AWS Cloud Security Best Practices

As the number of cloud users keeps growing, IT infrastructure security is one of their top three concerns, while cloud cost optimization and lack of expertise/resources are the other two problems, according to Flexera Cloud Status Report 2023.

We want to share AWS cloud security best practices used at Apiko, based on over 8 years of experience and dozens of successful projects.

Cloud services: reasons for growing popularity

Based on SaaSworthy94% of companies report online security improvements Later move to the cloud. This is largely due to automation of monitoring, testing, and alerting, as well as special mechanisms that, when properly configured, ensure data security and help IT infrastructure resist attacks. network attack.

Besides, using cloud services offers more flexibility than on-premise computing when it comes to

• data processing and AI implementation
• software scalability and maintainability
• added new functionality and third-party integrations, etc.

Cloud-based infrastructure is also required for software transformation to SaaS modelbecause it provides high availability due to the workload distribution, and is easy to scale within a few minutes. SaaS data security and Reduce IT costs are other important reasons to choose the cloud.

You can find practical examples with more details in migrate to the AWS cloud case study.

Managed Cloud Security Service

Since lack of expertise and resources is one of the top three concerns for cloud users, managed security services are a real game saver.

Ensuring a safe environment is one of Apiko’s competencies DevOps Services. their original IT infrastructure audit provides an overall check, including a summary of the overall security state.

Do not depend on types of cloud architectureFor a thorough in-depth test, we run a IT security audit. It is based on AWS security best practices, key of which we will describe below.

AWS Cloud Security Best Practices

There are many factors that must be taken into account to ensure the security of an IT infrastructure both at the granular and holistic levels. That’s why our AWS security best practices checklist is quite extensive.

Let’s take a closer look at exactly what’s behind these practices.

Identity and access management

IAM is the foundation for securing your AWS resources. It allows you to securely manage access to AWS services and resources. Our main recommendations for IAM are:

• Perform multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all IAM users and roles
• Grant least privileged access to resources sufficient to complete user tasks and tasks using IAM policy
• Authorize AWS services and applications using IAM roles
• Manage multiple AWS accounts and apply security policies on them using AWS Organizations.

Cloud data security

Data protection is essential to ensuring the security and integrity of data in AWS. Aside from precautions, make sure that your data is backed up and that you have a recovery plan in place after a disaster or data loss event. To protect cloud data, we recommend:

• Limit access to sensitive data using access control
• Encrypt data at rest and in transit

• Generate and control encryption keys with AWS Key Management Service (KMS)
• Manage Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Secure Transport Layer (TLS) certificates and enable HTTPS for your web applications using AWS Certificate Manager

• Record API calls to AWS services using AWS CloudTrail
• Categorize and label data to identify and protect sensitive data
• Set up backup and restore data

• Back up your data regularly
• Check your backup and recovery routines regularly
• Store your backups in a different region or account
• Use AWS disaster recovery services, such as AWS CloudEndure, to clone your system to another region or account

• Manage the lifecycle of your data with data retention policies.

In addition to the above practices, special attention should be paid to Amazon S3 buckets (a highly scalable object storage service) and cloud database security.

Amazon S3 bucket security tips

• Grant least privileged access to S3 buckets and objects using S3 bucket policies and IAM policies
• Protect your objects from accidental deletion or overwriting with S3 bucket instances
• Protect data in storage with S3 server-side encryption (SSE)
• Encryption key management for SSE using KMS
• Improve data transfer speeds and reduce latency using S3 Transfer Acceleration

Cloud database security

There are many Amazon database services and some of the most frequently used ones at Apiko include

• Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
• AmazonDB Document
• Amazon DynamoDB.

In addition, Amazon ElastiCache is a data caching service that provides high performance scalable caching for web applications. Ours cloud data security best practices as follows:

• Use a private IP address for your DB instance
• Encrypt data in transit using SSL
• Control access to your instances or tables/clusters with IAM
• Use automatic data backup
• Encrypt your data at rest
• Control inbound and outbound traffic to your DB instance or ElastiCache cluster with Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) security groups
• Securely connect to DynamoDB using VPC endpoints
• Use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor your DynamoDB tables for suspicious activity
• Enable multi-region replication and troubleshoot DynamoDB global tables
• Use SSL encryption for Amazon ElastiCache client connections.

Cybersecurity best practices

Network security is critical to protecting your AWS resources from outside attacks. Below we will briefly describe some of the most useful cloud security technologies.

AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) allows you to create an isolated virtual network in the cloud. Here are some key considerations for securing your VPC:

• Control access to resources and limit public internet exposure with VPC
• Isolate resources and reduce attack surface with private subnets
• Filter traffic at the subnet level with Network Access Control Lists (NACLs)
• Filter traffic at the instance level using security groups
• Protect your resources from DDoS attacks with Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, and AWS Shield
• Encrypt data in transit using SSL/TLS
• Manage SSL/TLS Certificates with AWS Certificate Manager
• Use HTTPS for web traffic and secure protocols for other types of traffic
• Access AWS services securely without exposing your traffic to the public internet with AWS PrivateLink
• Connect securely to your VPC using a VPN or AWS Direct Connect.

AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) protect your web applications from common web threats, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. It also protects the API from exploits, such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and bad bots, and blocks traffic from known malicious IP addresses and botnets.

AWS Shield is a managed service that helps protect your applications from DDoS attacks. AWS Shield Advanced provides additional DDoS protection and provides AWS DDoS Response Team support during a DDoS attack.

Logging and monitoring

Detecting and responding to security incidents in AWS is essential. That’s where logging and monitoring come in handy, lets

• Logging API calls to AWS services using AWS CloudTrail
• Monitor AWS resources and applications with Amazon CloudWatch
• Monitor and manage compliance of AWS resources with AWS Config
• Aggregate and analyze security alerts with AWS Security Hub
• Detect and prevent security threats with Amazon GuardDuty.

Cloud application security

When you host your application in the cloud, it is essential to protect its users and data. Below are the basic security measures that we use at Apiko and recommend that you follow them.

1. Use strong authentication and authorization mechanisms

   1. Secure user accounts with strong passwords and multi-factor authentication.
   2. Implement OAuth or OpenID Connect for third-party authentication.

2. Enable HTTPS and HSTS

   1. Encrypt all communication between client and server using HTTPS.
   2. Prevent downgrade attacks with HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS).

3. Protection against cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection attacks

   1. Sanitize user input to prevent XSS attacks.
   2. Use parameterized queries to prevent SQL injection attacks.

4. Implement rate limit

   1. Implement rate limits to prevent brute force and denial of service (DoS) attacks.
   2. Set a rate limit for your RESTful APIs using Amazon API Gateway so that the number of requests per second can’t exceed a certain limit, and when that limit is exceeded, an error occurs.

5. Secure your sessions

   1. Prevent session hijacking with secure cookies.
   2. Use HTTPS for session management.
   3. Secure session storage using AWS ElastiCache.

6. Implement CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Differentiate Between Computers and Humans) for User Submissions

   1. Implement CAPTCHAs to prevent attacks and automate account creation.

   2. Set up a CAPTCHA for a serverless architecture using AWS Lambda.

Conclusion

You should implement security measures starting with the initial steps of application development. You can also always use the AWS security best practices checklist provided in this article to double-check that your cloud network, resources, and applications are protected.

Don’t hesitate contact Apiko if you feel like you can use a hand. We’ll make sure you’re up to date with the latest security practices, and we’ll provide regular checks on your security policies and techniques to keep your apps safe.