Introduction The cfn_nag tool is a static analysis tool for finding obvious security weaknesses in CloudFormation templates. The core product includes rules that apply universally across environments and enterprises. That said, the product supports the development of custom rules to allow enterprise-specific rules for compliance and security controls. For more information on developing custom rules Read more…
Deployment Pipelines – Introduction The software “deployment pipeline” has become a common mechanism in the modern enterprise. A deployment pipeline is a sequence of automation that produces or deploys a software artifact. This artifact can take many forms, for example, a programming library, a web application, or even automation to converge infrastructure and security controls. Read more…
One of the biggest challenges with managing usernames, passwords, API keys, and other secrets is balancing the need to make it simple for authorized accounts, databases, and APIs to securely access these secrets while adhering to the principle of least privilege. Simply put, most everyone knows not to store sensitive configuration information in plain text Read more…
We had over 40 people from Mphasis and Mphasis Stelligent at the AWS re:Invent 2019 conference in Las Vegas, NV. There were 77 product launches, feature releases, & services announced at the conference (and many more at “pre:Invent” in November). Of this, there were several DevOps-related features announced at re:Invent or during pre:Invent. The theme Read more…
As the complexity and scale of our AWS use cases grow, so too does the complexity of monitoring and managing our AWS accounts. Whether these concerns revolve around maintaining corporate compliance objectives, hardening accounts against attackers, or simply controlling cost, the enforcement mechanisms can involve some serious logic. With the advent of AWS Cloudwatch Events Read more…
Many enterprises attempt to drive software development and delivery towards a DevOps mindset. Likewise, organizations struggle with increasing security challenges while adopting these innovative software practices. Embedding security within the deployment lifecycle is non-negotiable. Therefore, integration of security into CI/CD workflows need be done cautiously to meet an ever-evolving technology landscape. DevSecOps is an important Read more…
In this episode, we chat with Michael Wittig an AWS Community Hero prior to re:Invent 2019 with some of our hopes and expectations of the conference, and we also dive into a number of topics including Michael’s most recent book. In this episode, Paul Duvall and Michael Wittig will give you an overview of the Read more…
The AWS QuickStart team open sourced a project they use for automated testing of CloudFormation templates called TaskCat. With TaskCat, you can run automated tests to learn of and fix any errors that arise in your CloudFormation templates. If you have been using CloudFormation for any period of time, you will learn that even if Read more…
Traditionally, managing transport layer security (TLS) digital certificates that are used for encrypting data in transit between clients and servers has been a very manual process. In 2016, Amazon Web Services began offering the AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) – a service for managing these digital certificates. By using AWS CloudFormation and AWS CodePipeline, you can Read more…
“AWS Config provides AWS managed rules, which are predefined, customizable rules that AWS Config uses to evaluate whether your AWS resources comply with common best practices.” (Source) There are over 100 Managed Config Rules that AWS provides for all types of checks including Analytics, Compute, Database, Machine Learning, Security, Identity & Compliance, and Storage – Read more…