Business | February 21, 2024 7 min to read

Top 8 AWS Security Best Practices

Securing your cloud infrastructure is essential to protect your data and ensure the integrity and availability of your AWS resources. In this guide, we explore AWS security best practices to help fortify your cloud environment. By implementing these practices, you can enhance the security posture of your AWS infrastructure and minimize the risk of security breaches.

To further assist in securing your AWS environment, we recommend downloading the Veeam white paper on secure data protection in AWS. This in-depth resource provides valuable insights and practical tips related to the safety and recoverability of your data in the AWS cloud.

Understanding AWS Cloud Security and Its Importance

AWS cloud security refers to the measures and practices employed to protect data, applications, and infrastructure in the AWS cloud. It encompasses security controls, mechanisms, and services offered by AWS to secure your resources from unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security threats.

Amazon offers guidance on tools and best practices for security, identity, and compliance, along with detailed documentation that helps customers develop a resilient cloud security model for their applications, because it’s up to the organizations to implement these AWS best practices. Securing data and applications in the cloud is a shared responsibility between AWS and its customers.

According to the shared responsibility model, the cloud provider is responsible for securing the underlying cloud infrastructure, including the physical data centers, networking, and hardware, by implementing security measures, such as physical security, network firewalls, and basic encryption of data in transit or at rest depending on their services and offerings.

As a customer, you’re responsible for configuring the security settings of your applications, managing access to your data and implementing additional encryption measures. This includes proper authentication mechanisms, user access privileges, and sensitive data encryption. You must also regularly back up your data to protect against loss, corruption or other threats.

Following best practices for AWS cloud security helps you address all areas within your IT team’s responsibilities when hardening applications and securing your data.

Best Practices for AWS Security

Consider the following when planning your security approach:

1. Design Your Cloud With the AWS Well-Architected Framework

Follow industry best practices and frameworks to secure your cloud architecture. Some industry-standard frameworks and benchmarks that help you design a secure AWS infrastructure include:

AWS Well-Architected Framework: The AWS Well-Architected Framework is a free tool that provides architectural best practices across various domains, including security. It offers guidance on how to design, deploy, and operate reliable and secure applications on AWS.
NIST: The NIST Cybersecurity Framework provides a set of best practices for managing cybersecurity risks. Leveraging this framework can help establish a strong security posture in your AWS environment.
CIS Benchmarks: These best practices from the Center for Internet Security align with NIST and other regulatory frameworks aimed at safeguarding against cyber risks.

2. Utilize Identity and Access Management (IAM) to Control Access

One of the fundamental aspects of AWS security is controlling access to your resources. AWS Identity and Access Management and AWS IAM Identity Center enables you to manage user identities and their permissions to access the AWS resources related to their roles. You can use IAM to grant access to specific resources while restricting access to others. Role-based access controls are often easier to manage than per-account controls, helping prevent departed employees from retaining privileges for resources they no longer need.

By leveraging the power of CloudFormation and Lambda, you can automate creating and managing IAM roles across your organization’s AWS accounts. This approach ensures consistency, reduces manual effort, and improves security by following best practices for role management. Use multifactor authentication to reduce the risk of compromised accounts.

3. Detect Suspicious Activity With Monitoring and Logging

Continuously monitor your cloud networks for abnormal and malicious behavior. This information can provide early warning of system problems and allow you to detect and remediate cyberattacks.

Manually monitoring log files can be overwhelming and prone to errors due to high data volumes. Setting alerts for critical issues, like major errors or unusual account access, helps manage immediate risks, while automated tools provide broader security visibility. Effective logging and monitoring also support AWS cost management by identifying unexpected high loads, which can impact costs under specific AWS billing and pricing models.

4. Use Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Solutions

Integrating AWS with Security Information and Event Management solutions is an example of the automated tools mentioned above. SIEM solutions allow for centralized log aggregation and analysis, enabling you to correlate events and identify patterns indicative of malicious activity. They can detect compromised accounts, brute force attacks, security breaches, and malware. It’s also possible to integrate third-party SIEM tools, such as Splunk Cloud and CrowdStrike, into your Amazon infrastructure. SIEM solutions provide a centralized platform that logs and analyzes incidents.

5. Protect Infrastructure With Network Security

Network security is a vital component of cloud infrastructure. A key aspect of network security is continually scanning your network for software and hardware vulnerabilities that could provide opportunities for hackers. This practice — known as vulnerability management — identifies, assesses, and mitigates vulnerabilities within your network, systems, and applications. This management helps organizations reduce the risk of data breaches, DDoS attacks, ransomware, and other cybersecurity risks. Alternative steps for improving network security include configuring virtual private clouds, network access control lists, and web application firewalls.

Your network should be locked down whenever possible, with applications accessible only from within your private network. If a service must be internet-facing, only the relevant ports on that server should be exposed to the outside world, and proper access controls should be configured to restrict access to authorized users.

