Enterprise security on AWS ~ ideas, recommendations and best practices

1. AWS Security Strategy
Enterprise Security on AWS
Teri Radichel, Cloud Architect | WatchGuard Technologies | @teriradichel

2. The CIO of the
5th largest bank
in the US says
they can be
more secure in
AWS than in
their own
data center.
Possible?

3. About That Internet Thing…
You are already
using shared
infrastructure.
How do you
secure it?

4. Security Policy
Yours.
Do you know what it says?
Does everybody follow it?
AWS.
https://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/a
ws-security-whitepaper.pdf

5. What’s In Your Network?
Do you really know?

6. Automated Configuration
AWS facilitates
automated
infrastructure
and application
deployment via
code stored in
source control

7. Automated Event-Driven Security
AWS makes it
easier to
automatically
react to
events that
trigger a
security
response

8. Points of Discovery and Reaction
• Knowns:
• Prevent from entering environment
• Detect and roll back on entry into environment
• Unknowns:
• Baseline normal behavior
• React to anomalies – alerts, investigation

9. Recommendations…
• Best Practices
• Lessons Learned
• Ideas
• Tools

10. Follow IAM Best Practices

11. Follow Evident IO Best Practices

12. The Right People
Cowboy has no
well thought out
plan or expertise
Mr. No Kills Innovation.
He is not open to new ideas.
Analysis Paralysis
Kills Productivity
Engineers = expertise + well-designed
solutions based on available data

13. Deployment Pipeline
DevOps, security, developer and
QA teams should all use the
same process for AWS
deployments.
Add Security Controls at this
checkpoint.
Facilitates inventory, audit and
compliance.
CICD – Continuous Integration,
Continuous Deployment

14. Automate Everything
From The Start.

15. Security Automation
• Automate Biggest Risks ~ Verizon Data Breach Report
• Automated Deployments – CloudFormation, SDKs
- Consider Immutable Infrastructure where possible
• Automated Compliance – AWS Config, AWS Inspector
• Automated Security Operations – AWS WAF, 3rd Party Tools
• Custom automation – roll your own
• Automated Intrusion Detection – Proof of Concept Framework:
https://github.com/tradichel/AWSSecurityAutomationFramework

17. Other Options for SSH and Access Secret Key
• IAM Roles for Users and AWS Resources
• Cross Account Roles
• Active Directory Integration
• STS – temporary credentials
• Use MFA where possible
• Consider CLI, Console and Instance Logins
• If using keys, train users that keys are passwords and treat as such

18. Encryption on AWS
• KMS - AWS Key Management Service
• CloudHSM - Single Tenant Hardware Security Module
• Bring Your Own Key – import from your own key manager or HSM
• AWS Certificate Manager - SSL/TLS for encryption in transit

19. 5. Plan Network Carefully.
Internet Access AWS Only AWS to Corporate
security group
security group
security group
security group
security group
security group
Routes: Enforce Traffic Flow. Subnets: Larger. Security Groups: Whitelist.

20. Avoid This
So many holes in
your network and
running so many
agents that you no
longer know what is
traversing your
network anymore
and network security
is pointless.

21. Avoid This
Subnets with almost nothing in
them has the potential to
exhaust your IP space.
It also becomes unwieldy to
manage numerous subnets and
security groups.
Use security groups for
application specific rules.

22. Architect for the Cloud
Avoid Lift and Shift
Costs will be higher
Doesn’t leverage AWS
Possible Security Issues
Fix it later…right.
If you do...keep it in a
separate account.

23. Scalable Dev Ops

24. Use Process Controls
Technology can’t make your toast. Yet. Use process controls when needed.

25. Have a Sandbox Account
Tightly secure other accounts.
Match production or purpose built.

27. AWS Monitoring Tools
• VPC Flow Logs ~ like Netflow for VPC, not real time
• CloudTrail ~ Monitor actions taken on AWS
• CloudWatch ~ Any kind of logs, cannot be altered if properly secured
• 3rd Party Tools

28. Teri Radichel, Cloud Architect
WatchGuard Technologies ~ We are hiring!
@teriradichel
Security Certifications and Papers:
Http://www.giac.org/certified-professional/teri-radichel/140127
Thank you!