11 Useful Security Tips for Securing Your AWS Environment

Want to take advantage of excellent cloud services? Amazon Web Services may be the perfect solution, but don’t forget about AWS security.

Whether you want to use AWS for a few things or everything, you need to protect access to it. Then you can make sure your business can run smoothly.

Read on to learn some important AWS security tips.

Use Multi-Factor authentication

When setting up your AWS security settings or adding new users, you should implement multi-factor authentication (MFA). MFA relies on more than one login factor to grant you access to your account.

For example, when you log in to your account, the program might send a code to your mobile phone. Then you must verify that you have that phone and enter the code to access your account.

MFA is an excellent way to protect your data if someone figures out your username and password. This way, you can still have a layer of protection against the hacker.

Create strong passwords

Even with MFA, you should use strong, unique passwords for yourself and all other Amazon Web Services users in your organization. Make sure the password is long and contains a variety of different characters.

You can also make everyone change their password every few months to keep hackers from getting in. If a hacker discovers a password, you can be sure they won’t have access to AWS for long.

Your password should also be something you don’t use elsewhere. While it can be tempting to reuse passwords, this gives hackers a higher chance of getting into your AWS account.

Test for vulnerabilities

Next, you should test for vulnerabilities in your cloud security settings. It would be best if you analyzed your security infrastructure to identify vulnerabilities that already exist. Then, you can prioritize the vulnerabilities.

You can also run a network scan to find vulnerabilities so you can fix them. First, you need to request a vulnerability test so that you can maintain a connection while you run the test.

If you don’t request the test, you may still be able to run it. However, your connection may not be maintained throughout the event.

Use securiCAD Vanguard for simulated attacks

You can work with a third-party vendor like Foreseeti and use its securiCAD Vanguard tool to simulate thousands of AI-attacks automatically, without interacting with the actual environment, since it does all of its simulations on a digital twin.

securiCAD’s attack simulations and automated threat modeling enable you to automatically build, visualize and simulate attacks on a virtual model of your AWS environment.

After securiCAD has completed its attacks, it starts to quantify and prioritize the risks. securiCAD analyzes what vulnerabilities are the most critical to address and presents actionable insights on what actions to take.

From the results, you can learn how to prioritize your resources. E.g. Where should MFA be implemented? What systems need to be patched first? What permissions should be reduced? Where to enforce encryption? Etc.

Minimize permissions

Another great way to improve AWS security is to minimize access and permissions. Consider whether someone in your organization even needs to access AWS or a specific part of AWS.

Then you can grant access to the people who need it, but you can define the things they can do. You can still allow people to do their tasks, but you can minimize hackers’ chance of getting in.

If only ten people have access to Amazon Web Services instead of 100, it can be much harder for someone to guess a username and password.

Encrypt data

Encrypting data can help you protect it from hackers, even if they do get into your account. When you use encryption, you can create keys that you need to read the data in question.

Without the keys, you won’t be able to recognize the data, whether it’s financial or otherwise. Encryption is essential for cloud security because it can help you protect essential data.

Before you encrypt all the data, you can classify it to determine if you need to use encryption. Then you can still access some data without the key, but you can protect the more critical information.

Adopt a Virtual Private cloud

You can also secure your AWS environment with a virtual private cloud (VPC) or even a virtual private network (VPN). A VPC or VPN can help isolate your network so you can keep your AWS access separate from the rest of the organization.

If other parts of your business are affected by a data breach or attack, you can keep AWS safe and vice versa. Using a VPC doesn’t route through the Internet, so it can be easier to protect yourself from hackers.

Update regularly

Another essential tip for AWS security is to update the security patches regularly. You can check the patches to make sure they are protecting your account from any vulnerabilities.

When you update, you can also make sure that you update your settings to what AWS recommends for security. That way, you can ensure that your account is as secure as possible.

Backup your data

Before and after major updates, you should also back up your data to AWS. You can then download the backup so you can restore your account in case of a data breach, natural disaster, or other database corruption.

Ensure you back up your data and store the copy in the cloud or on a hard drive that you can access. If something happens to your AWS account, you can quickly upload the backup to get back to work.

Verify your contact information

It would help if you also made sure that AWS has a proper email address to contact you in case of any issues. Make sure you check this email address regularly so you can quickly learn of any problems.

As always, you should use a strong password for the email address. You can also set up an alternate contact in case you are not at work so that someone else can access the notifications.

Review AWS Security tips

Whether you have a small team or work for a large company, you should know some AWS security tips. This way, you can use AWS without putting data at risk.

Need help with prioritizing what you should do to improve your cloud security? Start a free trial of securiCAD Vanguard to make sure your AWS environment is secure.