Tag Archives: Active Directory

Simplify Login with Application Load Balancer Built-in Authentication

2018-05-30 Randall Hunt

Post Syndicated from Randall Hunt original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/built-in-authentication-in-alb/

Today I’m excited to announce built-in authentication support in Application Load Balancers (ALB). ALB can now securely authenticate users as they access applications, letting developers eliminate the code they have to write to support authentication and offload the responsibility of authentication from the backend. The team built a great live example where you can try out the authentication functionality.

Identity-based security is a crucial component of modern applications and as customers continue to move mission critical applications into the cloud, developers are asked to write the same authentication code again and again. Enterprises want to use their on-premises identities with their cloud applications. Web developers want to use federated identities from social networks to allow their users to sign-in. ALB’s new authentication action provides authentication through social Identity Providers (IdP) like Google, Facebook, and Amazon through Amazon Cognito. It also natively integrates with any OpenID Connect protocol compliant IdP, providing secure authentication and a single sign-on experience across your applications.

How Does ALB Authentication Work?

Authentication is a complicated topic and our readers may have differing levels of expertise with it. I want to cover a few key concepts to make sure we’re all on the same page. If you’re already an authentication expert and you just want to see how ALB authentication works feel free to skip to the next section!

Authentication verifies identity.
Authorization verifies permissions, the things an identity is allowed to do.
OpenID Connect (OIDC) is a simple identity, or authentication, layer built on top on top of the OAuth 2.0 protocol. The OIDC specification document is pretty well written and worth a casual read.
Identity Providers (IdPs) manage identity information and provide authentication services. ALB supports any OIDC compliant IdP and you can use a service like Amazon Cognito or Auth0 to aggregate different identities from various IdPs like Active Directory, LDAP, Google, Facebook, Amazon, or others deployed in AWS or on premises.

When we get away from the terminology for a bit, all of this boils down to figuring out who a user is and what they’re allowed to do. Doing this securely and efficiently is hard. Traditionally, enterprises have used a protocol called SAML with their IdPs, to provide a single sign-on (SSO) experience for their internal users. SAML is XML heavy and modern applications have started using OIDC with JSON mechanism to share claims. Developers can use SAML in ALB with Amazon Cognito’s SAML support. Web app or mobile developers typically use federated identities via social IdPs like Facebook, Amazon, or Google which, conveniently, are also supported by Amazon Cognito.

ALB Authentication works by defining an authentication action in a listener rule. The ALB’s authentication action will check if a session cookie exists on incoming requests, then check that it’s valid. If the session cookie is set and valid then the ALB will route the request to the target group with X-AMZN-OIDC-* headers set. The headers contain identity information in JSON Web Token (JWT) format, that a backend can use to identify a user. If the session cookie is not set or invalid then ALB will follow the OIDC protocol and issue an HTTP 302 redirect to the identity provider. The protocol is a lot to unpack and is covered more thoroughly in the documentation for those curious.

ALB Authentication Walkthrough

I have a simple Python flask app in an Amazon ECS cluster running in some AWS Fargate containers. The containers are in a target group routed to by an ALB. I want to make sure users of my application are logged in before accessing the authenticated portions of my application. First, I’ll navigate to the ALB in the console and edit the rules.

I want to make sure all access to /account* endpoints is authenticated so I’ll add new rule with a condition to match those endpoints.

Now, I’ll add a new rule and create an Authenticate action in that rule.

I’ll have ALB create a new Amazon Cognito user pool for me by providing some configuration details.

After creating the Amazon Cognito pool, I can make some additional configuration in the advanced settings.

I can change the default cookie name, adjust the timeout, adjust the scope, and choose the action for unauthenticated requests.

I can pick Deny to serve a 401 for all unauthenticated requests or I can pick Allow which will pass through to the application if unauthenticated. This is useful for Single Page Apps (SPAs). For now, I’ll choose Authenticate, which will prompt the IdP, in this case Amazon Cognito, to authenticate the user and reload the existing page.

Now I’ll add a forwarding action for my target group and save the rule.

Over on the Facebook side I just need to add my Amazon Cognito User Pool Domain to the whitelisted OAuth redirect URLs.

I would follow similar steps for other authentication providers.

Now, when I navigate to an authenticated page my Fargate containers receive the originating request with the X-Amzn-Oidc-* headers set by ALB. Using the information in those headers (claims-data, identity, access-token) my application can implement authorization.

All of this was possible without having to write a single line of code to deal with each of the IdPs. However, it’s still important for the implementing applications to verify the signature on the JWT header to ensure the request hasn’t been tampered with.

Additional Resources

Of course everything we’ve seen today is also available in the the API and AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). You can find additional information on the feature in the documentation. This feature is provided at no additional charge.

Be sure to check out the live example as well.

With authentication built-in to ALB, developers can focus on building their applications instead of rebuilding authentication for every application, all the while maintaining the scale, availability, and reliability of ALB. I think this feature is a pretty big deal and I can’t wait to see what customers build with it. Let us know what you think of this feature in the comments or on twitter!

– Randall

How to use Amazon AppStream 2.0 to reduce your bastion host attack surface

2018-05-02 Chaim Landau

Post Syndicated from Chaim Landau original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-use-amazon-appstream-2-0-to-reduce-your-bastion-host-attack-surface/

To help protect their assets, many security-conscious enterprises require their system administrators to go through a “bastion” (or “jump”) host to gain administrative access to backend systems in protected or sensitive network segments.

A bastion host is a special-purpose instance that hosts a minimal number of administrative applications, such as RDP for Windows or Putty for Linux-based distributions. All other unnecessary services are removed. The host is typically placed in a segregated network (or “DMZ”), and is often protected with multi-factor authentication (MFA) and monitored with auditing tools. And most enterprises require that the access trail to the bastion host be auditable.

In this post, I demonstrate the use of Amazon AppStream 2.0 as a hardened and auto-scaled bastion host solution, and show how it could reduce the attack surface by stripping away the underlying OS and exposing only the necessary tools to system administrators that need access to protected network segments.

Prerequisites

A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) with a dedicated subnet for AppStream 2.0.
An existing Active Directory (AD) domain. This may be on premises, on AWS EC2 for Windows, or AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory used as a user directory.
Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).
A Linux or Windows instance for which AppStream 2.0 will be acting as a bastion host.

Solution overview

Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed application streaming service that provides users instant access to their desktop applications from anywhere by using an HTML5-compatible desktop browser. When a user requests access to an application, AppStream 2.0 uses a base image to deploy a streaming instance and destroys the instance after the user closes their session. This ensures the same consistent experience during each logon.

You can use AppStream 2.0 as a bastion solution to enable your system administrators to manage their environment without giving them a full bastion host. Because AppStream 2.0 freshly builds instances each time a user requests access, a compromised instance will only last for the duration of a user session. As soon as the user closes their session and the Disconnect Timeout period is reached, AppStream 2.0 terminates the instance and, with it, you’ve reduced your risks of compromised instances.

You will also potentially reduce your costs because AppStream 2.0 has built-in auto-scaling to increase and decrease capacity based on user demand. It allows you to take advantage of the pay-as-you-go model, where you only pay for what you use.

High-level AppStream 2.0 architecture

The diagram below depicts a high-level AppStream 2.0 architecture used as a bastion host for servers in another VPC.

There are three VPCs shown: AppStream 2.0 VPC, Bastion host VPC, and application VPC. The AppStream 2.0 VPC is an AWS-owned VPC where the AppStream 2.0 maintains its infrastructure. Customers are not responsible for this VPC and have no access to it. AppStream 2.0 builds each streaming instance with two Elastic Network Interfaces (ENI); one in the AppStream 2.0 VPC and one in the VPC where you choose to deploy your AppStream 2.0 instances. The third VPC is the application VPC where you would typically keep your backend servers.

The diagram also depicts the end-user process to access the AppStream 2.0 environment, which works as follow:

Using an HTML5 desktop browser the user logs on to a Single Sign-On URL. This authenticates the user against the corporate directory using SAML 2.0 federation and with optional MFA.
After successful authentication, the user will see a list of provisioned applications.
The user can launch applications, such as RDP and Putty, which are only visible within the browser and with its underlying OS hidden. The user is then able to connect to the backend systems over the ports that were opened through security groups. The user logs off and AppStream 2.0 destroys the instance used for the session.

Figure 1: Architecture diagram

Step-by-step instructions

This walk-through assumes you have created the following resources as prerequisites.

A single VPC with a /23 CIDR range and two private subnets in two AZs.

Note: “private” subnet refers to a subnet that has no internet gateway (IGW) attached.
- Bastion Subnets — used for the AppStream 2.0 instances that will be hosting the bastion applications.
- Apps Subnets — used for the servers for which the AppStream 2.0 instances will be acting as a bastion host.
  
  Figure 2: Screen shot of bastion and apps subnets
A peering connection to a VPC where the corporate Active Directory resides and with updated routing tables. This is only necessary if your AD resides in a different VPC.
Two EC2 instances with private IP addresses in the app subnet.

Phase 1: Create the DHCP Options Set

For the AppStream 2.0 instances to be able to join the corporate domain, they need to have their DNS entries point to the corporate domain controller(s). To accomplish this, you need to create a DHCP Options Set and assign it to the VPC:

Sign in to the AWS console, and then select VPC Dashboard > DHCP Option Sets > Create DHCP options set.
Give the DHCP Options Set a name, enter the domain name and DNS server(s) of your corporate domain controller(s), and then select Yes, Create.
Select your VPC Dashboard > your VPC > Actions > Edit DHCP Options Set.
Select the DHCP Options Set created in the previous step, and then select Save.

Figure 3: The “Edit DHCP Options Set” dialog

Phase 2: Create the AppStream 2.0 Stack

An AppStream 2.0 stack consists of a fleet, user access policies, and storage configuration. To create a stack, follow these steps:

Sign in to the AWS console and select AppStream 2.0 > Stack > Create Stack.
Give the stack a name, and then select Next.
Enable Home Folders, if you want persistent storage, and then select Review.

Figure 4: The “Enable Home Folders” dialog
Select Create.

Phase 3: Create the AppsStream 2.0 Directory Configuration

First create a directory configuration so you can join the AppStream 2.0 instances to an Organizational Unit (OU) in your corporate directory.

Note: AppStream 2.0 instances must be placed in an OU and can’t reside in the Computer Container.

To create a directory configuration, follow these steps:

Sign in to the AWS console and select AppStream 2.0 > Directory Configs > Create Directory Config.
Enter the following Directory Config information:
- Directory name: The FQDN of your corporate domain.
- Service Account Name: The account AppStream 2.0 uses to join the instances to the corporate domain. The required service account privileges are documented here.
- Organizational Unit (OU): The OUs where AppStream 2.0 will create your instances. You can add additional OUs by clicking the plus (+) sign.
Select Next, and then select Create.

Create Security Groups

Now, create AWS security groups for your AppStream 2.0 instances and backend servers.

BastionHostSecurityGroup

For your AppStream 2.0 instances, you must attach a “BastionHostSecurityGroup” in order to communicate to the backend servers. This security group is only used as a “source” by the security groups the backend servers are attached to and, therefore, they don’t require any inbound ports to be opened.

To create a security group, follow these steps:

Sign in to the AWS console and select VPC > Security Groups > Create Security Group.
Give your “BastionHostSecurityGroup” Security Group a name, select the VPC where you will place the AppStream 2.0 instances, and then select Yes, Create.

BastionHostAccessSecurityGroup

For your backend servers, you must attach a “BastionHostAccessSecurityGroup” that allows incoming traffic from the AppStream 2.0 instance. Unlike the “BastionHostSecurityGroup”, this one requires open inbound ports.

Sign in to the AWS console and select VPC > Security Groups > Create Security Group.
Give your “BastionHostAccessSecurityGroup” security group a name, select the correct VPC, and then select Yes, Create.
In the Security Group console, select the newly created security group, select the Inbound Rule tab, and then select Edit.
Add rules to open port 3389 and 22, use the previously-created security group as the source, and then select Save.

Figure 5: Opening ports 3389 and 22

Note: In addition to security groups, you can place Network ACLs (NACLs) around the subnet you use for AppStream 2.0 as an additional layer of security. The main differences between security groups and NACLs are that security groups are mandatory and you apply them to the instance level, while you apply NACLs to the subnet level and are optional. Another difference worth pointing out is that NACLs are “stateless” while security groups are “stateful.” This means that any port allowed inbound via NACLs will need a corresponding outbound rule. For more information on NACLs, refer to this documentation.

Phase 4: Build the AppStream 2.0 Image

An AppStream 2.0 image contains applications that you can stream to users. AppStream 2.0 uses the image to launch streaming instances that are part of an AppStream 2.0 fleet.

Once you have created the stack, create a custom image to make custom applications available to the users:

Sign in to the AWS console and select AppStream 2.0 > Images > Image Builder > Launch Image Builder.
Choose the image you want to use as a starting point, and then select Next. For this example, I chose a generic image from the General Purpose stock.

Figure 6: Choosing an image
Give your image a name, choose the instance family, and then select Next.
Choose the VPC and subnet you want to deploy the AppStream 2.0 instances in.
Select the security group you created for the AppStream 2.0 instances.
Select the directory configuration you created, the OU you want your AppStream 2.0 instances to reside in, and then select Review.
Select Launch.
Once the image is built and in a running state, select the image, and then select Connect. This will open a new browser tab where you’ll be able to connect to and manage the image.
Select Administrator and log in.

Figure 7: Log in as a local administrator
Once logged in as administrator, select the Image Assistant shortcut on the desktop.

Figure 8: The Image Assistant shortcut on the desktop
Add all the applications you want to make available to your users for streaming, and then select Next.

Note: If you need to upload installation or configuration files, you can use the My Files option in the Control menu. Any files uploaded through this method will show up under the X: drive on the Image Builder.

Figure 9: The “Control” menu
If you want to test the applications as a non-privileged user, follow the on-screen instructions to switch the user. Otherwise, select Next.

Figure 10: “Switch User” on-screen instructions
Select Launch to have the Image Assistant optimize the applications.
Give the image a name, and then select Next.
Select Disconnect and Create Image.
Go back to the AppStream 2.0 console and wait for the “snapshotting” to complete and for the image to be in an available state before continuing to the next step.

Phase 5: Create the AppStream 2.0 Fleet

Once you create your Stack and image, you need to create a Fleet and associate it with your Stack.

AppStream 2.0 fleets consist of streaming instances that run the image that you specify. The fleet type determines when your instances run and how you pay for them. You can specify a fleet type when you create a fleet, and you can’t change them once they’ve been created.

To create a fleet, follow these steps:

Sign in to the AWS console and select AppStream 2.0 > Fleets > Create Fleet.
Give your fleet a name, and then select Next.
Select the newly created image, and then select Next.
Choose your preferred settings, and then select Next.

Important: Pay special attention to the Fleet capacity value. Fleet capacity determines the number of running instances you have at any given time, and it affects your costs.

Figure 11: The “Fleet capacity” dialog
Select your VPC, subnet(s), security Group(s), Active Directory settings, and then select Next.
Review the information, and then select Create.

Figure 12: Review your settings

Associate the fleet with the stack

Follow these steps:

Sign in to the AWS console and select AppStream 2.0 > Stacks.
Select the stack, select Actions, and then select Associate Fleet.
Select the fleet, and then select Associate.

