All news with #aws tag

AWS Achieves HITRUST Certification for 177 Services

🔒 Amazon Web Services announced that 177 AWS services achieved HITRUST certification for the 2025 assessment cycle, with five services certified for the first time: Amazon Verified Permissions, AWS B2B Data Interchange, AWS Payment Cryptography, AWS Resource Explorer, and AWS Security Incident Response. A third‑party assessor audited the services under the HITRUST CSF v11.5.1 framework. Customers can inherit the certification for validated assessments when they use in‑scope services and follow the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, and evidence is available through AWS Artifact.

Malware Analysis on AWS: Building Secure Isolated Sandboxes

🔒 This AWS blog explains how security teams can run malware analysis in the cloud while complying with AWS policies and minimizing risk. It recommends an architecture that uses an isolated VPC with no internet egress, ephemeral EC2 detonation hosts accessed via AWS Systems Manager Session Manager, and secure S3 storage via VPC gateway endpoints with encryption. The post emphasizes strong IAM and SCP guardrails, immutable hosts, automated teardown, centralized logging, and monitoring with CloudTrail and GuardDuty to maintain visibility and lifecycle control.

Implementing Defense-in-Depth for AWS CodeBuild Pipelines

🔒 This guide consolidates practical recommendations for securing AWS CodeBuild CI/CD pipelines, emphasizing webhook configuration, trust boundaries, and least-privilege access. It warns against automatic pull request builds from untrusted contributors and prescribes push-based, branch-based, and contributor-filtered webhook patterns, plus staged rollout using Infrastructure as Code. Additional safeguards include scoped GitHub tokens, per-build IAM roles, isolated build environments, CloudTrail logging, and manual approval gates for sensitive deployments.

Secure File Sharing on AWS: Security and Cost Options

🔐 This post by Swapnil Singh (updated July 28, 2025) compares AWS file-sharing options and explains security and cost trade-offs to help architects choose the right approach. Part 1 focuses on AWS Transfer Family, Transfer Family web apps, S3 pre-signed URLs, and a serverless pre-signed URL pattern (API Gateway + Lambda), outlining strengths, limitations, and pricing considerations. It emphasizes requirements gathering—access patterns, protocols, security, operations, and business constraints—and presents a decision matrix and high-level guidance for selecting a solution.

Migrating Oracle TDE Keystore on EC2 to AWS CloudHSM

🔐 This AWS Security Blog post, republished July 30, 2025, demonstrates how to migrate an Oracle 19c Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) keystore on Amazon EC2 from a file-based wallet to AWS CloudHSM using the CloudHSM Client SDK 5. It walks through prerequisites—CloudHSM cluster, CloudHSM admin and crypto users, network connectivity—and stepwise commands to install the client and PKCS#11 library, adjust Oracle WALLET_ROOT/TDE_CONFIGURATION, and run the ADMINISTER KEY MANAGEMENT migration. The guide also covers creating an auto-login keystore, verifying V$ENCRYPTION_WALLET status, and outlines benefits such as FIPS-validated hardware, centralized management, and improved compliance.

Automate Disabling AD Users from GuardDuty Findings

🔐 This AWS Security Blog post explains how to use Amazon GuardDuty to detect suspicious activity and automatically disable accounts in AWS Managed Microsoft AD. It walks through deploying a managed directory and a directory-administration EC2 instance, configuring AWS Systems Manager Run Command documents, and orchestrating those actions with AWS Step Functions triggered by Amazon EventBridge. The guide includes required permissions, testing steps using GuardDuty’s test domains, and notes on extending the automation to reset passwords or send notifications.

Amazon Engineer Exposed Credentials via Public GitHub Repo

🔒 UpGuard discovered a public GitHub repository on 13 January 2020 containing an Amazon Web Services engineer’s personal identity documents and numerous system credentials. The repository included AWS key pairs (including a file named rootkey.csv), API tokens, private keys, passwords, logs, and customer-related templates. UpGuard reported the exposure to AWS Security within hours and the repository was secured the same day. The incident highlights how rapid leak detection can prevent accidental disclosures from escalating.

