at a fraction of the cost of running a full data inspection across all your S3 buckets. Automated sensitive data discovery automates the continual discovery of sensitive data and potential data security risks across your S3 storage aggregated at the AWS Organizations level.
• Amazon Inspector now supports AWS Lambda functions, adding continual, automated vulnerability assessments for serverless compute workloads. Amazon Inspector automatically discovers eligible AWS Lambda functions and identifies software vulnerabilities in application package dependencies used in the Lambda function code. The functions are initially assessed upon deployment to Lambda and continually monitored and reassessed, informed by updates to the function and newly published vulnerabilities. When vulnerabilities are identified, actionable security findings are generated, aggregated in Amazon Inspector, and pushed to Security Hub and Amazon EventBridge to automate workflows.
• Amazon GuardDuty now offers threat detection for Amazon Aurora to identify potential threats to data stored in Aurora databases. Currently in preview, Amazon GuardDuty RDS Protection profiles and monitors access activity to existing and new databases in your account, and uses tailored machine learning models to detect suspicious logins to Aurora databases. When a potential threat is detected, GuardDuty generates a security finding that includes database details and contextual information on the suspicious activity. GuardDuty is integrated with Aurora for direct access to database events without requiring you to modify your databases.
• AWS Security Hub is now integrated with AWS Control Tower, allowing you to pair Security Hub detective controls with AWS Control Tower proactive or preventive controls and manage them together using AWS Control Tower. Security Hub controls are mapped to related control objectives in the AWS Control Tower control library, providing you with a holistic view of the controls required to meet a specific control objective. This combination of over 160 detective controls from Security Hub, with the AWS Control Tower built-in automations for multi-account environments, gives you a strong baseline of governance and off-the-shelf controls to scale your business using new AWS workloads and services. This combination of controls also helps you monitor whether your multi-account AWS environment is secure and managed in accordance with best practices, such as the AWS Foundational Security Best Practices standard.
• We launched our Cloud Audit Academy (CAA) course for Federal and DoD Workloads (FDW) on AWS. This new course is a 12-hour interactive training based on NIST SP 800-171, with mappings to NIST SP 800-53 and the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) and covers AWS services relevant to each NIST control family. This virtual instructor-led training is industry- and framework-specific for our U.S. Federal and DoD customers.
• AWS Wickr allows businesses and public sector organizations to collaborate more securely, while retaining data to help meet requirements such as e-discovery and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. AWS Wickr is an end-to-end encrypted enterprise communications service that facilitates one-to-one chats, group messaging, voice and video calling, file sharing, screen sharing, and more.
• We introduced the Post-Quantum Cryptography hub that aggregates resources and showcases AWS research and engineering efforts focused on providing cryptographic security for our customers, and how AWS interfaces with the global cryptographic community.

Watch on demand

Were you unable to join the event in person? See the following for on-demand sessions.

Keynotes and leadership sessions

Watch the AWS re:Invent 2022 keynote where AWS Chief Executive Officer Adam Selipsky shares best practices for managing security, compliance, identity, and privacy in the cloud. You can also replay the other AWS re:Invent 2022 keynotes.

To learn about the latest innovations in cloud security from AWS and what you can do to foster a culture of security in your business, watch AWS Chief Information Security Officer CJ Moses’s leadership session with guest Deneen DeFiore, Chief Information Security Officer at United Airlines.

Breakout sessions and new launch talks

You can watch talks and learning sessions on demand to learn about the following topics:

• See how AWS, customers, and partners work together to raise their security posture with AWS infrastructure and services. Learn about trends in identity and access management, threat detection and incident response, network and infrastructure security, data protection and privacy, and governance, risk, and compliance.
• Dive into our launches! Hear from security experts on recent announcements. Learn how new services and solutions can help you meet core security and compliance requirements.

Consider joining us for more in-person security learning opportunities by saving the date for AWS re:Inforce 2023, which will be held June 13-14 in Anaheim, California. We look forward to seeing you there!

If you’d like to discuss how these new announcements can help your organization improve its security posture, AWS is here to help. Contact your AWS account team today.

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