Phase 6: Configure ADFS for AppStream 2.0

To have users authenticate against the corporate directory prior to accessing AppStream 2.0, use a Single Sign-On solution. For this demo, I use ADFS. If you choose another solution, follow the instructions that come with the solution. For help with setting up ADFS with AppStream 2.0, review Enabling Identify Federation with ADSF and Amazon Appstream 2.0.

Note: If you use AWS Directory Service for Microsoft AD (AWS Managed Microsoft AD) as your user directory, you can use ADFS by following the ADFS set-up instructions in the blog on How to Enable Your Users to Access Office 365 with AWS Managed Microsoft AD Credentials.

End User Experience

This section shows you what the AppStream 2.0 end user experience is like when connecting to backend Windows and Linux instances.

Note: Make sure you have backend servers to connect to, as indicated in the prerequisites.

Process

Access the ADFS URL that you created as part of the ADFS setup.
Sign in using your corporate credentials.
Select Remote Desktop from the list of applications.
Enter your corporate credentials.
Enter the private IP address of the backend windows instance you want to remote in to.

Figure 13: Enter the private IP address

You’re now logged on to the backend Windows instance through AppStream 2.0.
To test in Linux, open putty. Select the Launch app icon in the Control menu, and then select putty.

Figure 14: The “Control” menu showing putty
Provide the private IP address of a backend Linux host you want to connect to, and then select Open.

Note: For putty to connect to a Linux instance on AWS, you will need to provide a KeyPair. For information on how to configure putty and KeyPairs, refer to this documentation.

You’re now logged on to a backend Linux host through AppStream 2.0.

Monitoring

You can monitor AppStream 2.0 use by default with the following AWS monitoring services.

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring service for AWS cloud resources. You can use CloudWatch to collect and track metrics, collect and monitor log files, set alarms, and automatically react to changes in your AWS resources. For more information, refer to this documentation. Here’s a sample CloudWatch metric showing in-use capacity was 100% at 14:30, which indicates the Fleet capacity may need to be adjusted.

Figure 15: An example CloudWatch metric
AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of your AWS account. With CloudTrail, you can log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure. For more information, refer to this documentation. Here’s a sample CloudTrail event. For example, from this event you can see that user Bob logged on to AppStream 2.0 on March 4, 2018, and you can see his source IP.

Figure 16: An example CloudTrail event

Summary

Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a cost-effective way to provide administrators with a secure and auditable method to access their backend environments.

The AppStream 2.0 built-in auto-scaling feature offers a pay-as-you-go model, where the number of instances running is based on user demand. This allows you to keep costs down without compromising availability. Another cost-saving benefit of AppStream 2.0 is its underlying infrastructure being managed and maintained by AWS, so you can deploy AppStream 2.0 with minimal effort.

AppStream 2.0 helps with reducing the attack surface by hiding the shell of the streaming OS. This prevents administrators from interacting with executables that haven’t been made available to them through AppStream 2.0.

Another security benefit of AppStream 2.0 is that it destroys streaming instances after each use, reducing risks. This is a good mitigation strategy against compromised instances, as the lifespan of an instance is limited to the length of a user’s session.

AppStream 2.0 support for SAML provides yet another layer of security, allowing you to restrict access to SAML-federated URLs from corporate networks only, as well as the ability to enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA).

You can monitor the AppStream 2.0 environment through the use of AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch, allowing you to monitor and trace the usage of AppStream 2.0.

For all of these reasons, AppStream 2.0 makes for a uniquely attractive bastion host solution.

For more information on the technologies mentioned in this blog, see the links below:

If you have comments about this post, submit them in the Comments section below. If you have questions about anything in this post, start a new thread on the Amazon AppStream 2.0 forum or contact AWS Support.

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How to centralize DNS management in a multi-account environment

2018-04-26 Mahmoud Matouk

Post Syndicated from Mahmoud Matouk original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-centralize-dns-management-in-a-multi-account-environment/

In a multi-account environment where you require connectivity between accounts, and perhaps connectivity between cloud and on-premises workloads, the demand for a robust Domain Name Service (DNS) that’s capable of name resolution across all connected environments will be high.

The most common solution is to implement local DNS in each account and use conditional forwarders for DNS resolutions outside of this account. While this solution might be efficient for a single-account environment, it becomes complex in a multi-account environment.

In this post, I will provide a solution to implement central DNS for multiple accounts. This solution reduces the number of DNS servers and forwarders needed to implement cross-account domain resolution. I will show you how to configure this solution in four steps:

Set up your Central DNS account.
Set up each participating account.
Create Route53 associations.
Configure on-premises DNS (if applicable).

Solution overview

In this solution, you use AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (AWS Managed Microsoft AD) as a DNS service in a dedicated account in a Virtual Private Cloud (DNS-VPC).

The DNS service included in AWS Managed Microsoft AD uses conditional forwarders to forward domain resolution to either Amazon Route 53 (for domains in the awscloud.com zone) or to on-premises DNS servers (for domains in the example.com zone). You’ll use AWS Managed Microsoft AD as the primary DNS server for other application accounts in the multi-account environment (participating accounts).

A participating account is any application account that hosts a VPC and uses the centralized AWS Managed Microsoft AD as the primary DNS server for that VPC. Each participating account has a private, hosted zone with a unique zone name to represent this account (for example, business_unit.awscloud.com).

You associate the DNS-VPC with the unique hosted zone in each of the participating accounts, this allows AWS Managed Microsoft AD to use Route 53 to resolve all registered domains in private, hosted zones in participating accounts.

The following diagram shows how the various services work together:

Figure 1: Diagram showing the relationship between all the various services

In this diagram, all VPCs in participating accounts use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) option sets. The option sets configure EC2 instances to use the centralized AWS Managed Microsoft AD in DNS-VPC as their default DNS Server. You also configure AWS Managed Microsoft AD to use conditional forwarders to send domain queries to Route53 or on-premises DNS servers based on query zone. For domain resolution across accounts to work, we associate DNS-VPC with each hosted zone in participating accounts.

If, for example, server.pa1.awscloud.com needs to resolve addresses in the pa3.awscloud.com domain, the sequence shown in the following diagram happens:

Figure 2: How domain resolution across accounts works

1.1: server.pa1.awscloud.com sends domain name lookup to default DNS server for the name server.pa3.awscloud.com. The request is forwarded to the DNS server defined in the DHCP option set (AWS Managed Microsoft AD in DNS-VPC).
1.2: AWS Managed Microsoft AD forwards name resolution to Route53 because it’s in the awscloud.com zone.
1.3: Route53 resolves the name to the IP address of server.pa3.awscloud.com because DNS-VPC is associated with the private hosted zone pa3.awscloud.com.

Similarly, if server.example.com needs to resolve server.pa3.awscloud.com, the following happens:

2.1: server.example.com sends domain name lookup to on-premise DNS server for the name server.pa3.awscloud.com.
2.2: on-premise DNS server using conditional forwarder forwards domain lookup to AWS Managed Microsoft AD in DNS-VPC.
1.2: AWS Managed Microsoft AD forwards name resolution to Route53 because it’s in the awscloud.com zone.
1.3: Route53 resolves the name to the IP address of server.pa3.awscloud.com because DNS-VPC is associated with the private hosted zone pa3.awscloud.com.

Step 1: Set up a centralized DNS account

In previous AWS Security Blog posts, Drew Dennis covered a couple of options for establishing DNS resolution between on-premises networks and Amazon VPC. In this post, he showed how you can use AWS Managed Microsoft AD (provisioned with AWS Directory Service) to provide DNS resolution with forwarding capabilities.

To set up a centralized DNS account, you can follow the same steps in Drew’s post to create AWS Managed Microsoft AD and configure the forwarders to send DNS queries for awscloud.com to default, VPC-provided DNS and to forward example.com queries to the on-premise DNS server.

Here are a few considerations while setting up central DNS:

The VPC that hosts AWS Managed Microsoft AD (DNS-VPC) will be associated with all private hosted zones in participating accounts.
To be able to resolve domain names across AWS and on-premises, connectivity through Direct Connect or VPN must be in place.

Step 2: Set up participating accounts

The steps I suggest in this section should be applied individually in each application account that’s participating in central DNS resolution.

Create the VPC(s) that will host your resources in participating account.
Create VPC Peering between local VPC(s) in each participating account and DNS-VPC.
Create a private hosted zone in Route 53. Hosted zone domain names must be unique across all accounts. In the diagram above, we used pa1.awscloud.com / pa2.awscloud.com / pa3.awscloud.com. You could also use a combination of environment and business unit: for example, you could use pa1.dev.awscloud.com to achieve uniqueness.
Associate VPC(s) in each participating account with the local private hosted zone.

The next step is to change the default DNS servers on each VPC using DHCP option set:

Follow these steps to create a new DHCP option set. Make sure in the DNS Servers to put the private IP addresses of the two AWS Managed Microsoft AD servers that were created in DNS-VPC:

Figure 3: The “Create DHCP options set” dialog box
Follow these steps to assign the DHCP option set to your VPC(s) in participating account.

Step 3: Associate DNS-VPC with private hosted zones in each participating account

The next steps will associate DNS-VPC with the private, hosted zone in each participating account. This allows instances in DNS-VPC to resolve domain records created in these hosted zones. If you need them, here are more details on associating a private, hosted zone with VPC on a different account.

In each participating account, create the authorization using the private hosted zone ID from the previous step, the region, and the VPC ID that you want to associate (DNS-VPC).

aws route53 create-vpc-association-authorization –hosted-zone-id <hosted-zone-id> –vpc VPCRegion=<region>,VPCId=<vpc-id>
In the centralized DNS account, associate DNS-VPC with the hosted zone in each participating account.

aws route53 associate-vpc-with-hosted-zone –hosted-zone-id <hosted-zone-id> –vpc VPCRegion=<region>,VPCId=<vpc-id>

After completing these steps, AWS Managed Microsoft AD in the centralized DNS account should be able to resolve domain records in the private, hosted zone in each participating account.

Step 4: Setting up on-premises DNS servers

This step is necessary if you would like to resolve AWS private domains from on-premises servers and this task comes down to configuring forwarders on-premise to forward DNS queries to AWS Managed Microsoft AD in DNS-VPC for all domains in the awscloud.com zone.

The steps to implement conditional forwarders vary by DNS product. Follow your product’s documentation to complete this configuration.

Summary

I introduced a simplified solution to implement central DNS resolution in a multi-account environment that could be also extended to support DNS resolution between on-premise resources and AWS. This can help reduce operations effort and the number of resources needed to implement cross-account domain resolution.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, start a new thread on the AWS Directory Service forum or contact AWS Support.

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Enable Federated API Access to your AWS Resources for up to 12 hours Using IAM Roles

2018-03-29 Ujjwal Pugalia

Post Syndicated from Ujjwal Pugalia original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/enable-federated-api-access-to-your-aws-resources-for-up-to-12-hours-using-iam-roles/

Now, your applications and federated users can complete longer running workloads in a single session by increasing the maximum session duration up to 12 hours for an IAM role. Users and applications still retrieve temporary credentials by assuming roles using AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS), but these credentials can now be valid for up to 12 hours when using the AWS SDK or CLI. This change allows your users and applications to perform longer running workloads, such as a batch upload to S3 or a CloudFormation template, using a single session. You can extend the maximum session duration using the IAM console or CLI. Once you increase the maximum session duration, users and applications assuming the IAM role can request temporary credentials that expire when the IAM role session expires.

In this post, I show you how to configure the maximum session duration for an existing IAM role to 4 hours (maximum allowed duration is 12 hours) using the IAM console. I’ll use 4 hours because AWS recommends configuring the session duration for a role to the shortest duration that your federated users would require to access your AWS resources. I’ll then show how existing federated users can use the AWS SDK or CLI to request temporary security credentials that are valid until the role session expires.

Prerequisites

In this post, I’ll use a federation example. If you have an existing identity provider, you might have enabled federation by using SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) to allow your users to access your AWS resources. This post assumes you have created an IAM role for a third-party identity provider that defines the permissions for your federated users. You could also have configured SAML-based federation for API access to AWS. For my example, I’ve chosen to configure SAML-based federation using Microsoft Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS) as the identity provider (IdP).

Configure the maximum session duration for an existing IAM role to 4 hours

Let’s assume you have an existing IAM role called ADFS-Production that allows your federated users to upload objects to an S3 bucket in your AWS account. You want to extend the maximum session duration for this role to 4 hours. By default, IAM roles in your AWS accounts have a maximum session duration of one hour. To extend a role’s maximum session duration to 4 hours, follow the steps below:

Sign in to the IAM console.
In the left navigation pane, select Roles and then select the role for which you want to increase the maximum session duration. For this example, I select ADFS-Production and verify the maximum session duration for this role. This value is set to 1 hour (3,600 seconds) by default.
Select Edit, and then define the maximum session duration.

Select one of the predefined durations or provide a custom duration. For this example, I set the maximum session duration to be 4 hours.
Select Save changes.

Alternatively, you can use the latest AWS CLI and call Update-Role to set the maximum session duration for the role ADFS-Production. Here’s an example to set the maximum session duration to 14,400 seconds (4 hours).

$ aws iam update-role -–role-name ADFS-Production -–MaxSessionDuration 14400

Now that you’ve successfully extended the maximum session for your IAM role, ADFS-Production, your federated users can use AWS STS to retrieve temporary credentials that are valid for 4 hours to access your S3 buckets.

Access AWS resources with temporary security credentials using AWS CLI/SDK

To enable federated SDK and CLI access for your users who use temporary security credentials, you might have implemented the solution described in the blog post on How to Implement Federated API and CLI Access Using SAML 2.0 and AD FS. That blog post demonstrates how to use the AWS Python SDK and some additional client-side integration code provided in the post to implement federated SDK and CLI access for your users. To enable your users to request longer temporary security credentials, you can make the following changes suggested in this blog to the solution provided in that post.

When calling AssumeRoleWithSAML API to request AWS temporary security credentials, you need to include the DurationSeconds parameter. The value of this parameter is the duration the user requests and, therefore, the duration their temporary security credentials are valid. In this example, I am using boto to request the maximum length of 14,400 seconds (4 hours) using code from the How to Implement Federated API and CLI Access Using SAML 2.0 and AD FS post that I have updated:

# Use the assertion to get an AWS STS token using Assume Role with SAML conn = boto.sts.connect_to_region(region) token = conn.assume_role_with_saml(role_arn, principal_arn, assertion, 14400)

By adding a value for the DurationSeconds parameter in the AssumeRoleWithSAML call, your federated user can retrieve temporary security credentials that are valid for up to 14,400 seconds (4 hours). If you don’t provide this value, the default session duration is 1 hour. If you provide a value of 5 hours for your temporary security credentials, AWS STS will throw an error since this is longer than the role session duration of 4 hours.

Conclusion

I demonstrated how you can configure the maximum session duration for a role from 1 hour (default) up to 12 hours. Then, I showed you how your federated users can retrieve temporary security credentials that are valid for longer durations to access AWS resources using AWS CLI/SDK for up to 12 hours.

Similarly, you can also increase the maximum role session duration for your applications and users who use Web Identity or OpenID Connect Federation or Cross-Account Access with Assume Role. If you have comments about this blog, submit them in the Comments section below. If you have questions or suggestions, please start a new thread on the IAM forum.

