Vulnerability Management on AWS

How AWS protects its infrastructure and services through proactive defense and rapid vulnerability response.

Proactive defense at scale

Effective vulnerability management is crucial for customers who entrust their workloads to the cloud. At AWS, security is our top priority. Our approach combines continuous, automated monitoring and patching capabilities with robust response mechanisms.

Our vulnerability management framework

AWS takes proactive steps to address vulnerabilities before they can impact our customers.

Building security from the start

The best way to manage software flaws is to prevent them from reaching production. Our software development process incorporates systems designed to detect known vulnerabilities. Prior to launch, all services undergo rigorous security assessments. These include mandatory vulnerability scanning, comprehensive security reviews, and implementation of built-in vulnerability management capabilities. This approach helps ensure that security is integrated from the outset.

Continuous monitoring, detection, and patching

Once software is deployed, new information can lead to the need to reassess and remediate. In that phase, AWS operates a comprehensive vulnerability management program that continuously discovers, assesses, and remediates potential vulnerabilities across our fleet. We use both internal tools and vendor subscriptions to identify potential vulnerabilities from multiple sources. Our monitoring system categorizes vulnerabilities by severity, helping ensure critical issues receive priority patching. The severity and patching timelines are based on standardized scoring of flaws including but not limited to, the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) and National Vulnerability Database (NVD).

Rapid response to external reports

AWS operates an open and effective responsible disclosure process for externally reported security concerns. Customers and security researchers can report concerns via our website or the Hacker One process. We investigate all reported security vulnerabilities affecting Amazon and AWS services, software, and products. We also undergo rigorous third-party audits to validate our robust vulnerability management program. We regularly publish Security Bulletins to help customers prioritize and address known issues. These bulletins balance transparency with customer data protection. For vulnerabilities with actual or potential customer impact, AWS discloses information through both our security bulletins and the industry-standard Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) process.

Rapid vulnerability response

Vulnerabilities don't always emerge in a predictable fashion. That's why AWS has developed a comprehensive, multi-phase process to rapidly respond and reduce the impact of newly discovered security issues. By combining immediate protective measures with advanced monitoring, root cause analysis, and systematic remediation, we're able to respond to emergent and zero-day threats with unparalleled precision and speed, minimizing disruption to our customers' operations. AWS remediates emergent and zero-day vulnerabilities by patching around the clock until the fleet is secured. This is done in a way to ensure appropriate measures are in place to protect confidentiality, integrity and availability of AWS services throughout the patching process.

How AWS responds to security events

Mitigation

Our first priority in any security event is to stop potential exploitation and prevent the issue from expanding. We implement protective measures while working on permanent solutions, often developing innovative approaches like hot-patching to protect customer workloads without disruption.

Monitoring

After initial mitigation, we focus on establishing reliable methods to detect any recurrence of the issue. Our security teams analyze the vulnerability and any exploit attempts to identify distinct patterns or indicators. We then develop and implement specific monitoring mechanisms to catch these signs across our infrastructure. This step also involves determining any potential warning signs that could indicate an impending exploit, allowing us to proactively respond to similar threats in the future. By the end of this phase, we aim to have robust, targeted detection measures in place for the specific vulnerability we're addressing.

Prevention

We focus on identifying and addressing root causes through automated tooling and systematic analysis to prevent similar issues from occurring in the future. This includes updating systems, implementing new security controls, and improving our automated security tooling. Our prevention strategy emphasizes maintaining security without impacting customer workloads or requiring customer intervention.

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Repair

The final phase involves thoroughly reviewing and remediating any potential impact from the vulnerability. We verify that both temporary mitigations and permanent fixes are properly implemented across all relevant services and systems. Our teams systematically validate that all affected components have been identified and patched, helping ensure no residual exposure remains. This phase also includes documenting the complete scope of repairs and confirming that our defense-in-depth strategy provides appropriate protection against similar vulnerabilities in the future.