Monitoring
General
For general monitoring process we use different types of tools and services that help us to be aware of issues in our stack.
We monitor AWS infrastructure with CloudWatch.
- For management purposes on AWS accounts, we register events related to them using CloudTrail.
With VPC Flow Logs we can capture ingoing and outgoing IP traffic information from network interfaces in our VPC.
Threat Detection
For threat detection purposes we adopted Amazon GuardDuty. It continuously monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior to protect AWS accounts, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) workloads, container applications, and data stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
GuardDuty uses machine learning, anomaly detection, network monitoring, and malicious file discovery for threat and intrusion detection tasks.
It is capable of analyzing tens of billions of events across multiple AWS data sources, such as AWS CloudTrail event logs, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Flow Logs, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) audit and system-level logs, and DNS query logs.
S3 Protection
S3 protection is a feature offered by Amazon GuardDuty that enhances the monitoring capabilities for data stored in Amazon S3 buckets. By default, GuardDuty monitors bucket-level API operations related to S3 resources. However, with S3 protection enabled, GuardDuty expands its monitoring to include object-level API operations within S3 buckets. This means it can detect suspicious or potentially malicious activities at a more granular level.
EKS Protection
EKS Protection in Amazon GuardDuty offers threat detection coverage for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) clusters in your AWS environment. It includes two key components: EKS Audit Log Monitoring and EKS Runtime Monitoring.
EKS Audit Log Monitoring focuses on detecting suspicious activities within EKS clusters by analyzing Kubernetes audit logs. These logs capture a sequential record of actions performed by users, applications using the Kubernetes API, and the control plane.
On the other hand, EKS Runtime Monitoring provides real-time threat detection for Amazon EKS nodes and containers in your AWS environment. By leveraging the Amazon EKS add-on GuardDuty security agent, it monitors and analyzes runtime events within your EKS clusters, helping to identify potential security threats.
By configuring your accounts with both EKS Audit Log Monitoring and EKS Runtime Monitoring, you can achieve comprehensive EKS Protection. This setup enables monitoring at the cluster control plane level and extends down to the individual pod or container operating system level, providing optimal security coverage for your EKS environment.
Malware Protection
Malware Protection in Amazon GuardDuty is a feature designed to identify potential malware presence in Amazon EC2 instances and container workloads within your AWS account. It performs scans on the Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes attached to these instances or workloads.
There are two types of scans offered by Malware Protection:
- GuardDuty-initiated malware scan: This scan is initiated by GuardDuty on a periodic basis. It automatically scans the EBS volumes associated with your EC2 instances and container workloads to detect any signs of malware.
- On-demand malware scan: With this option, you can manually trigger a malware scan for specific EBS volumes. It allows you to initiate a scan whenever needed, providing flexibility in scanning resources on-demand.
By leveraging these scanning capabilities, Malware Protection helps you proactively detect the potential presence of malware in your EC2 instances and container workloads. For more detailed information about the differences between these scan types, you can refer to the GuardDuty Malware Protection documentation.
AWS GuardDuty Summary
While GuardDuty generates detailed findings and insights based on the last 10,000 events, it does not directly generate predefined reports summarizing these findings. However, by analyzing the generated findings, you can gain valuable insights into common attack vectors, suspicious user behavior, unauthorized access attempts, data exfiltration attempts, malicious IP addresses, vulnerable EC2 instances, anomalous network traffic, cryptocurrency mining activity, suspicious DNS activity, and policy violations. Regularly reviewing and addressing these findings enables you to proactively strengthen your security measures and protect your AWS resources against potential threats and attacks.