New – Usage-Based Pricing for Amazon Chime

2018-03-12 Jeff Barr

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-usage-based-pricing-for-amazon-chime/

I am a regular and frequent user of Amazon Chime, as are most of my colleagues. In addition to dozens of ongoing point-to-point sessions with individual colleagues, I participate in one chat room for the AWS Blog team and another for the AWS Evangelists. I attend several meetings per day, and use Amazon Chime’s conferencing feature to set up my own meetings once or twice a month. While I don’t actually see the monthly bill, I am on Amazon Chime’s Pro plan, at a per-user rate of $15 per month. This is, based on feedback from our customers, a good value for users who regularly host meetings, but a bit too high for those who use the other features and/or spend more time attending meetings than hosting them.

Usage-Based Pricing
To meet the needs of these users and to make Amazon Chime even more economical we are introducing a new, usage-based pricing model that goes in to effect on April 1, 2018.

During the initial, 30-day free trial, users have access to all Amazon Chime features at no charge. After the trial period ends, the users can chat with each other and attend meetings, both at no charge. On days that they host meetings, a $3 per day charge will be made, up to a maximum of $15 per month. Based on historical usage patterns, this will result in an overall price reduction for virtually all Amazon Chime customers.

In order to use the scheduling and hosting features after the end of the trial period, users must be connected to an AWS account and the administrator must enable the Amazon Pro Features features for the account. Thanks to the usage-based model, administrators will no longer have to purchase licenses for individual users in their organization. Instead, they can use Active Directory settings and policy management within the Amazon Chime Console to set permissions as desired.

As part of this change we are also eliminating the Plus plan and adding the screen sharing and corporate directory features to the Basic plan.

This change goes in to effect on April 1, 2018! To learn more, take a look at the Amazon Chime Pricing page.

— Jeff;

Easily manage table metadata for Presto running on Amazon EMR using the AWS Glue Data Catalog

2018-03-10 Radhika Ravirala

Post Syndicated from Radhika Ravirala original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/easily-manage-table-metadata-for-presto-running-on-amazon-emr-using-the-aws-glue-data-catalog/

Amazon EMR empowers many customers to build big data processing applications quickly and cost-effectively, using popular distributed frameworks such as Apache Spark, Apache HBase, Presto, and Apache Flink. For organizations that are crafting their analytical applications on Amazon EMR, there is a growing need to keep their data assets organized in an automated fashion. Because datasets tend to grow exponentially, using cataloging tools is essential to automating data discovery and organizing data assets.

AWS Glue Data Catalog provides this essential capability, allowing you to automatically discover and catalog metadata about your data stores in a central repository. Since Amazon EMR 5.8.0, customers have been using the AWS Glue Data Catalog as a metadata store for Apache Hive and Spark SQL applications that are running on Amazon EMR. Starting with Amazon EMR 5.10.0, you can catalog datasets using AWS Glue and run queries using Presto on Amazon EMR from the Hue (Hadoop User Experience) and Apache Zeppelin UIs.

You might wonder what scenarios warrant using Presto running on Amazon EMR and when to choose Amazon Athena (which uses Presto as the query engine under the hood). It is important to note that both are excellent tools for querying massive amounts of data and addressing different needs and use cases.

Amazon Athena provides the easiest way to run interactive queries for data in Amazon S3 without needing to set up or manage any servers. Presto running on Amazon EMR gives you much more flexibility in how you configure and run your queries, providing the ability to federate to other data sources if needed. For example, you might have a use case that requires LDAP authentication for clients such as the Presto CLI or JDBC/ODBC drivers. Or you might have a workflow where you need to join data between different systems like MySQL/Amazon Redshift/Apache Cassandra and Hive. In these examples, Presto running on Amazon EMR is the right tool to use because it can be configured to enable LDAP authentication in addition to the desired database connectors at cluster launch.

Now, let’s look at how metadata management for Presto works with AWS Glue.

Using an AWS Glue crawler to discover datasets

The AWS Glue Data Catalog is a reference to the location, schema, and runtime metrics of your datasets. To create this reference metadata, AWS Glue needs to crawl your datasets. In this exercise, we use an AWS Glue crawler to populate tables in the Data Catalog for the NYC taxi rides dataset.

The following are the steps for adding a crawler:

Sign in to the AWS Management Console, and open the AWS Glue console. In the navigation pane, choose Crawlers. Then choose Add crawler.
On the Add a data store page, specify the location of the NYC taxi rides dataset.

In the next step, choose an existing IAM role if one is available, or create a new role. Then choose Next.

On the scheduling page, for Frequency, choose Run on demand.
On the Configure the crawler’s output page, choose Add database. Specify blog-db as the database name. (You can specify a name of your choice, but be sure to choose the correct database name when running queries.)
Follow the remaining steps using the default values to create a crawler.

When the crawler displays the Ready state, navigate to the Databases (Choose blog-db from the list of databases, or search for it by specifying it as a filter, as shown in the following screenshot.) Then choose Tables. You should see the three tables created by the crawler, as follows.

(Optional) The discovered data is classified as CSV files. You can optionally convert this data into Parquet format for better response times on your queries.

Launching an Amazon EMR cluster

With the dataset discovered and organized, we can now walk through different options for launching Presto on an Amazon EMR cluster to use the AWS Glue Data Catalog.

Option 1: From the Amazon EMR console

On the Amazon EMR console, choose Create cluster.
In Create Cluster – Quick Options, choose EMR release 10.0 or greater.
Choose Presto as an application.
Under AWS Glue Data Catalog settings, select Use for Presto table metadata.

Option 2: From the AWS CLI

Create a classification configuration as shown following, and save it as a JSON file (presto-emr-config.json).

 [
  {
   "Classification": "presto-connector-hive",
   "Properties": {
     "hive.metastore.glue.datacatalog.enabled": "true"
    }
  }
]

Create the cluster using the AWS CLI as follows:

aws emr create-cluster --name "<your-cluster-name>" --configurations file:///<local-folder>/presto-emr-config.json --release-label emr-5.10.0 --use-default-roles --ec2-attributes KeyName=<your-key-name> --applications Name=Hadoop Name=Spark Name=Hive Name=PRESTO Name=HUE --instance-groups InstanceGroupType=MASTER,InstanceCount=1,InstanceType=m3.xlarge InstanceGroupType=CORE,InstanceCount=3,InstanceType=m3.xlarge

Running queries with Presto on Amazon EMR

After you’ve set up the Amazon EMR cluster with Presto, the AWS Glue Data Catalog is available through a default “hive” catalog. To change between the Hive and Glue metastores, you have to manually update hive.properties and restart the Presto server. Connect to the master node on your EMR cluster using SSH, and run the Presto CLI to start running queries interactively.

$ presto-cli --catalog hive

Begin with a simple query to sample a few rows:

presto> SELECT * FROM “blog-db”.taxi limit 10;

The query shows a few sample rows as follows:

Query the average fare for trips at each hour of the day and for each day of the month on the Parquet version of the taxi dataset.

presto> SELECT EXTRACT (HOUR FROM pickup_datetime) AS hour, avg(fare_amount) AS average_fare FROM “blog-db”.taxi_parquet GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1;

The following image shows the results:

More interestingly, you can compute the number of trips that gave tips in the 10 percent, 15 percent, or higher percentage range:

presto> -- Tip Percent Category
SELECT TipPrctCtgry
, COUNT (DISTINCT TripID) TripCt
FROM
(SELECT TripID
, (CASE 
WHEN fare_prct < 0.7 THEN 'FL70'
WHEN fare_prct < 0.8 THEN 'FL80'
WHEN fare_prct < 0.9 THEN 'FL90'
ELSE 'FL100'
END) FarePrctCtgry
, (CASE 
WHEN tip_prct < 0.1 THEN 'TL10'
WHEN tip_prct < 0.15 THEN 'TL15'
WHEN tip_prct < 0.2 THEN 'TL20'
ELSE 'TG20'
END) TipPrctCtgry

FROM
(SELECT TripID
, (fare_amount / total_amount) as fare_prct
, (extra / total_amount) as extra_prct
, (mta_tax / total_amount) as tip_prct
, (tolls_amount / total_amount) as mta_taxprct
, (tip_amount / total_amount) as tolls_prct
, (improvement_surcharge / total_amount) as imprv_suchrgprct
, total_amount
FROM 
(SELECT *
 , (cast(pickup_longitude AS VARCHAR(100)) || '_' || cast(pickup_latitude AS VARCHAR(100))) as TripID
 from "blog-db”.taxi_parquet 
 WHERE total_amount > 0
 ) as t
) as t
) ct
GROUP BY TipPrctCtgry;

The results are as follows:

While the preceding query is running, navigate to the web interface for Presto on Amazon EMR at <http://master-public-dns-name:8889/. Here you can look into the query metrics, such as active worker nodes, number of rows read per second, reserved memory, and parallelism.

Running queries in the Presto Editor on Hue

If you installed Hue with your Amazon EMR launch, you can also run queries on Hue’s Presto Editor. On the Amazon EMR Cluster console, choose Enable Web Connection, and follow the instructions to access the web interfaces for Hue and Zeppelin.

After the web connection is enabled, choose the Hue link to open the web interface. At the login screen, if you are the administrator logging in for the first time, type a user name and password to create your Hue superuser account. Then choose Create account. Otherwise, type your user name and password and choose Create account, or type the credentials provided by your administrator.

Choose the Presto Editor from the menu. You can run Presto queries against your tables in the AWS Glue Data Catalog.

Conclusion

Having a shared data catalog for applications on Amazon EMR alleviates a myriad of data-related challenges that organizations face today—including discovery, governance, auditability, and collaboration. In this post, we explored how the AWS Glue Data Catalog addresses discoverability and manageability for table metadata for Presto on Amazon EMR. Go ahead, give this a try, and share your experience with us!

Additional Reading

If you found this post useful, be sure to check out Custom Log Presto Query Events on Amazon EMR for Auditing and Performance Insights and Build a Multi-Tenant Amazon EMR Cluster with Kerberos, Microsoft Active Directory Integration and EMRFS Authorization.

About the Author

Radhika Ravirala is a Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services where she helps customers craft distributed big data applications on the AWS platform. Prior to her cloud journey, she worked as a software engineer and designer for technology companies in Silicon Valley. She holds a M.S in computer science from San Jose State University.

How to Delegate Administration of Your AWS Managed Microsoft AD Directory to Your On-Premises Active Directory Users

2018-03-08 Vijay Sharma

Post Syndicated from Vijay Sharma original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-delegate-administration-of-your-aws-managed-microsoft-ad-directory-to-your-on-premises-active-directory-users/

You can now enable your on-premises users administer your AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory, also known as AWS Managed Microsoft AD. Using an Active Directory (AD) trust and the new AWS delegated AD security groups, you can grant administrative permissions to your on-premises users by managing group membership in your on-premises AD directory. This simplifies how you manage who can perform administration. It also makes it easier for your administrators because they can sign in to their existing workstation with their on-premises AD credential to administer your AWS Managed Microsoft AD.

AWS created new domain local AD security groups (AWS delegated groups) in your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory. Each AWS delegated group has unique AD administrative permissions. Users that are members in the new AWS delegated groups get permissions to perform administrative tasks, such as add users, configure fine-grained password policies and enable Microsoft enterprise Certificate Authority. Because the AWS delegated groups are domain local in scope, you can use them through an AD Trust to your on-premises AD. This eliminates the requirement to create and use separate identities to administer your AWS Managed Microsoft AD. Instead, by adding selected on-premises users to desired AWS delegated groups, you can grant your administrators some or all of the permissions. You can simplify this even further by adding on-premises AD security groups to the AWS delegated groups. This enables you to add and remove users from your on-premises AD security group so that they can manage administrative permissions in your AWS Managed Microsoft AD.

In this blog post, I will show you how to delegate permissions to your on-premises users to perform an administrative task–configuring fine-grained password policies–in your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory. You can follow the steps in this post to delegate other administrative permissions, such as configuring group Managed Service Accounts and Kerberos constrained delegation, to your on-premises users.

Background

Until now, AWS Managed Microsoft AD delegated administrative permissions for your directory by creating AD security groups in your Organization Unit (OU) and authorizing these AWS delegated groups for common administrative activities. The admin user in your directory created user accounts within your OU, and granted these users permissions to administer your directory by adding them to one or more of these AWS delegated groups.

However, if you used your AWS Managed Microsoft AD with a trust to an on-premises AD forest, you couldn’t add users from your on-premises directory to these AWS delegated groups. This is because AWS created the AWS delegated groups with global scope, which restricts adding users from another forest. This necessitated that you create different user accounts in AWS Managed Microsoft AD for the purpose of administration. As a result, AD administrators typically had to remember additional credentials for AWS Managed Microsoft AD.

To address this, AWS created new AWS delegated groups with domain local scope in a separate OU called AWS Delegated Groups. These new AWS delegated groups with domain local scope are more flexible and permit adding users and groups from other domains and forests. This allows your admin user to delegate your on-premises users and groups administrative permissions to your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory.

Note: If you already have an existing AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory containing the original AWS delegated groups with global scope, AWS preserved the original AWS delegated groups in the event you are currently using them with identities in AWS Managed Microsoft AD. AWS recommends that you transition to use the new AWS delegated groups with domain local scope. All newly created AWS Managed Microsoft AD directories have the new AWS delegated groups with domain local scope only.

Now, I will show you the steps to delegate administrative permissions to your on-premises users and groups to configure fine-grained password policies in your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory.

Prerequisites

For this post, I assume you are familiar with AD security groups and how security group scope rules work. I also assume you are familiar with AD trusts.

The instructions in this blog post require you to have the following components running:

An active AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory. To create a directory, follow the steps in Creating an AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory. You also need to know the password for the admin account so that you can add other users and groups to the AWS created AD security groups in the AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory.
An existing on-premises AD directory. Your on-premises AD directory must contain a user that you want to delegate permissions to manage your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory.
A trust relationship between your AWS Managed Microsoft AD and your on-premises AD. To learn more, see Simplified Configuration of Trust Relationship in the AWS Directory Service Console. You can create a one-way outgoing trust from your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory to your on-premises AD directory, or a two-way trust.
A machine joined to AWS Managed Microsoft AD domain with Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) tool installed. If you don’t have an existing machine with ADUC installed, you can join an Amazon EC2 for Windows Server instance to your AWS Managed Microsoft AD domain and install Active Directory Administrative Tools.
A machine joined to your on-premises AD directory with ADUC installed. You can install ADUC by installing Active Directory Administrative Tools on a Windows computer that you joined to your on-premises AD domain.

Solution overview

I will now show you how to manage which on-premises users have delegated permissions to administer your directory by efficiently using on-premises AD security groups to manage these permissions. I will do this by:

Adding on-premises groups to an AWS delegated group. In this step, you sign in to management instance connected to AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory as admin user and add on-premises groups to AWS delegated groups.
Administer your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory as on-premises user. In this step, you sign in to a workstation connected to your on-premises AD using your on-premises credentials and administer your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory.

