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…
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…
Whether it’s in or out of the cloud, most IT compliance usually comes in the form of a multitude of checklists – like the one you see below. It might be a spreadsheet, website, or other “digital” tool but, in the end, it’s still checklists that software teams must comply with by filling out forms Read more…
While enterprises are capable of rapidly scaling their infrastructure in the cloud, there’s a corresponding increase in the demand for scalable mechanisms to meet security and compliance requirements based on corporate policies, auditors, security teams, and others. For example, we can easily and rapidly launch hundreds of resources – such as EC2 instances – in Read more…
It’s 7:37 AM on a Sunday. You’re in the Security Operations Center (SOC) and alarms and emails are seemingly being triggered everywhere. You and a colleague are combing through dashboards and logs to determine what is causing these alerts. After running around with your “hair on fire” for around 30 minutes, you finally determine that Read more…