6. Implement Data Protection and Privacy Measures

Employ appropriate measures to protect data at rest and in transit. Best practices for data protection in AWS often focus on data classification, data encryption, and secure data backups. Consider creating a backup DMZ network for the backup account with specific IAM rules. This provides secure access to the backup service.

Data classification helps organizations prioritize their security efforts and allocate resources based on the importance and sensitivity of the data being processed. Data lifecycle management is an essential aspect of data classification, as it verifies data is properly handled from creation to deletion. This includes defining retention periods, access controls, and disposal procedures for different data types. Depending on the niche in which the industry the organization operates and the type of data being processed, regulatory requirements may exist relating to retention periods or data storage.

Encryption and Data Protection

Encrypting sensitive data safeguards it from unauthorized access. If an attacker gains access to a properly encrypted server, they won’t be able to use it. AWS provides various options for data encryption, both at rest and in transit. Data at rest refers to data stored in databases, file systems, or data warehouses. Data in transit refers to data transmitted between systems or over the public internet. AWS offers encryption capabilities that can be applied at different levels, such as the storage, database, or application layers. Additionally, AWS Key Management Service enables organizations to manage encryption keys securely so only authorized individuals can access the encrypted data.

7. Comply With Compliance Standards

Apart from keeping your data secure, you must be aware of and comply with data protection and regulatory requirements. These vary from one jurisdiction to another, and many, such as the EU’s GDPR, regulate where and how organizations store personal data. These requirements should form part of your cloud security governance policies and procedures.

Meeting data compliance requirements is essential, especially as offenders can face stiff penalties for the unauthorized release of personal data. AWS has some excellent resources that provide information on data compliance programs natively supported by the AWS platform. Organizations that deal with health-related data or government contracts may consider specialist secure cloud services tailored to those needs.

8. Create an Incident Response and Recovery Plan

In the face of increasing cyberattacks, organizations must have a clear incident response plan, especially regarding ransomware recovery. An incident response plan outlines the necessary steps when security incidents occur, enabling businesses to respond and minimize the impact of attacks. By following a structured incident response plan, organizations can mitigate risks, protect their data, and recover from security incidents.

Developing an Incident Response Plan

Creating an incident response plan can help your organization respond to cyberattacks and quickly recover. The plan should outline steps and procedures to follow when security incidents occur. Follow this process when building your incident response plan:

Create an incident response t Form a dedicated incident response team comprising members from IT, security, legal, and communications departments. Each team member should have defined roles and responsibilities to ensure a coordinated response to security incidents.
Prepare for security i Implement proactive security measures to mitigate the risk of attacks. These security measures include regular data backups, network segmentation to limit the spread of malware, and strong endpoint protection solutions.
Definesteps to follow during an i Outline the procedures to follow when a security incident occurs. This includes detection and analysis of the incident, containment and eradication of the threat, recovery and restoration of compromised systems, and a thorough post-incident analysis to identify vulnerabilities and update the incident response plan accordingly.

The incident response plan is a living document, and you should review it regularly. Set a schedule for reviewing your plans. You should also examine your incident response plan whenever you make any changes to your infrastructure or workflows.

Backup and Recovery as Part of an Incident Response Plan

Regular data backups are essential for data protection and recovery in the event of data loss or system failures. Establish a backup schedule that aligns with the organization’s recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives. Periodically test the restoration procedures. You can use AWS backup and recovery for AWS services, but Veeam Backup for AWS offers cloud-native protection with data validation, testing, and full disaster recovery.

Regularly Test and Update Your Security Measures

Security threats are constantly evolving, so it’s essential to regularly test and update your security measures. Important steps to consider include:

Penetration testing and red teaming: Conduct regular penetration testing and red teaming exercises to evaluate the effectiveness of your security measures. These simulated attacks help identify any weaknesses in your systems and processes, allowing you to address them proactively.
Staying current with AWS security updates: Stay informed about the latest security updates and patches provided by AWS. Regularly update your security tools and systems to protect against emerging threats and ensure the security of your AWS infrastructure.
Post-incident analysis and improvement: After a security incident, perform a thorough analysis to understand how the attack occurred and what steps you can take to prevent similar incidents. Use the lessons learned to improve your incident response plan and implement additional security measures to enhance your security posture.

Conclusion

Always design your systems with security in mind and in line with the six pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. Pay particular attention to IAM principles, especially least privilege access and multifactor authentication. Monitor your network and software for abnormal behavior and vulnerabilities using SIEM tools. Actively protect your networks by using virtual private clouds, access control lists, and web firewalls. Encrypt your data and back it up regularly using immutable backups. Once you have a well-rehearsed and comprehensive incident response plan in place, review it regularly to ensure it’s still current.