For the purpose of this blog, I already have an on-premises AD directory (in this case, on-premises.com). I also created an AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory (in this case, corp.example.com) that I use with Amazon RDS for SQL Server. To enable Integrated Windows Authentication to my on-premises.com domain, I established a one-way outgoing trust from my AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory to my on-premises AD directory. To administer my AWS Managed Microsoft AD, I created an Amazon EC2 for Windows Server instance (in this case, Cloud Management). I also have an on-premises workstation (in this case, On-premises Management), that is connected to my on-premises AD directory.

The following diagram represents the relationships between the on-premises AD and the AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory.

The left side represents the AWS Cloud containing AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory. I connected the directory to the on-premises AD directory via a 1-way forest trust relationship. When AWS created my AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory, AWS created a group called AWS Delegated Fine Grained Password Policy Administrators that has permissions to configure fine-grained password policies in AWS Managed Microsoft AD.

The right side of the diagram represents the on-premises AD directory. I created a global AD security group called On-premises fine grained password policy admins and I configured it so all members can manage fine grained password policies in my on-premises AD. I have two administrators in my company, John and Richard, who I added as members of On-premises fine grained password policy admins. I want to enable John and Richard to also manage fine grained password policies in my AWS Managed Microsoft AD.

While I could add John and Richard to the AWS Delegated Fine Grained Password Policy Administrators individually, I want a more efficient way to delegate and remove permissions for on-premises users to manage fine grained password policies in my AWS Managed Microsoft AD. In fact, I want to assign permissions to the same people that manage password policies in my on-premises directory.

To do this, I will:

As admin user, add the On-premises fine grained password policy admins as member of the AWS Delegated Fine Grained Password Policy Administrators security group from my Cloud Management machine.
Manage who can administer password policies in my AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory by adding and removing users as members of the On-premises fine grained password policy admins. Doing so enables me to perform all my delegation work in my on-premises directory without the need to use a remote desktop protocol (RDP) session to my Cloud Management instance. In this case, Richard, who is a member of On-premises fine grained password policy admins group can now administer AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory from On-premises Management workstation.

Although I’m showing a specific case using fine grained password policy delegation, you can do this with any of the new AWS delegated groups and your on-premises groups and users.

Let’s get started.

Step 1 – Add on-premises groups to AWS delegated groups

In this step, open an RDP session to the Cloud Management instance and sign in as the admin user in your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory. Then, add your users and groups from your on-premises AD to AWS delegated groups in AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory. In this example, I do the following:

Sign in to the Cloud Management instance with the user name admin and the password that you set for the admin user when you created your directory.
Open the Microsoft Windows Server Manager and navigate to Tools > Active Directory Users and Computers.
Switch to the tree view and navigate to corp.example.com > AWS Delegated Groups. Right-click AWS Delegated Fine Grained Password Policy Administrators and select Properties.
In the AWS Delegated Fine Grained Password Policy window, switch to Members tab and choose Add.
In the Select Users, Contacts, Computers, Service Accounts, or Groups window, choose Locations.
In the Locations window, select on-premises.com domain and choose OK.
In the Enter the object names to select box, enter on-premises fine grained password policy admins and choose Check Names.
Because I have a 1-way trust from AWS Managed Microsoft AD to my on-premises AD, Windows prompts me to enter credentials for an on-premises user account that has permissions to complete the search. If I had a 2-way trust and the admin account in my AWS Managed Microsoft AD has permissions to read my on-premises directory, Windows will not prompt me.In the Windows Security window, enter the credentials for an account with permissions for on-premises.com and choose OK.
Click OK to add On-premises fine grained password policy admins group as a member of the AWS Delegated Fine Grained Password Policy Administrators group in your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory.

At this point, any user that is a member of On-premises fine grained password policy admins group has permissions to manage password policies in your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory.

Step 2 – Administer your AWS Managed Microsoft AD as on-premises user

Any member of the on-premises group(s) that you added to an AWS delegated group inherited the permissions of the AWS delegated group.

In this example, Richard signs in to the On-premises Management instance. Because Richard inherited permissions from Delegated Fine Grained Password Policy Administrators, he can now administer fine grained password policies in the AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory using on-premises credentials.

Sign in to the On-premises Management instance as Richard.
Open the Microsoft Windows Server Manager and navigate to Tools > Active Directory Users and Computers.
Switch to the tree view, right-click Active Directory Users and Computers, and then select Change Domain.
In the Change Domain window, enter corp.example.com, and then choose OK.
You’ll be connected to your AWS Managed Microsoft AD domain:

Richard can now administer the password policies. Because John is also a member of the AWS delegated group, John can also perform password policy administration the same way.

In future, if Richard moves to another division within the company and you hire Judy as a replacement for Richard, you can simply remove Richard from On-premises fine grained password policy admins group and add Judy to this group. Richard will no longer have administrative permissions, while Judy can now administer password policies for your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory.

Summary

We’ve tried to make it easier for you to administer your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory by creating AWS delegated groups with domain local scope. You can add your on-premises AD groups to the AWS delegated groups. You can then control who can administer your directory by managing group membership in your on-premises AD directory. Your administrators can sign in to their existing on-premises workstations using their on-premises credentials and administer your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory. I encourage you to explore the new AWS delegated security groups by using Active Directory Users and Computers from the management instance for your AWS Managed Microsoft AD. To learn more about AWS Directory Service, see the AWS Directory Service home page. If you have questions, please post them on the Directory Service forum. If you have comments about this post, submit them in the “Comments” section below.

AWS Federated Authentication with Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS)

2018-03-03 Kevin Higgins

Post Syndicated from Kevin Higgins original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-federated-authentication-with-active-directory-federation-services-ad-fs/

Today we’d like to walk you through AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), federated sign-in through Active Directory (AD) and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). With IAM, you can centrally manage users, security credentials such as access keys, and permissions that control which resources users can access. Customers have the option of creating users and group objects within IAM or they can utilize a third-party federation service to assign external directory users access to AWS resources. To streamline the administration of user access in AWS, organizations can utilize a federated solution with an external directory, allowing them to minimize administrative overhead. Benefits of this approach include leveraging existing passwords and password policies, roles and groups. This guide provides a walk-through on how to automate the federation setup across multiple accounts/roles with an Active Directory backing identity store. This will establish the minimum baseline for the authentication architecture, including the initial IdP deployment and elements for federation.

ADFS Federated Authentication Process

The following describes the process a user will follow to authenticate to AWS using Active Directory and ADFS as the identity provider and identity brokers:

Corporate user accesses the corporate Active Directory Federation Services portal sign-in page and provides Active Directory authentication credentials.
AD FS authenticates the user against Active Directory.
Active Directory returns the user’s information, including AD group membership information.
AD FS dynamically builds ARNs by using Active Directory group memberships for the IAM roles and user attributes for the AWS account IDs, and sends a signed assertion to the users browser with a redirect to post the assertion to AWS STS.
Temporary credentials are returned using STS AssumeRoleWithSAML.
The user is authenticated and provided access to the AWS management console.

Configuration Steps

Configuration requires setup in the Identity Provider store (e.g. Active Directory), the identity broker (e.g. Active Directory Federation Services), and AWS. It is possible to configure AWS to federate authentication using a variety of third-party SAML 2.0 compliant identity providers, more information can be found here.

AWS Configuration

The configuration steps outlined in this document can be completed to enable federated access to multiple AWS accounts, facilitating a single sign on process across a multi-account AWS environment. Access can also be provided to multiple roles in each AWS account. The roles available to a user are based on their group memberships in the identity provider (IdP). In a multi-role and/or multi-account scenario, role assumption requires the user to select the account and role they wish to assume during the authentication process.

Identity Provider

A SAML 2.0 identity provider is an IAM resource that describes an identity provider (IdP) service that supports the SAML 2.0 (Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0) standard. AWS SAML identity provider configurations can be used to establish trust between AWS and SAML-compatible identity providers, such as Shibboleth or Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services. These enable users in an organization to access AWS resources using existing credentials from the identity provider.

A SAML identify provider can be configured using the AWS console by completing the following steps.

1. Access the “Identity Providers” section of the AWS IAM console at the following URL: https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home?region=us-east-1#/providers. Click on the “Create Provider” button.

2. Select SAML for the provider type. Select a provider name of your choosing (this will become the logical name used in the identity provider ARN). Lastly, download the FederationMetadata.xml file from your ADFS server to your client system file (https://yourADFSserverFQDN/FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml). Click “Choose File” and upload it to AWS.

3. Click “Next Step” and then verify the information you have entered. Click “Create” to complete the AWS identity provider configuration process.

IAM Role Naming Convention for User Access
Once the AWS identity provider configuration is complete, it is necessary to create the roles in AWS that federated users can assume via SAML 2.0. An IAM role is an AWS identity with permission policies that determine what the identity can and cannot do in AWS. In a federated authentication scenario, users (as defined in the IdP) assume an AWS role during the sign-in process. A role should be defined for each access delineation that you wish to define. For example, create a role for each line of business (LOB), or each function within a LOB. Each role will then be assigned a set of policies that define what privileges the users who will be assuming that role will have.

The following steps detail how to create a single role. These steps should be completed multiple times to enable assumption of different roles within AWS, as required.

1. Access the “Roles” section of the AWS IAM console at the following URL: https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home?region=us-east-1#/roles. Click on the “Create Role” button.

2. Select “SAML” as the trusted entity type. Click Next Step.

3. Select your previously created identity provider. Click Next: Permissions.

4. The next step requires selection of policies that represent the desired permissions the user should obtain in AWS, once they have authenticated and successfully assumed the role. This can be either a custom policy or preferably an AWS managed policy. AWS recommends leveraging existing AWS access policies for job functions for common levels of access. For example, the “Billing” AWS Managed policy should be utilized to provide financial analyst access to AWS billing and cost information.

5. Provide a name for your role. All roles should be created with the prefix ADFS-<rolename> to simplify the identification of roles in AWS that are accessed through the federated authentication process. Next click, “Create Role”.

Active Directory Configuration

Determining how you will create and delineate your AD groups and IAM roles in AWS is crucial to how you secure access to your account and manage resources. SAML assertions to the AWS environment and the respective IAM role access will be managed through regular expression (regex) matching between your on-premises AD group name to an AWS IAM role.

One approach for creating the AD groups that uniquely identify the AWS IAM role mapping is by selecting a common group naming convention. For example, your AD groups would start with an identifier, for example AWS-, as this will distinguish your AWS groups from others within the organization. Next, include the 12-digit AWS account number. Finally, add the matching role name within the AWS account. Here is an example:

You should do this for each role and corresponding AWS account you wish to support with federated access. Users in Active Directory can subsequently be added to the groups, providing the ability to assume access to the corresponding roles in AWS. If a user is associated with multiple Active Directory groups and AWS accounts, they will see a list of roles by AWS account and will have the option to choose which role to assume. A user will not be able to assume more than one role at a time, but has the ability to switch between them as needed.

Note: Microsoft imposes a limit on the number of groups a user can be a member of (approximately 1,015 groups) due to the size limit for the access token that is created for each security principal. This limitation, however, is not affected by how the groups may or may not be nested.

Active Directory Federation Services Configuration

ADFS federation occurs with the participation of two parties; the identity or claims provider (in this case the owner of the identity repository – Active Directory) and the relying party, which is another application that wishes to outsource authentication to the identity provider; in this case Amazon Secure Token Service (STS). The relying party is a federation partner that is represented by a claims provider trust in the federation service.

Relying Party

You can configure a new relying party in Active Directory Federation Services by doing the following.

1. From the ADFS Management Console, right-click ADFS and select Add Relying Party Trust.

2. In the Add Relying Party Trust Wizard, click Start.

3. Check Import data about the relying party published online or on a local network, enter
https://signin.aws.amazon.com/static/saml-metadata.xml, and then click Next. The metadata XML file is a standard SAML metadata document that describes AWS as a relying party.

Note: SAML federations use metadata documents to maintain information about the public keys and certificates that each party utilizes. At run time, each member of the federation can then use this information to validate that the cryptographic elements of the distributed transactions come from the expected actors and haven’t been tampered with. Since these metadata documents do not contain any sensitive cryptographic material, AWS publishes federation metadata at https://signin.aws.amazon.com/static/saml-metadata.xml

4. Set the display name for the relying party and then click Next.

5. We will not choose to enable/configure the MFA settings at this time.

6. Select “Permit all users to access this relying party” and click Next.

7. Review your settings and then click Next.

8. Choose Close on the Finish page to complete the Add Relying Party Trust Wizard. AWS is now configured as a relying party.

Custom Claim Rules

Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) uses Claims Rule Language to issue and transform claims between claims providers and relying parties. A claim is information about a user from a trusted source. The trusted source is asserting that the information is true, and that source has authenticated the user in some manner. The claims provider is the source of the claim. This can be information pulled from an attribute store such as Active Directory (AD). The relying party is the destination for the claims, in this case AWS.

AD FS provides administrators with the option to define custom rules that they can use to determine the behavior of identity claims with the claim rule language. The Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) claim rule language acts as the administrative building block to help manage the behavior of incoming and outgoing claims. There are four claim rules that need to be created to effectively enable Active Directory users to assume roles in AWS based on group membership in Active Directory.

Right-click on the relying party (in this case Amazon Web Services) and then click Edit Claim Rules

Here are the steps used to create the claim rules for NameId, RoleSessionName, Get AD Groups and Roles.

1. NameId

a) In the Edit Claim Rules for <relying party> dialog box, click Add Rule.
b) Select Transform an Incoming Claim and then click Next.
c) Use the following settings:

i) Claim rule name: NameId
ii) Incoming claim type: Windows Account Name
iii) Outgoing claim type: Name ID
iv) Outgoing name ID format: Persistent Identifier
v) Pass through all claim values: checked

d) Click OK.

Rule language:
c:[Type == "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/windowsaccountname"] => issue(Type = "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/nameidentifier", Issuer = c.Issuer, OriginalIssuer = c.OriginalIssuer, Value = c.Value, ValueType = c.ValueType, Properties["http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claimproperties/format"] = "urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:persistent");

2. RoleSessionName

a) Click Add Rule
b) In the Claim rule template list, select Send LDAP Attributes as Claims.
c) Use the following settings:

i) Claim rule name: RoleSessionName
ii) Attribute store: Active Directory
iii) LDAP Attribute: E-Mail-Addresses
iv) Outgoing Claim Type: https://aws.amazon.com/SAML/Attributes/RoleSessionName

d) Click OK

Rule language:
c:[Type == "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/windowsaccountname", Issuer == "AD AUTHORITY"] => issue(store = "Active Directory", types = ("https://aws.amazon.com/SAML/Attributes/RoleSessionName"), query = ";mail;{0}", param = c.Value);

3. Get AD Groups

a) Click Add Rule.
b) In the Claim rule template list, select Send Claims Using a Custom Rule and then click Next.
c) For Claim Rule Name, select Get AD Groups, and then in Custom rule, enter the following:

Rule language:
c:[Type == "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/windowsaccountname", Issuer == "AD AUTHORITY"] => add(store = "Active Directory", types = ("http://temp/variable"), query = ";tokenGroups;{0}", param = c.Value);

This custom rule uses a script in the claim rule language that retrieves all the groups the authenticated user is a member of and places them into a temporary claim named http://temp/variable. Think of this as a variable you can access later.