AWS Guide Updated for Australian Financial Regulations

🛡️ AWS published an updated AWS User Guide to Financial Services Regulations and Guidelines in Australia to reflect APRA’s Prudential Standard CPS 230 Operational Risk Management, effective 1 July 2025, and APRA’s February 2025 rescission of its 2018 cloud outsourcing information paper. The whitepaper is intended for APRA‑regulated institutions and is particularly useful for leadership, governance, security, risk, and compliance teams seeking to run workloads on AWS. It summarizes APRA expectations on operational risk management and information security and provides materials to begin due diligence and implement appropriate programs within a shared responsibility model. AWS will continue to publish updates through its Security Blog and Compliance resources and encourages customers to engage their AWS account managers for assistance.

Testing Post-Quantum TLS in Python with OpenSSL 3.5

🔐 AWS provides a containerized sample to test post-quantum hybrid TLS (PQ TLS) from Python by bundling OpenSSL 3.5 with a standard interpreter and common libraries. The sample demonstrates hybrid key exchange using ML-KEM alongside classical algorithms and includes examples for boto3/AWS CLI, requests, and low-level ssl sockets. It also shows how to capture traffic and confirm PQ negotiation in TLS handshakes.

AWS Security Incident Response: Accelerating IR Lifecycle

🛡️ AWS Security Incident Response is a Tier 1, AWS-native service launched in December 2024 to accelerate detection, triage, and containment of security incidents. It integrates with Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Security Hub, and AWS Systems Manager, supports partner integrations, and enables escalation to AWS CIRT. The service centralizes findings, automates monitoring and intelligent triage to reduce false positives, and offers prebuilt containment playbooks and APIs to compress MTTR and coordinate cross-account response.

New AWS Whitepaper: AICPA SOC 2 Compliance Guide on AWS

📘 AICPA SOC 2 Compliance Guide on AWS provides detailed, prescriptive guidance for cloud architects, security and compliance teams, and DevOps professionals to implement SOC 2–aligned controls using AWS services. The whitepaper maps Trust Services Criteria (Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, Privacy) to AWS services and constructs and explains complementary user entity controls. It outlines strategies for evidence collection, documentation, and audit readiness and highlights automation best practices. The guide places controls within the AWS shared responsibility model and points to AWS Security Assurance Services for further assistance.

AWS releases SRA Verify: Open-source SRA assessment

🔍 SRA Verify is an open-source assessment tool from AWS that automates validation of an organization’s alignment to the AWS Security Reference Architecture (AWS SRA). It runs automated checks across multiple services to verify configurations and highlight deviations from recommended patterns. The tool links checks to remediation guidance and IaC examples to help teams implement fixes more quickly. It currently covers CloudTrail, GuardDuty, IAM Access Analyzer, Config, Security Hub, S3, Inspector, and Macie, with plans to expand.

CLOUD Act Explained: Provider Obligations and Protections

🔒 AWS clarifies five key points about the CLOUD Act, stressing it does not grant automatic or unfettered access to customer content and that U.S. law requires judicial process for compelled disclosures. AWS reports no disclosure of enterprise or government customer content stored outside the U.S. since 2020. The company notes the Act applies to any provider with a U.S. presence and aligns with international law, while technical controls like AWS Nitro and AWS KMS limit operator access.

Beyond IAM Access Keys: Modern AWS Authentication Approaches

🔐 This AWS Security Blog post explains why long-term IAM access keys introduce exposure and operational risk, and outlines practical, more secure alternatives. It recommends browser-based CloudShell for CLI access, IAM Identity Center (with AWS CLI v2 and MFA) and IDE integrations for developer workflows, and IAM roles for compute and CI/CD. The post also covers external access options, emphasizes temporary credentials, and urges the principle of least privilege.

AWS Completes 2024 CCAG Pooled Audit with EU Banks

🔒 AWS completed the 2024 pooled audit run by the Collaborative Cloud Audit Group (CCAG) with major European financial institutions. The multi‑phase engagement (February–December 2024) was grounded in the CSA Cloud Controls Matrix and aligned to IIA IPPF and ISACA ITAF benchmarks, with on‑site fieldwork at two AWS locations. Assessments covered data confidentiality and sovereignty, incident detection and response, privileged access controls, operational resilience, API security, supplier governance, interoperability and centralized compliance oversight.

Alteryx Cloud Leak Exposes Data on 123M Households

🔒 UpGuard discovered an Amazon S3 bucket at the subdomain 'alteryxdownload' that was misconfigured to allow any AWS 'Authenticated Users' to download its contents. The repository included Alteryx software and a 36 GB ConsumerView dataset from Experian containing 123 million household records and 248 fields. A separate file held public 2010 US Census data. Alteryx secured the bucket after notification, underscoring vendor and cloud configuration risk.