AWS cloud infrastructure is the most secure and largest cloud provider in the universe. Both Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a service of AWS helps the organization's network to be innovative, responsive, and agile. Even though AWS offers highly secured infrastructure, certain things go wrong. At most times, the AWS cloud security risks generate from the configuration stage itself. Organizations do not use the security features properly and these vulnerabilities can undermine your entire security architecture.

With this article, we are explaining the most serious AWS cloud security risks and how to resolve them. Before going deeply about the best practices to fix the AWS cloud security risks, let's have a look at the factors which affect the security of your AWS cloud.

  • IAM Access Keys

Identity and access management, (IAM) allows users to control and revoke access to the AWS cloud accounts and services. Some organizations do not enable multi factor authentication which in turn helps the attackers access the sensitive data from your server. If you are keeping the IAM access keys without frequent password changes, you are knowingly inviting AWS cloud security risks.

  • S3 Buckets Misconfiguration

Permission is configuration is one of the common causes of AWS cloud security risks. S3 buckets can be created by organizations for various purposes. Malicious activities may arise if the S3 buckets are made public which enables users to edit the configuration.

  • Absence of Audit History

organizations should keep deep insights about user activities to avoid AWS cloud security risks. The security insights help you identify account compromises, warnings about malicious activities and threats, and many more. Hence, insufficient audit history is a downside that leads your organization to face a lot of risks.

  • Too Much Traffic Allowed by Network Access Control List

The optional layer of AWS is the Network Access Control List (NACL) which controls the traffic flow similar to the working of VPC or VPN. If the NACL is configured wrongly, anyone could access your data and hence your server becomes vulnerable to attackers.

  • Server-Side Request Forgery

The server-side request Forgery or SSRF can cause abuse of the AWS functionality thereby gaining access to your sensitive data. Thus is considered as one of the major AWS cloud security risks since attackers can get privileged access to the application by extracting the credentials.

Other than improper S3 configuration, IAM access keys. SSRF attack, lack of audit history reports, and wrong Network Access control List, there are still many more AWS cloud security risks that should be considered as major issues. Some of the best practices to minimize these AWS cloud security risks are explained below.

Best Practices To Resolve the AWS Cloud Security Risks

  • Identity Solution Provider to Resolve IAM Issues

Centralize the authentication using an Identity solution provider. You do not want to create IAM users manually or attach the policies with the help of a single sign. To keep the sensitive data, you can create short-time keys thus these generated keys will expire after a predetermined period. In this way, the data is almost safe from unauthorized access. This is one of the AWS cloud security best practices since it ensures the right users have the authorized permissions to data access.

  • Use AWS CloudFront

You can use AWS CloudFront if you want to keep the content in the bucket. You should use the bucket as the origin of CloudFront and also should keep it private. By doing this, only CloudFront has access to the content contained in the bucket. A URI path with CloudFront domain will be required if someone wants to access the content from the bucket. Signed URLs and Signed Cookies are two other techniques for serving the contents from AWS Cloud. Managed services for AWS Cloud help businesses to take advantage of the features offered by the AWS cloud platform.

  • AWS CloudTrail

AWS provides a web service called AWS CloudTrail which helps you in providing the AWS event history. Since it provides a lot of information about the AWS user activity, CloudTrail can simplify troubleshooting the vulnerabilities that affect the AWS security. You can freely contact managed service provider such as HashRoot to get help for you are facing any issues with your AWS platform

  • Configuring NACL Correctly

The right way of Network Access Control List configuration and regular monitoring can reduce the risk of unauthorized access and data loss. Even though the AWS Cloud platform provides better security features, some factors will bring vulnerabilities to your cloud environment. The security concerns such as network permissions, data access, accounts, and many more could be used improperly. You may get expert AWS consulting services to minimize security concerns if required.

  • Version Update

The Server-Side Request Forgery or SSRF is a common issue that brings AWS cloud security risks. Generally, gaining access to the instance metadata and abusing the AWS functionality can be resolved straightforwardly. To resolve this issue, update version one (IMDSv1) of the instance metadata service to version two (IMDSv2).

Wrapping Up

Though the AWS Cloud platform comes with a lot of security features, there are some factors that bring AWS cloud security risks. With this article, we try to explain the AWS cloud security best practices that help you minimize the AWS cloud security risks. You can resolve the security concerns on your own by proper monitoring and testing. If you are unable to resolve it on your own and are still facing any issues related to the AWS cloud, there are professional AWS consulting companies to help you fix the issue by providing best managed cloud services.