Note: Ensure there’s no trailing whitespace to avoid unexpected results.

4. Role Attributes

a) Unlike the two previous claims, here we used custom rules to send role attributes. This is done by retrieving all the authenticated user’s AD groups and then matching the groups that start with to IAM roles of a similar name. I used the names of these groups to create Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) of IAM roles in my AWS account (i.e., those that start with AWS-). Sending role attributes requires two custom rules. The first rule retrieves all the authenticated user’s AD group memberships and the second rule performs the transformation to the roles claim.

i) Click Add Rule.
ii) In the Claim rule template list, select Send Claims Using a Custom Rule and then click Next.
iii) For Claim Rule Name, enter Roles, and then in Custom rule, enter the following:

Rule language:
c:[Type == "http://temp/variable", Value =~ "(?i)^AWS-([\d]{12})"] => issue(Type = "https://aws.amazon.com/SAML/Attributes/Role", Value = RegExReplace(c.Value, "AWS-([\d]{12})-", "arn:aws:iam::$1:saml-provider/idp1,arn:aws:iam::$1:role/"));

This custom rule uses regular expressions to transform each of the group memberships of the form AWS-<Account Number>-<Role Name> into in the IAM role ARN, IAM federation provider ARN form AWS expects.

Note: In the example rule language above idp1 represents the logical name given to the SAML identity provider in the AWS identity provider setup. Please change this based on the logical name you chose in the IAM console for your identity provider.

Adjusting Session Duration

By default, the temporary credentials that are issued by AWS IAM for SAML federation are valid for an hour. Depending on your organizations security stance, you may wish to adjust. You can allow your federated users to work in the AWS Management Console for up to 12 hours. This can be accomplished by adding another claim rule in your ADFS configuration. To add the rule, do the following:

1. Access ADFS Management Tool on your ADFS Server.
2. Choose Relying Party Trusts, then select your AWS Relying Party configuration.
3. Choose Edit Claim Rules.
4. Choose Add Rule to configure a new rule, and then choose Send claims using a custom rule. Finally, choose Next.
5. Name your Rule “Session Duration” and add the following rule syntax.
6. Adjust the value of 28800 seconds (8 hours) as appropriate.

Rule language:
=> issue(Type = "https://aws.amazon.com/SAML/Attributes/SessionDuration", Value = "28800");

Note: AD FS 2012 R2 and AD FS 2016 tokens have a sixty-minute validity period by default. This value is configurable on a per-relying party trust basis. In addition to adding the “Session Duration” claim rule, you will also need to update the security token created by AD FS. To update this value, run the following command:

Set-ADFSRelyingPartyTrust -TargetName “[Display Name]” -TokenLifetime 480

The Parameter “-TokenLifetime” determines the Lifetime in Minutes. In this example, we set the Lifetime to 480 minutes, eight hours.

These are the main settings related to session lifetimes and user authentication. Once updated, any new console session your federated users initiate will be valid for the duration specified in the SessionDuration claim.

API/CLI Access
Access to the AWS API and command-line tools using federated access can be accomplished using techniques in the following blog article:

https://blogs.aws.amazon.com/security/post/Tx1LDN0UBGJJ26Q/How-to-Implement-Federated-API-and-CLI-Access-Using-SAML-2-0-and-AD-FS

This will enable your users to access your AWS environment using their domain credentials through the AWS CLI or one of the AWS SDKs.

Conclusion
In this post, I’ve shown you how to provide identity federation, and thus SSO, to the AWS Management Console for multiple accounts using SAML assertions. With this approach, the AWS Security Token service (STS) will provide temporary credentials (via SAML) for the user to ‘assume’ a role (that they have access to use, as denoted by AD Group membership) that has specific permissions associated; as opposed to providing long-term access credentials to the AWS resources. By adopting this model, you will have a secure and robust IAM approach for accessing AWS resources that align with AWS security best practices.

[$] Authentication and authorization in Samba 4

2018-02-14 jake

Post Syndicated from jake original https://lwn.net/Articles/747122/rss

Volker Lendecke is one of the first contributors to Samba,
having submitted his first patches in 1994. In addition to developing
other important file-sharing tools, he’s heavily involved in development of
the winbind service, which is implemented in winbindd. Although the core Active Directory (AD) domain controller
(DC) code was written by his colleague Stefan Metzmacher, winbind is a
crucial component of Samba’s AD functionality.
In his information-packed talk at FOSDEM
2018, Lendecke
said he aimed to give a high-level
overview of what AD and Samba authentication is, and in particular the
communication pathways and trust relationships between the parts of
Samba that authenticate a Samba user in an AD environment.

[$] Two FOSDEM talks on Samba 4

2018-02-13 jake

Post Syndicated from jake original https://lwn.net/Articles/747098/rss

Much as some of us would love never to have to deal with Windows,
it exists. It wants to authenticate its users and share
resources like files and printers over the network. Although many
enterprises use Microsoft tools to do this, there is a free alternative,
in the form of Samba. While Samba 3 has been happily providing
authentication along with file and print sharing to Windows clients for
many years,
the Microsoft world has been slowly moving toward Active Directory (AD).
Meanwhile, Samba 4, which adds a free reimplementation of AD on Linux, has
been increasingly ready for deployment. Three short talks at FOSDEM 2018
provided three different views of Samba 4, also known as Samba-AD,
and left behind a pretty clear picture that Samba 4 is truly
ready for use.

Subscribers can read on for a report from guest author Tom Yates on the first two of those talks; stay tuned for another on the third soon.

Build a Multi-Tenant Amazon EMR Cluster with Kerberos, Microsoft Active Directory Integration and EMRFS Authorization

2018-02-07 Songzhi Liu

Post Syndicated from Songzhi Liu original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/build-a-multi-tenant-amazon-emr-cluster-with-kerberos-microsoft-active-directory-integration-and-emrfs-authorization/

One of the challenges faced by our customers—especially those in highly regulated industries—is balancing the need for security with flexibility. In this post, we cover how to enable multi-tenancy and increase security by using EMRFS (EMR File System) authorization, the Amazon S3 storage-level authorization on Amazon EMR.

Amazon EMR is an easy, fast, and scalable analytics platform enabling large-scale data processing. EMRFS authorization provides Amazon S3 storage-level authorization by configuring EMRFS with multiple IAM roles. With this functionality enabled, different users and groups can share the same cluster and assume their own IAM roles respectively.

Simply put, on Amazon EMR, we can now have an Amazon EC2 role per user assumed at run time instead of one general EC2 role at the cluster level. When the user is trying to access Amazon S3 resources, Amazon EMR evaluates against a predefined mappings list in EMRFS configurations and picks up the right role for the user.

In this post, we will discuss what EMRFS authorization is (Amazon S3 storage-level access control) and show how to configure the role mappings with detailed examples. You will then have the desired permissions in a multi-tenant environment. We also demo Amazon S3 access from HDFS command line, Apache Hive on Hue, and Apache Spark.

EMRFS authorization for Amazon S3

There are two prerequisites for using this feature:

Users must be authenticated, because EMRFS needs to map the current user/group/prefix to a predefined user/group/prefix. There are several authentication options. In this post, we launch a Kerberos-enabled cluster that manages the Key Distribution Center (KDC) on the master node, and enable a one-way trust from the KDC to a Microsoft Active Directory domain.
The application must support accessing Amazon S3 via Applications that have their own S3FileSystem APIs (for example, Presto) are not supported at this time.

EMRFS supports three types of mapping entries: user, group, and Amazon S3 prefix. Let’s use an example to show how this works.

Assume that you have the following three identities in your organization, and they are defined in the Active Directory:

To enable all these groups and users to share the EMR cluster, you need to define the following IAM roles:

In this case, you create a separate Amazon EC2 role that doesn’t give any permission to Amazon S3. Let’s call the role the base role (the EC2 role attached to the EMR cluster), which in this example is named EMR_EC2_RestrictedRole. Then, you define all the Amazon S3 permissions for each specific user or group in their own roles. The restricted role serves as the fallback role when the user doesn’t belong to any user/group, nor does the user try to access any listed Amazon S3 prefixes defined on the list.

Important: For all other roles, like emrfs_auth_group_role_data_eng, you need to add the base role (EMR_EC2_RestrictedRole) as the trusted entity so that it can assume other roles. See the following example:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": "ec2.amazonaws.com"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::511586466501:role/EMR_EC2_RestrictedRole"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}

The following is an example policy for the admin user role (emrfs_auth_user_role_admin_user):

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "s3:*",
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

We are assuming the admin user has access to all buckets in this example.

The following is an example policy for the data science group role (emrfs_auth_group_role_data_sci):

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::emrfs-auth-data-science-bucket-demo/*",
                "arn:aws:s3:::emrfs-auth-data-science-bucket-demo"
            ],
            "Action": [
                "s3:*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

This role grants all Amazon S3 permissions to the emrfs-auth-data-science-bucket-demo bucket and all the objects in it. Similarly, the policy for the role emrfs_auth_group_role_data_eng is shown below:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::emrfs-auth-data-engineering-bucket-demo/*",
                "arn:aws:s3:::emrfs-auth-data-engineering-bucket-demo"
            ],
            "Action": [
                "s3:*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Example role mappings configuration

To configure EMRFS authorization, you use EMR security configuration. Here is the configuration we use in this post

Consider the following scenario.

First, the admin user admin1 tries to log in and run a command to access Amazon S3 data through EMRFS. The first role emrfs_auth_user_role_admin_user on the mapping list, which is a user role, is mapped and picked up. Then admin1 has access to the Amazon S3 locations that are defined in this role.

Then a user from the data engineer group (grp_data_engineering) tries to access a data bucket to run some jobs. When EMRFS sees that the user is a member of the grp_data_engineering group, the group role emrfs_auth_group_role_data_eng is assumed, and the user has proper access to Amazon S3 that is defined in the emrfs_auth_group_role_data_eng role.

Next, the third user comes, who is not an admin and doesn’t belong to any of the groups. After failing evaluation of the top three entries, EMRFS evaluates whether the user is trying to access a certain Amazon S3 prefix defined in the last mapping entry. This type of mapping entry is called the prefix type. If the user is trying to access s3://emrfs-auth-default-bucket-demo/, then the prefix mapping is in effect, and the prefix role emrfs_auth_prefix_role_default_s3_prefix is assumed.

If the user is not trying to access any of the Amazon S3 paths that are defined on the list—which means it failed the evaluation of all the entries—it only has the permissions defined in the EMR_EC2RestrictedRole. This role is assumed by the EC2 instances in the cluster.

In this process, all the mappings defined are evaluated in the defined order, and the first role that is mapped is assumed, and the rest of the list is skipped.

Setting up an EMR cluster and mapping Active Directory users and groups

Now that we know how EMRFS authorization role mapping works, the next thing we need to think about is how we can use this feature in an easy and manageable way.

Active Directory setup

Many customers manage their users and groups using Microsoft Active Directory or other tools like OpenLDAP. In this post, we create the Active Directory on an Amazon EC2 instance running Windows Server and create the users and groups we will be using in the example below. After setting up Active Directory, we use the Amazon EMR Kerberos auto-join capability to establish a one-way trust from the KDC running on the EMR master node to the Active Directory domain on the EC2 instance. You can use your own directory services as long as it talks to the LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol).

To create and join Active Directory to Amazon EMR, follow the steps in the blog post Use Kerberos Authentication to Integrate Amazon EMR with Microsoft Active Directory.

After configuring Active Directory, you can create all the users and groups using the Active Directory tools and add users to appropriate groups. In this example, we created users like admin1, dataeng1, datascientist1, grp_data_engineering, and grp_data_science, and then add the users to the right groups.

Join the EMR cluster to an Active Directory domain

For clusters with Kerberos, Amazon EMR now supports automated Active Directory domain joins. You can use the security configuration to configure the one-way trust from the KDC to the Active Directory domain. You also configure the EMRFS role mappings in the same security configuration.

The following is an example of the EMR security configuration with a trusted Active Directory domain EMRKRB.TEST.COM and the EMRFS role mappings as we discussed earlier:

The EMRFS role mapping configuration is shown in this example:

We will also provide an example AWS CLI command that you can run.

Launching the EMR cluster and running the tests

Now you have configured Kerberos and EMRFS authorization for Amazon S3.

Additionally, you need to configure Hue with Active Directory using the Amazon EMR configuration API in order to log in using the AD users created before. The following is an example of Hue AD configuration.

[
  {
    "Classification":"hue-ini",
    "Properties":{

    },
    "Configurations":[
      {
        "Classification":"desktop",
        "Properties":{

        },
        "Configurations":[
          {
            "Classification":"ldap",
            "Properties":{

            },
            "Configurations":[
              {
                "Classification":"ldap_servers",
                "Properties":{

                },
                "Configurations":[
                  {
                    "Classification":"AWS",
                    "Properties":{
                      "base_dn":"DC=emrkrb,DC=test,DC=com",
                      "ldap_url":"ldap://emrkrb.test.com",
                      "search_bind_authentication":"false",
                      "bind_dn":"CN=adjoiner,CN=users,DC=emrkrb,DC=test,DC=com",
                      "bind_password":"Abc123456",
                      "create_users_on_login":"true",
                      "nt_domain":"emrkrb.test.com"
                    },
                    "Configurations":[

                    ]
                  }
                ]
              }
            ]
          },
          {
            "Classification":"auth",
            "Properties":{
              "backend":"desktop.auth.backend.LdapBackend"
            },
            "Configurations":[

            ]
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }

Note: In the preceding configuration JSON file, change the values as required before pasting it into the software setting section in the Amazon EMR console.

Now let’s use this configuration and the security configuration you created before to launch the cluster.

In the Amazon EMR console, choose Create cluster. Then choose Go to advanced options. On the Step1: Software and Steps page, under Edit software settings (optional), paste the configuration in the box.

The rest of the setup is the same as an ordinary cluster setup, except in the Security Options section. In Step 4: Security, under Permissions, choose Custom, and then choose the RestrictedRole that you created before.

Choose the appropriate subnets (these should meet the base requirement in order for a successful Active Directory join—see the Amazon EMR Management Guide for more details), and choose the appropriate security groups to make sure it talks to the Active Directory. Choose a key so that you can log in and configure the cluster.

Most importantly, choose the security configuration that you created earlier to enable Kerberos and EMRFS authorization for Amazon S3.

You can use the following AWS CLI command to create a cluster.

aws emr create-cluster --name "TestEMRFSAuthorization" \ 
--release-label emr-5.10.0 \ --instance-type m3.xlarge \ 
--instance-count 3 \ 
--ec2-attributes InstanceProfile=EMR_EC2_DefaultRole,KeyName=MyEC2KeyPair \ --service-role EMR_DefaultRole \ 
--security-configuration MyKerberosConfig \ 
--configurations file://hue-config.json \
--applications Name=Hadoop Name=Hive Name=Hue Name=Spark \ 
--kerberos-attributes Realm=EC2.INTERNAL, \ KdcAdminPassword=<YourClusterKDCAdminPassword>, \ ADDomainJoinUser=<YourADUserLogonName>,ADDomainJoinPassword=<YourADUserPassword>, \ 
CrossRealmTrustPrincipalPassword=<MatchADTrustPwd>

Note: If you create the cluster using CLI, you need to save the JSON configuration for Hue into a file named hue-config.json and place it on the server where you run the CLI command.

