Category: Amazon EC2

July 27, 2021: We’ve updated the link to the 2019 re:Invent session on this topic. Since it first launched over 10 years ago, the Amazon EC2 Instance Metadata Service (IMDS) has helped customers build secure and scalable applications. The IMDS solved a big security headache for cloud users by providing access to temporary, frequently rotated […]

October 29, 2021: AWS KMS is replacing the term customer master key (CMK) with AWS KMS key and KMS key. The concept has not changed. To prevent breaking changes, AWS KMS is keeping some variations of this term. More info. Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) offers an encryption solution for your Amazon EBS volumes so […]

As companies mature in their cloud journey, they implement layered security capabilities and practices in their cloud architectures. One such practice is to continually assess golden Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for security vulnerabilities. AMIs provide the information required to launch an Amazon EC2 instance, which is a virtual server in the AWS Cloud. A golden […]

Most malware tries to compromise your systems by using a known vulnerability that the maker of the operating system has already patched. To help prevent malware from affecting your systems, two security best practices are to apply all operating system patches to your systems and actively monitor your systems for missing patches. In case you […]

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has granted the AWS GovCloud (US) Region an Impact Level 5 (IL5) Department of Defense (DoD) Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide (CC SRG) Provisional Authorization (PA) for six core services. This means that AWS’s DoD customers and partners can now deploy workloads for Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) exceeding IL4 […]

September 9, 2020: There’s an updated version of this blog here – https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-configure-ldaps-endpoint-for-simple-ad/. Simple AD, which is powered by Samba  4, supports basic Active Directory (AD) authentication features such as users, groups, and https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-configure-ldaps-endpoint-for-simple-ad/the ability to join domains. Simple AD also includes an integrated Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server. LDAP is a standard application […]

As part of the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, you are responsible for monitoring and managing your resources at the operating system and application level. When you monitor your application servers, for example, you can measure, visualize, react to, and improve the security of those servers. You probably already do this on premises or in other […]

Today, we made available the new Resource Groups Tagging API that makes it easier for you to centrally manage tags and search for resources across AWS services and regions. This new API includes five operations that enable you to programmatically tag and untag resources, list resources with a specific tag, and list unique tag keys […]

In 2010, AWS launched resource tagging for Amazon EC2 instances and other EC2 resources. Since that launch, we have raised the allowable number of tags per resource from 10 to 50 and made tags more useful with the introduction of resource groups and Tag Editor. AWS customers use tags to track ownership, drive their cost accounting […]

September 9, 2021: Amazon Elasticsearch Service has been renamed to Amazon OpenSearch Service. See details. To help you secure your AWS resources, we recommend that you adopt a layered approach that includes the use of preventative and detective controls. For example, incorporating host-based controls for your Amazon EC2 instances can restrict access and provide appropriate […]