After the cluster gets into the Waiting state, try to connect by using SSH into the cluster using the Active Directory user name and password.

ssh -l [email protected] <EMR IP or DNS name>

Quickly run two commands to show that the Active Directory join is successful:

id [user name] shows the mapped AD users and groups in Linux.
hdfs groups [user name] shows the mapped group in Hadoop.

Both should return the current Active Directory user and group information if the setup is correct.

Now, you can test the user mapping first. Log in with the admin1 user, and run a Hadoop list directory command:

hadoop fs -ls s3://emrfs-auth-data-science-bucket-demo/

Now switch to a user from the data engineer group.

Retry the previous command to access the admin’s bucket. It should throw an Amazon S3 Access Denied exception.

When you try listing the Amazon S3 bucket that a data engineer group member has accessed, it triggers the group mapping.

hadoop fs -ls s3://emrfs-auth-data-engineering-bucket-demo/

It successfully returns the listing results. Next we will test Apache Hive and then Apache Spark.

To run jobs successfully, you need to create a home directory for every user in HDFS for staging data under /user/<username>. Users can configure a step to create a home directory at cluster launch time for every user who has access to the cluster. In this example, you use Hue since Hue will create the home directory in HDFS for the user at the first login. Here Hue also needs to be integrated with the same Active Directory as explained in the example configuration described earlier.

First, log in to Hue as a data engineer user, and open a Hive Notebook in Hue. Then run a query to create a new table pointing to the data engineer bucket, s3://emrfs-auth-data-engineering-bucket-demo/table1_data_eng/.

You can see that the table was created successfully. Now try to create another table pointing to the data science group’s bucket, where the data engineer group doesn’t have access.

It failed and threw an Amazon S3 Access Denied error.

Now insert one line of data into the successfully create table.

Next, log out, switch to a data science group user, and create another table, test2_datasci_tb.

The creation is successful.

The last task is to test Spark (it requires the user directory, but Hue created one in the previous step).

Now let’s come back to the command line and run some Spark commands.

Start the SparkSQL interactive shell by typing spark-sql, and run the show tables command. It should list the tables that you created using Hive.

As a data science group user, try select on both tables. You will find that you can only select the table defined in the location that your group has access to.

Conclusion

EMRFS authorization for Amazon S3 enables you to have multiple roles on the same cluster, providing flexibility to configure a shared cluster for different teams to achieve better efficiency. The Active Directory integration and group mapping make it much easier for you to manage your users and groups, and provides better auditability in a multi-tenant environment.

Additional Reading

If you found this post useful, be sure to check out Use Kerberos Authentication to Integrate Amazon EMR with Microsoft Active Directory and Launching and Running an Amazon EMR Cluster inside a VPC.

About the Authors

Songzhi Liu is a Big Data Consultant with AWS Professional Services. He works closely with AWS customers to provide them Big Data & Machine Learning solutions and best practices on the Amazon cloud.

EU Compliance Update: AWS’s 2017 C5 Assessment

2018-01-18 Oliver Bell

Post Syndicated from Oliver Bell original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/eu-compliance-update-awss-2017-c5-assessment/

C5 logo

AWS has completed its 2017 assessment against the Cloud Computing Compliance Controls Catalog (C5) information security and compliance program. Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI)—Germany’s national cybersecurity authority—established C5 to define a reference standard for German cloud security requirements. With C5 (as well as with IT-Grundschutz), customers in German member states can use the work performed under this BSI audit to comply with stringent local requirements and operate secure workloads in the AWS Cloud.

Continuing our commitment to Germany and the AWS European Regions, AWS has added 16 services to this year’s scope:

The English version of the C5 report is available through AWS Artifact. The German version of the report will be available through AWS Artifact in the coming weeks.

– Oliver

Use Kerberos Authentication to Integrate Amazon EMR with Microsoft Active Directory

2018-01-10 Bruno Faria

Post Syndicated from Bruno Faria original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/use-kerberos-authentication-to-integrate-amazon-emr-with-microsoft-active-directory/

Many enterprises use Microsoft Active Directory to manage users, groups, and computers in a network. And a question is asked frequently: How can Active Directory users access big data workloads running on Amazon EMR with the same single sign-on (SSO) experience they have when accessing resources in the Active Directory network?

This post walks you through the process of using AWS CloudFormation to set up a cross-realm trust and extend authentication from an Active Directory network into an Amazon EMR cluster with Kerberos enabled. By establishing a cross-realm trust, Active Directory users can use their Active Directory credentials to access an Amazon EMR cluster and run jobs as themselves.

Walkthrough overview

In this example, you build a solution that allows Active Directory users to seamlessly access Amazon EMR clusters and run big data jobs. Here’s what you need before setting up this solution:

An AWS account
An Amazon EC2 key pair
A possible limit increase for your account (Note: Usually a limit increase will not be necessary. See the AWS Service Limits documentation if you encounter a limit error while building the solution.)

To make it easier for you to get started, I created AWS CloudFormation templates that automatically configure and deploy the solution for you. The following steps and resources are involved in setting up the solution:

Create and configure an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC).
Launch an Amazon EC2 Windows instance (Active Directory domain controller).
Create an Amazon EMR security configuration for Kerberos and cross-realm trust.
Launch an Amazon EMR cluster with Kerberos enabled and a cross-realm trust configuration.

You can use the AWS CloudFormation templates to complete each step individually, or you can deploy the entire solution through a single step.

To skip the basics and deploy the entire solution through the single-step AWS CloudFormation template, go to the Single-step solution deployment
To set up each component individually, go to the Deploying each component individually

Note: If you want to manually create and configure the components for this solution without using AWS CloudFormation, refer to the Amazon EMR cross-realm documentation.
IMPORTANT: The AWS CloudFormation templates used in this post are designed to work only in the us-east-1 (N. Virginia) Region. They are not intended for production use without modification.

Single-step solution deployment

If you don’t want to set up each component individually, you can use the single-step AWS CloudFormation template. The single-step template is a master template that uses nested stacks (additional templates) to launch and configure all the resources for the solution in one go.

To deploy the single-step template into your account, choose Launch Stack:

This takes you to the Create stack wizard in the AWS CloudFormation console. The template is launched in the US East (N. Virginia) Region by default. Do not change to a different Region because the template is designed to work only in us-east-1 (N. Virginia).

On the Select Template page, keep the default URL for the AWS CloudFormation template, and then choose Next.

On the Specify Details page, review the parameters for the template. Provide values for the parameters that require input (for more information, see the parameters table that follows).

The following parameters are available in this template.

Parameter	Default	Description
Domain Controller name	DC1	NetBIOS (hostname) name of the Active Directory server. This name can be up to 15 characters long.
Active Directory domain	example.com	Fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the forest root domain (for example, `example.com`).
Domain NetBIOS name	EXAMPLE	NetBIOS name of the domain for users of earlier versions of Windows. This name can be up to 15 characters long.
Domain admin user	CrossRealmAdmin	User name for the account that is added as domain administrator. This account is separate from the default administrator account.
Domain admin password	Requires input	Password for the domain admin user. Must be at least eight characters including letters, numbers, and symbols.
Key pair name	Requires input	Name of an existing key pair, which enables you to connect securely to your instance after it launches.
Instance type	m4.xlarge	Instance type for the domain controller and the Amazon EMR cluster.
Allowed IP address	10.0.0.0/16	The client IP address can that can reach your cluster. Specify an IP address range in CIDR notation (for example, 203.0.113.5/32). By default, only the VPC CIDR (10.0.0.0/16) can reach the cluster. Be sure to add your client IP range so that you can connect to the cluster using SSH.
EMR Kerberos realm	EC2.INTERNAL	Cluster’s Kerberos realm name. By default, the realm name is derived from the cluster’s VPC domain name in uppercase letters (for example, `EC2.INTERNAL` is the default VPC domain name in the us-east-1 Region).
Trusted AD domain	EXAMPLE.COM	The Active Directory (AD) domain that you want to trust. This is the same as the “Active Directory domain.” However, it must use all uppercase letters (for example, `EXAMPLE.COM`).
Cross-realm trust password	Requires input	Password that you want to use for your cross-realm trust.
Instance count	2	The number of instances (core nodes) for the cluster.
EMR applications	Hadoop, Spark, Ganglia, Hive	Comma separated list of applications to install on the cluster.

After you specify the template details, choose Next. On the Options page, choose Next again. On the Review page, select the I acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources with custom names check box, and then choose Create.

It takes approximately 45 minutes for the deployment to complete. When the stack launch is complete, it will return outputs with information about the resources that were created. Note the outputs and skip to the Managing and testing the solution section. You can view the stack outputs on the AWS Management Console or by using the following AWS CLI command:

$ aws cloudformation describe-stacks --stack-name <Stack_Name> --region us-east-1 --query Stacks[0].Outputs

Deploying each component individually

This section describes how to use AWS CloudFormation templates to perform each step separately in the solution.

Create and configure an Amazon VPC

In order for you to establish a cross-realm trust between an Amazon EMR Kerberos realm and an Active Directory domain, your Amazon VPC must meet the following requirements:

The subnet used for the Amazon EMR cluster must have a CIDR block of fewer than nine digits (for example, 10.0.1.0/24).
Both DNS resolution and DNS hostnames must be enabled (set to “yes”).
The Active Directory domain controller must be the DNS server for instances in the Amazon VPC (this is configured in the next step).

To use the AWS CloudFormation template to create and configure an Amazon VPC with the prerequisites listed previously, choose Launch Stack:

Note: If you want to create the VPC manually (without using AWS CloudFormation), see Set Up the VPC and Subnet in the Amazon EMR documentation.

Launching this stack creates the following AWS resources:

Amazon VPC with CIDR block 10.0.0.0/16 (Name: CrossRealmVPC)
Internet Gateway (Name: CrossRealmGateway)
Public subnet with CIDR block 10.0.1.0/24 (Name: CrossRealmSubnet)
Security group allowing inbound access from the VPC’s subnets (Name tag: CrossRealmSecurityGroup)

When the stack launch is complete, it should return outputs similar to the following.

Key	Value example	Description
SubnetID	subnet-xxxxxxxx	The subnet for the Active Directory domain controller and the EMR cluster.
SecurityGroup	sg-xxxxxxxx	The security group for the Active Directory domain controller.
VPCID	vpc-xxxxxxxx	The Active Directory domain controller and EMR cluster will be launched on this VPC.

Note the outputs because they are used in the next step. You can view the stack outputs on the AWS Management Console or by using the following AWS CLI command:

$ aws cloudformation describe-stacks --stack-name <Stack_Name> --region us-east-1 --query Stacks[0].Outputs

Launch and configure an Active Directory domain controller

In this step, you use an AWS CloudFormation template to automatically launch and configure a new Active Directory domain controller and cross-realm trust.

Note: There are various ways to install and configure an Active Directory domain controller. For details on manually launching and installing a domain controller without AWS CloudFormation, see Step 2: Launch and Install the AD Domain Controller in the Amazon EMR documentation.

In addition to launching and configuring an Active Directory domain controller and cross-realm trust, this AWS CloudFormation template also sets the domain controller as the DNS server (name server) for your Amazon VPC. In other words, the template creates a new DHCP option-set for the VPC where it’s being deployed to, and it sets the private IP of the domain controller as the name server for that new DHCP option set.

IMPORTANT: You should not use this template on a production VPC with existing resources like Amazon EC2 instances. When you launch this stack, make sure that you use the new environment and resources (Amazon VPC, subnet, and security group) that were created in the Create and configure an Amazon VPC step.

To launch this stack, choose Launch Stack:

The following table contains information about the parameters available in this template. Review the parameters for the template and provide values for those that require input.

Parameter	Default	Description
VPC ID	Requires input	Launch the domain controller on this VPC (for example, use the VPC created in the Create and configure an Amazon VPC step).
Subnet ID	Requires input	Subnet used for the domain controller (for example, use the subnet created in the Create and configure an Amazon VPC step).
Security group ID	Requires input	Security group (SG) for the domain controller (for example, use the SG created in the Create and configure an Amazon VPC step).
Domain Controller name	DC1	NetBIOS name of the Active Directory server (up to 15 characters).
Active Directory domain	example.com	Fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the forest root domain (for example, `example.com`).
Domain NetBIOS name	EXAMPLE	NetBIOS name of the domain for users of earlier versions of Windows. This name can be up to 15 characters long.
Domain admin user	CrossRealmAdmin	User name for the account that is added as domain administrator. This account is separate from the default administrator account.
Domain admin password	Requires input	Password for the domain admin user. Must be at least eight characters including letters, numbers, and symbols.
Key pair name	Requires input	Name of an existing EC2 key pair to enable access to the domain controller instance.
Instance type	m4.xlarge	Instance type for the domain controller.
EMR Kerberos realm	EC2.INTERNAL	Cluster’s Kerberos realm name. By default, the realm name is derived from the cluster’s VPC domain name in uppercase letters (for example, `EC2.INTERNAL` is the default VPC domain name in the us-east-1 Region).
Cross-realm trust password	Requires input	Password that you want to use for your cross-realm trust.

It takes 25–30 minutes for this stack to be created. When it’s complete, note the stack’s outputs, and then move to the next step: Launch an EMR cluster with Kerberos enabled.

Create a security configuration and launch an Amazon EMR cluster with Kerberos enabled

To launch a kerberized Amazon EMR cluster, you first need to create a security configuration containing the cross-realm trust configuration. You then specify cluster-specific Kerberos attributes when launching the cluster.

In this step, you use AWS CloudFormation to launch and configure a kerberized Amazon EMR cluster with a cross-realm trust. If you want to manually launch and configure a cluster with Kerberos enabled, see Step 6: Launch a Kerberized EMR Cluster in the Amazon EMR documentation.

Note: At the time of this writing, AWS CloudFormation does not yet support launching Amazon EMR clusters with Kerberos authentication enabled. To overcome this limitation, I created a template that uses an AWS Lambda-backed custom resource to launch and configure the Amazon EMR cluster with Kerberos enabled. If you use this template, there’s nothing else that you need to do. Just keep in mind that the template creates and invokes an AWS Lambda function (custom resource) to launch the cluster.

To create a cross-realm trust security configuration and launch a kerberized Amazon EMR cluster using AWS CloudFormation, choose Launch Stack:

The following table lists and describes the template parameters for deploying a kerberized Amazon EMR cluster and configuring a cross-realm trust.

Parameter	Default	Description
Active Directory domain	example.com	The Active Directory domain that you want to establish the cross-realm trust with.
Domain admin user (joiner user)	CrossRealmAdmin	The user name of an Active Directory domain user with privileges to join domains/computers to the Active Directory domain (joiner user).
Domain admin password	Requires input	Password of the joiner user.
Cross-realm trust password	Requires input	Password of your cross-realm trust.
EC2 key pair name	Requires input	Name of an existing key pair, which enables you to connect securely to your cluster after it launches.
Subnet ID	Requires input	Subnet that you want to use for your Amazon EMR cluster (for example, choose the subnet created in the Create and configure an Amazon VPC step).
Security group ID	Requires input	Security group that you want to use for your Amazon EMR cluster (for example, choose the security group created in the Create and configure an Amazon VPC step).
Instance type	m4.xlarge	The instance type that you want to use for the cluster nodes.
Instance count	2	The number of instances (core nodes) for the cluster.
Allowed IP address	10.0.0.0/16	The client IP address can that can reach your cluster. Specify an IP address range in CIDR notation (for example, 203.0.113.5/32). By default, only the VPC CIDR (10.0.0.0/16) can reach the cluster. Be sure to add your client IP range so that you can connect to the cluster using SSH.
EMR applications	Hadoop, Spark, Ganglia, Hive	Comma separated list of the applications that you want installed on the cluster.
EMR Kerberos realm	EC2.INTERNAL	Cluster’s Kerberos realm name. By default, the realm name is derived from the cluster’s VPC domain name in uppercase letters (for example, `EC2.INTERNAL` is the default VPC domain name in the us-east-1 Region).
Trusted AD domain	EXAMPLE.COM	The Active Directory domain that you want to trust. This name is the same as the “AD domain name.” However, it must use all uppercase letters (for example, `EXAMPLE.COM`).

It takes 10–15 minutes for this stack to be created. When it’s complete, note the stack’s outputs, and then move to the next section: Managing and testing the solution.

Managing and testing the solution

Now that you’ve configured and built the solution, it’s time to test it by connecting to a cluster using Active Directory credentials.

SSH to a cluster using Active Directory credentials (single sign-on)

After you launch a kerberized Amazon EMR cluster, if you used the AWS CloudFormation templates and added your client IP range to the Allowed IP address parameter, you should be able to connect to the cluster using an SSH client and your Active Directory user credentials. If you have trouble connecting to the cluster using SSH, check the cluster’s security group to make sure that it allows inbound SSH connection (TCP port 22) from your client’s IP address (source).

The following steps assume that you’re using a client such as OpenSSH. If you’re using a different SSH application (for example, PuTTY), consult the application-specific documentation.

Note: Because the cluster was launched with a cross-realm trust configuration, you don’t need to use a private key (.pem file) when you connect to it as a domain user using SSH.

To connect to your Amazon EMR cluster as an Active Directory user using SSH, run the following command. Replace ad_user with the domain admin user that you created while setting up the domain controller and replace master_node_URL with the cluster’s URL (see the stack’s outputs to find this information):

$ ssh -l <ad_user> <master_node_URL>

If your SSH client is configured to use a key as the preferred authentication method, the login might fail. If that’s the case, you can add the following options to your SSH command to force the SSH connection to use password authentication:

$ ssh -o PreferredAuthentications=password -o PubkeyAuthentication=no -l <ad_user> <master_node_URL>

After a domain user connects to the cluster using SSH, if this is the first that the user is connecting, a local home directory is created for that user. In addition to creating a local home directory, if you used the create-hdfs-home-ba.sh bootstrap action when launching the cluster (done by default if you used the AWS CloudFormation template to launch a kerberized cluster), an HDFS user home directory is also automatically created.

Note: If you manually launched the cluster and did not use the create-hdfs-home-ba.sh bootstrap action, then you’ll need to manually create HDFS user home directories for your users.

When you connect to the cluster using SSH for the first time (as a domain user), you should see the following messages if the HDFS home directory for your domain user was successfully created:

Running jobs on a kerberized Amazon EMR cluster

To run a job on a kerberized cluster, the user submitting the job must first be authenticated. If you followed the previous section to connect to your cluster as an Active Directory user using SSH, the user should be authenticated automatically.

If running the klist command returns a “No credentials cache found” message, it means that the user is not authenticated (the user doesn’t have a Kerberos ticket). You can re-authenticate a user at any time by running the following command (be sure to use all uppercase letters for the Active Directory domain):

$ kinit <username>@<AD_DOMAIN>

When the user is authenticated, they can submit jobs just like they would on a non-kerberized cluster.

Auditing jobs

Another advantage that Kerberos can provide is that you can easily tell which user ran a particular job. For example, connect (using SSH) to a kerberized cluster with an Active Directory user, and submit the SparkPi sample application:

$ spark-example SparkPi

After running the SparkPi application, go to the Amazon EMR console and choose your cluster. Then choose the Application history tab. There you can see information about the application, including the user that submitted the job:

Common issues

Although it would be hard to cover every possible Kerberos issue, this section covers some of the more common issues that might occur and ways to fix them.

Issue 1: You can successfully connect and get authenticated on a cluster. However, whenever you try running job, it fails with an error similar to the following:

org.apache.hadoop.security.AccessControlException: Permission denied

Solution: Make sure that an HDFS home directory for the user was created and that it has the right permissions.

Issue 2: You can successfully connect to the cluster, but you can’t run any Hadoop or HDFS commands.

Solution: Use the klist command to confirm whether the user is authenticated and has a valid Kerberos ticket. Use the kinit command to re-authenticate a user.

Issue 3: You can’t connect (using SSH) to the cluster using Active Directory user credentials, but you can manually authenticate the user with kinit.

Solution: Make sure that the Active Directory domain controller is the DNS server (name server) for the cluster nodes.

Cleaning up

After completing and testing this solution, remember to clean up the resources. If you used the AWS CloudFormation templates to create the resources, then use the AWS CloudFormation console or AWS CLI/SDK to delete the stacks. Deleting a stack also deletes the resources created by that stack.

If one of your stacks does not delete, make sure that there are no dependencies on the resources created by that stack. For example, if you deployed an Amazon VPC using AWS CloudFormation and then deployed a domain controller into that VPC using a different AWS CloudFormation stack, you must first delete the domain controller stack before the VPC stack can be deleted.

Summary

The ability to authenticate users and services with Kerberos not only allows you to secure your big data applications, but it also enables you to easily integrate Amazon EMR clusters with an Active Directory environment. This post showed how you can use Kerberos on Amazon EMR to create a single sign-on solution where Active Directory domain users can seamlessly access Amazon EMR clusters and run big data applications. We also showed how you can use AWS CloudFormation to automate the deployment of this solution.

Wanted: Sales Engineer

2018-01-10 Yev

Post Syndicated from Yev original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wanted-sales-engineer/

At inception, Backblaze was a consumer company. Thousands upon thousands of individuals came to our website and gave us $5/mo to keep their data safe. But, we didn’t sell business solutions. It took us years before we had a sales team. In the last couple of years, we’ve released products that businesses of all sizes love: Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage and Backblaze for Business Computer Backup. Those businesses want to integrate Backblaze deeply into their infrastructure, so it’s time to hire our first Sales Engineer!

Company Description:
Founded in 2007, Backblaze started with a mission to make backup software elegant and provide complete peace of mind. Over the course of almost a decade, we have become a pioneer in robust, scalable low cost cloud backup. Recently, we launched B2 – robust and reliable object storage at just $0.005/gb/mo. Part of our differentiation is being able to offer the lowest price of any of the big players while still being profitable.

We’ve managed to nurture a team oriented culture with amazingly low turnover. We value our people and their families. Don’t forget to check out our “About Us” page to learn more about the people and some of our perks.

We have built a profitable, high growth business. While we love our investors, we have maintained control over the business. That means our corporate goals are simple – grow sustainably and profitably.

Some Backblaze Perks:

Competitive healthcare plans
Competitive compensation and 401k
All employees receive Option grants
Unlimited vacation days
Strong coffee
Fully stocked Micro kitchen
Catered breakfast and lunches
Awesome people who work on awesome projects
Childcare bonus
Normal work hours
Get to bring your pets into the office
San Mateo Office – located near Caltrain and Highways 101 & 280.

Backblaze B2 cloud storage is a building block for almost any computing service that requires storage. Customers need our help integrating B2 into iOS apps to Docker containers. Some customers integrate directly to the API using the programming language of their choice, others want to solve a specific problem using ready made software, already integrated with B2.

At the same time, our computer backup product is deepening it’s integration into enterprise IT systems. We are commonly asked for how to set Windows policies, integrate with Active Directory, and install the client via remote management tools.

We are looking for a sales engineer who can help our customers navigate the integration of Backblaze into their technical environments.

Are you 1/2” deep into many different technologies, and unafraid to dive deeper?

Can you confidently talk with customers about their technology, even if you have to look up all the acronyms right after the call?

Are you excited to setup complicated software in a lab and write knowledge base articles about your work?

Then Backblaze is the place for you!

Enough about Backblaze already, what’s in it for me?
In this role, you will be given the opportunity to learn about the technologies that drive innovation today; diverse technologies that customers are using day in and out. And more importantly, you’ll learn how to learn new technologies.

Just as an example, in the past 12 months, we’ve had the opportunity to learn and become experts in these diverse technologies:

How to setup VM servers for lab environments, both on-prem and using cloud services.
Create an automatically “resetting” demo environment for the sales team.
Setup Microsoft Domain Controllers with Active Directory and AD Federation Services.
Learn the basics of OAUTH and web single sign on (SSO).
Archive video workflows from camera to media asset management systems.
How upload/download files from Javascript by enabling CORS.
How to install and monitor online backup installations using RMM tools, like JAMF.
Tape (LTO) systems. (Yes – people still use tape for storage!)

How can I know if I’ll succeed in this role?

You have:

Confidence. Be able to ask customers questions about their environments and convey to them your technical acumen.
Curiosity. Always want to learn about customers’ situations, how they got there and what problems they are trying to solve.
Organization. You’ll work with customers, integration partners, and Backblaze team members on projects of various lengths. You can context switch and either have a great memory or keep copious notes. Your checklists have their own checklists.

You are versed in:

The fundamentals of Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems. You shouldn’t be afraid to use a command line.

Building, installing, integrating and configuring applications on any operating system.

Debugging failures – reading logs, monitoring usage, effective google searching to fix problems excites you.

The basics of TCP/IP networking and the HTTP protocol.

Novice development skills in any programming/scripting language. Have basic understanding of data structures and program flow.

Your background contains:

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or the equivalent.

2+ years of experience as a pre or post-sales engineer.

The right extra credit:
There are literally hundreds of previous experiences you can have had that would make you perfect for this job. Some experiences that we know would be helpful for us are below, but make sure you tell us your stories!

Experience using or programming against Amazon S3.

Experience with large on-prem storage – NAS, SAN, Object. And backing up data on such storage with tools like Veeam, Veritas and others.

Experience with photo or video media. Media archiving is a key market for Backblaze B2.

Program arduinos to automatically feed your dog.

Experience programming against web or REST APIs. (Point us towards your projects, if they are open source and available to link to.)

Experience with sales tools like Salesforce.

3D print door stops.

Experience with Windows Servers, Active Directory, Group policies and the like.

What’s it like working with the Sales team?
The Backblaze sales team collaborates. We help each other out by sharing ideas, templates, and our customer’s experiences. When we talk about our accomplishments, there is no “I did this,” only “we”. We are truly a team.

We are honest to each other and our customers and communicate openly. We aim to have fun by embracing crazy ideas and creative solutions. We try to think not outside the box, but with no boxes at all. Customers are the driving force behind the success of the company and we care deeply about their success.

If this all sounds like you:

Send an email to [email protected] with the position in the subject line.
Tell us a bit about your Sales Engineering experience.
Include your resume.

The post Wanted: Sales Engineer appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

The Most Viewed AWS Security Blog Posts in 2017

2018-01-03 Craig Liebendorfer

Post Syndicated from Craig Liebendorfer original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/the-most-viewed-aws-security-blog-posts-in-2017/

The following 10 posts were the most viewed AWS Security Blog posts that we published during 2017. You can use this list as a guide to catch up on your AWS Security Blog reading or read a post again that you found particularly useful.

The following 10 posts published since the blog’s inception in April 2013 were the most viewed AWS Security Blog posts in 2017.

Let us know in the comments section below if there is a specific security or compliance topic you would like us to cover on the Security Blog in 2018.

– Craig

Introducing AWS Single Sign-On

2017-12-08 Anand Murugesan

Post Syndicated from Anand Murugesan original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/introducing-aws-single-sign-on/

Today, AWS introduced AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO), a service that makes it easy for you to centrally manage SSO access to multiple AWS accounts and business applications. AWS SSO provides a user portal so that your users can find and access all of their assigned accounts and applications from one place, using their existing corporate credentials. AWS SSO is integrated with AWS Organizations to enable you to manage access to AWS accounts in your organization. In addition, AWS SSO supports Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0, which means you can extend SSO access to your SAML-enabled applications by using the AWS SSO application configuration wizard. AWS SSO also includes built-in SSO integrations with many business applications, such as Salesforce, Box, and Office 365.

In this blog post, I help you get started with AWS SSO by answering three main questions:

What benefits does AWS SSO provide?
What are the key features of AWS SSO?
How do I get started?

1. What benefits does AWS SSO provide?

You can connect your corporate Microsoft Active Directory to AWS SSO so that your users can sign in to the user portal with their user names and passwords to access the AWS accounts and applications to which you have granted them access. The following screenshot shows an example of the AWS SSO user portal.

You can use AWS SSO to centrally assign, manage, and audit your users’ access to multiple AWS accounts and SAML-enabled business applications. You can add new users to the appropriate Active Directory group, which automatically gives them access to the AWS accounts and applications assigned for members of that group. AWS SSO also provides better visibility into which users accessed which accounts and applications from the user portal by recording all user portal sign-in activities in AWS CloudTrail. AWS SSO records details such as the IP address, user name, date, and time of the sign-in request. Any changes made by administrators in the AWS SSO console also are recorded in CloudTrail, and you can use security information and event management (SIEM) solutions such as Splunk to analyze the associated CloudTrail logs.

2. What are the key features of AWS SSO?

AWS SSO includes the following key features.

AWS SSO user portal: In the user portal, your users can easily find and access all applications and AWS accounts to which you have granted them access. Users can access the user portal with their corporate Active Directory credentials and access these applications without needing to enter their user name and password again.

Integration with AWS Organizations: AWS SSO is integrated with Organizations to enable you to manage access to all AWS accounts in your organization. When you enable AWS SSO in your organization’s master account, AWS SSO lists all the accounts managed in your organization for which you can enable SSO access to AWS consoles.

Integration with on-premises Active Directory: AWS SSO integrates with your on-premises Active Directory by using AWS Directory Service. Users can access AWS accounts and business applications by using their Active Directory credentials. You can manage which users or groups in your corporate directory can access which AWS accounts.

Centralized permissions management: With AWS SSO, you can centrally manage the permissions granted to users when they access AWS accounts via the AWS Management Console. You define users’ permissions as permission sets, which are collections of permissions that are based on a combination of AWS managed policies or AWS managed policies for job functions. AWS managed policies are designed to provide permissions for many common use cases, and AWS managed policies for job functions are designed to closely align with common job functions in the IT industry.

With AWS SSO, you can configure all the necessary user permissions to your AWS resources in your AWS accounts by applying permission sets. For example, you can grant database administrators broad permissions to Amazon Relational Database Service in your development accounts, but limit their permissions in your production accounts. As you change these permission sets, AWS SSO helps you keep them updated in all relevant AWS accounts, allowing you to manage permissions centrally.

Application configuration wizard: You can configure SSO access to any SAML-enabled business application by using the AWS SSO application configuration wizard.

Built-in SSO integrations: AWS SSO provides built-in SSO integrations and step-by-step configuration instructions for many commonly used business applications such as Office 365, Salesforce, and Box.

Centralized auditing: AWS SSO logs all sign-in and administrative activities in CloudTrail. You can send these logs to SIEM solutions such as Splunk to analyze them.

Highly available multi-tenant SSO infrastructure: AWS SSO is built on a highly available, AWS managed SSO infrastructure. The AWS SSO multi-tenant architecture enables you to start using the service quickly without needing to procure hardware or install software.

3. How do I get started?

To get started, connect your corporate Active Directory to AWS SSO by using AWS Directory Service. You have two choices to connect your corporate directory: use AD Connector, or configure an Active Directory trust with your on-premises Active Directory. After connecting your corporate directory, you can set up accounts and applications for SSO access. You also can use AWS Managed Microsoft AD in the cloud to manage your users and groups in the cloud, if you don’t have an on-premises Active Directory or don’t want to connect to on-premises Active Directory.

The preceding diagram shows how AWS SSO helps connect your users to the AWS accounts and business applications to which they need access. The numbers in the diagram correspond to the following use cases.

Use case 1: Manage SSO access to AWS accounts

With AWS SSO, you can grant your users access to AWS accounts in your organization. You can do this by adding your users to groups in your corporate Active Directory. In AWS SSO, specify which Active Directory groups can access which AWS accounts, and then pick a permission set to specify the level of SSO access you are granting these Active Directory groups. AWS SSO then sets up AWS account access for the users in the groups. Going forward, you can add new users to your Active Directory groups, and AWS SSO automatically provides the users access to the configured accounts. You also can grant Active Directory users direct access to AWS accounts (without needing to add users to Active Directory groups).

To configure AWS account access for your users:

Navigate to the AWS SSO console, and choose AWS accounts from the navigation pane. Choose which accounts you want users to access from the list of accounts. For this example, I am choosing three accounts from my MarketingBU organizational unit. I then choose Assign users.
Choose Users, start typing to search for users, and then choose Search connected directory. This search will return a list of users from your connected directory. You can also search for groups.
To select permission sets, you first have to create one. Choose Create new permission set.
You can use an existing job function policy to create a permission set. This type of policy allows you to apply predefined AWS managed policies to a permission set that are based on common job functions in the IT industry. Alternatively, you can create a custom permission set based on custom policies.
For this example, I choose the SecurityAudit job function policy and then choose Create. As a result, this permission set will be available for me to pick on the next screen.
Choose a permission set to indicate what level of access you want to grant your users. For this example, I assign the SecurityAudit permission set I created in the previous step to the users I chose. I then choose Finish.
Your users can sign in to the user portal and access the accounts to which you gave them access. AWS SSO automatically sets up the necessary trust between accounts to enable SSO. AWS SSO also sets up the necessary permissions in each account. This helps you scale your administrative tasks across multiple AWS accounts.
The users can choose an account and a permission set to sign in to that account without needing to provide a password again. For example, if you grant a user two permission sets—one that is more restrictive and one that is less restrictive—the user can choose which permission set to use for a specific session. In the following screenshot, John has signed in to the AWS SSO user portal. He can see all the accounts to which he has access. For example, he can sign in to the Production Account with SecurityAudit permissions.

Use case 2: Manage SSO access to business applications

AWS SSO has built-in support for SSO access to commonly used business applications such as Salesforce, Office 365, and Box. You can find these applications in the AWS SSO console and easily configure SSO access by using the application configuration wizard. After you configure an application for SSO access, you can grant users access by searching for users and groups in your corporate directory. For a complete list of supported applications, navigate to the AWS SSO console.

To configure SSO access to business applications:

Navigate to the AWS SSO console and choose Applications from the navigation pane.
Choose Add a new application and choose one or more of the applications in the list. For this example, I have chosen Dropbox.
Depending on which application you choose, you will be asked to complete step-by-step instructions to configure the application for SSO access. The instructions guide you to use the details provided in the AWS SSO metadata section to configure your application, and then to provide your application details in the Application metadata section. Choose Save changes when you are done.
Optionally, you can provide additional SAML attribute mappings by choosing the Attribute mappings tab. You need to do this only if you want to pass user attributes from your corporate directory to the application.
To give your users access to this application, choose the Assigned users tab. Choose Assign users to search your connected directory, and choose a user or group that can access this application.

Use case 3: Manage SSO access to custom SAML-enabled applications

You also can enable SSO access to your custom-built or partner-built SAML applications by using the AWS SSO application configuration wizard.

To configure SSO access to SAML-enabled applications:

Navigate to the AWS SSO console and choose Applications from the navigation pane.
Choose Add a new application, choose Custom SAML 2.0 application, and choose Add.
On the Custom SAML 2.0 application page, copy or download the AWS SSO metadata from the AWS SSO metadata section to configure your custom SAML-enabled application to recognize AWS SSO as an identity provider.
On the same page, complete the application configuration details in the Application metadata section, and choose Save changes.
You can provide additional SAML attribute mappings to be passed to your application in the SAML assertion by choosing the Attribute mappings tab. See the documentation for list of all available attributes.
To give your users access to this application, choose the Assigned users tab. Choose Assign users to search your connected directory, and choose a user or group that can access this application.

Summary

In this blog post, I introduced AWS SSO and explained its key features, benefits, and use cases. With AWS SSO, you can centrally manage and audit SSO access to all your AWS accounts, cloud applications, and custom applications. To start using AWS SSO, navigate to the AWS SSO console.

If you have feedback or questions about AWS SSO, start a new thread on the AWS SSO forum.

– Anand

AWS Big Data & Analytics Sessions at Re:Invent 2017

2017-11-24 Roy Ben-Alta

Post Syndicated from Roy Ben-Alta original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/aws-big-data-analytics-sessions-at-reinvent-2017/

We can’t believe that there are just few days left before re:Invent 2017. If you are attending this year, you’ll want to check out our Big Data sessions! The Big Data and Machine Learning categories are bigger than ever. As in previous years, you can find these sessions in various tracks, including Analytics & Big Data, Deep Learning Summit, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Architecture, and Databases.

We have great sessions from organizations and companies like Vanguard, Cox Automotive, Pinterest, Netflix, FINRA, Amtrak, AmazonFresh, Sysco Foods, Twilio, American Heart Association, Expedia, Esri, Nextdoor, and many more. All sessions are recorded and made available on YouTube. In addition, all slide decks from the sessions will be available on SlideShare.net after the conference.

This post highlights the sessions that will be presented as part of the Analytics & Big Data track, as well as relevant sessions from other tracks like Architecture, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, and IoT. If you’re interested in Machine Learning sessions, don’t forget to check out our Guide to Machine Learning at re:Invent 2017.

This year’s session catalog contains the following breakout sessions.

DAT201 – AWS Database and Analytics State of the Union – Thursday

Raju Gulabani, VP, Database, Analytics and AI at AWS will discuss the evolution of database and analytics services in AWS, the new database and analytics services and features we launched this year, and our vision for continued innovation in this space. We are witnessing an unprecedented growth in the amount of data collected, in many different forms. Storage, management, and analysis of this data require database services that scale and perform in ways not possible before. AWS offers a collection of database and other data services—including Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon Kinesis, and Amazon EMR—to process, store, manage, and analyze data. In this session, we provide an overview of AWS database and analytics services and discuss how customers are using these services today.

Deep dive customer use cases

ABD401 – How Netflix Monitors Applications in Near Real-Time with Amazon Kinesis
Thousands of services work in concert to deliver millions of hours of video streams to Netflix customers every day. These applications vary in size, function, and technology, but they all make use of the Netflix network to communicate. Understanding the interactions between these services is a daunting challenge both because of the sheer volume of traffic and the dynamic nature of deployments. In this session, we first discuss why Netflix chose Kinesis Streams to address these challenges at scale. We then dive deep into how Netflix uses Kinesis Streams to enrich network traffic logs and identify usage patterns in real time. Lastly, we cover how Netflix uses this system to build comprehensive dependency maps, increase network efficiency, and improve failure resiliency. From this session, you will learn how to build a real-time application monitoring system using network traffic logs and get real-time, actionable insights.

SRV319 – How Nextdoor Built a Scalable, Serverless Data Pipeline for Billions of Events per Day

In this session, learn how Nextdoor replaced their home-grown data pipeline based on a topology of Flume nodes with a completely serverless architecture based on Kinesis and Lambda. By making these changes, they improved both the reliability of their data and the delivery times of billions of records of data to their Amazon S3–based data lake and Amazon Redshift cluster. Nextdoor is a private social networking service for neighborhoods.

ABD205 – Taking a Page Out of Ivy Tech’s Book: Using Data for Student Success
Data speaks. Discover how Ivy Tech, the nation’s largest singly accredited community college, uses AWS to gather, analyze, and take action on student behavioral data for the betterment of over 3,100 students. This session outlines the process from inception to implementation across the state of Indiana and highlights how Ivy Tech’s model can be applied to your own complex business problems.

ABD207 – Leveraging AWS to Fight Financial Crime and Protect National Security
Banks aren’t known to share data and collaborate with one another. But that is exactly what the Mid-Sized Bank Coalition of America (MBCA) is doing to fight digital financial crime—and protect national security. Using the AWS Cloud, the MBCA developed a shared data analytics utility that processes terabytes of non-competitive customer account, transaction, and government risk data. The intelligence produced from the data helps banks increase the efficiency of their operations, cut labor and operating costs, and reduce false positive volumes. The collective intelligence also allows greater enforcement of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations by helping members detect internal risks—and identify the challenges to detecting these risks in the first place. This session demonstrates how the AWS Cloud supports the MBCA to deliver advanced data analytics, provide consistent operating models across financial institutions, reduce costs, and strengthen national security.

ABD208 – Cox Automotive Empowered to Scale with Splunk Cloud & AWS and Explores New Innovation with Amazon Kinesis Firehose
In this session, learn how Cox Automotive is using Splunk Cloud for real time visibility into its AWS and hybrid environments to achieve near instantaneous MTTI, reduce auction incidents by 90%, and proactively predict outages. We also introduce a highly anticipated capability that allows you to ingest, transform, and analyze data in real time using Splunk and Amazon Kinesis Firehose to gain valuable insights from your cloud resources. It’s now quicker and easier than ever to gain access to analytics-driven infrastructure monitoring using Splunk Enterprise & Splunk Cloud.

ABD209 – Accelerating the Speed of Innovation with a Data Sciences Data & Analytics Hub at Takeda
Historically, silos of data, analytics, and processes across functions, stages of development, and geography created a barrier to R&D efficiency. Gathering the right data necessary for decision-making was challenging due to issues of accessibility, trust, and timeliness. In this session, learn how Takeda is undergoing a transformation in R&D to increase the speed-to-market of high-impact therapies to improve patient lives. The Data and Analytics Hub was built, with Deloitte, to address these issues and support the efficient generation of data insights for functions such as clinical operations, clinical development, medical affairs, portfolio management, and R&D finance. In the AWS hosted data lake, this data is processed, integrated, and made available to business end users through data visualization interfaces, and to data scientists through direct connectivity. Learn how Takeda has achieved significant time reductions—from weeks to minutes—to gather and provision data that has the potential to reduce cycle times in drug development. The hub also enables more efficient operations and alignment to achieve product goals through cross functional team accountability and collaboration due to the ability to access the same cross domain data.

ABD210 – Modernizing Amtrak: Serverless Solution for Real-Time Data Capabilities
As the nation’s only high-speed intercity passenger rail provider, Amtrak needs to know critical information to run their business such as: Who’s onboard any train at any time? How are booking and revenue trending? Amtrak was faced with unpredictable and often slow response times from existing databases, ranging from seconds to hours; existing booking and revenue dashboards were spreadsheet-based and manual; multiple copies of data were stored in different repositories, lacking integration and consistency; and operations and maintenance (O&M) costs were relatively high. Join us as we demonstrate how Deloitte and Amtrak successfully went live with a cloud-native operational database and analytical datamart for near-real-time reporting in under six months. We highlight the specific challenges and the modernization of architecture on an AWS native Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution. The solution includes cloud-native components such as AWS Lambda for microservices, Amazon Kinesis and AWS Data Pipeline for moving data, Amazon S3 for storage, Amazon DynamoDB for a managed NoSQL database service, and Amazon Redshift for near-real time reports and dashboards. Deloitte’s solution enabled “at scale” processing of 1 million transactions/day and up to 2K transactions/minute. It provided flexibility and scalability, largely eliminate the need for system management, and dramatically reduce operating costs. Moreover, it laid the groundwork for decommissioning legacy systems, anticipated to save at least $1M over 3 years.

ABD211 – Sysco Foods: A Journey from Too Much Data to Curated Insights
In this session, we detail Sysco’s journey from a company focused on hindsight-based reporting to one focused on insights and foresight. For this shift, Sysco moved from multiple data warehouses to an AWS ecosystem, including Amazon Redshift, Amazon EMR, AWS Data Pipeline, and more. As the team at Sysco worked with Tableau, they gained agile insight across their business. Learn how Sysco decided to use AWS, how they scaled, and how they became more strategic with the AWS ecosystem and Tableau.

ABD217 – From Batch to Streaming: How Amazon Flex Uses Real-time Analytics to Deliver Packages on Time
Reducing the time to get actionable insights from data is important to all businesses, and customers who employ batch data analytics tools are exploring the benefits of streaming analytics. Learn best practices to extend your architecture from data warehouses and databases to real-time solutions. Learn how to use Amazon Kinesis to get real-time data insights and integrate them with Amazon Aurora, Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon S3. The Amazon Flex team describes how they used streaming analytics in their Amazon Flex mobile app, used by Amazon delivery drivers to deliver millions of packages each month on time. They discuss the architecture that enabled the move from a batch processing system to a real-time system, overcoming the challenges of migrating existing batch data to streaming data, and how to benefit from real-time analytics.

ABD218 – How EuroLeague Basketball Uses IoT Analytics to Engage Fans
IoT and big data have made their way out of industrial applications, general automation, and consumer goods, and are now a valuable tool for improving consumer engagement across a number of industries, including media, entertainment, and sports. The low cost and ease of implementation of AWS analytics services and AWS IoT have allowed AGT, a leader in IoT, to develop their IoTA analytics platform. Using IoTA, AGT brought a tailored solution to EuroLeague Basketball for real-time content production and fan engagement during the 2017-18 season. In this session, we take a deep dive into how this solution is architected for secure, scalable, and highly performant data collection from athletes, coaches, and fans. We also talk about how the data is transformed into insights and integrated into a content generation pipeline. Lastly, we demonstrate how this solution can be easily adapted for other industries and applications.

ABD222 – How to Confidently Unleash Data to Meet the Needs of Your Entire Organization
Where are you on the spectrum of IT leaders? Are you confident that you’re providing the technology and solutions that consistently meet or exceed the needs of your internal customers? Do your peers at the executive table see you as an innovative technology leader? Innovative IT leaders understand the value of getting data and analytics directly into the hands of decision makers, and into their own. In this session, Daren Thayne, Domo’s Chief Technology Officer, shares how innovative IT leaders are helping drive a culture change at their organizations. See how transformative it can be to have real-time access to all of the data that’ is relevant to YOUR job (including a complete view of your entire AWS environment), as well as understand how it can help you lead the way in applying that same pattern throughout your entire company

ABD303 – Developing an Insights Platform – Sysco’s Journey from Disparate Systems to Data Lake and Beyond
Sysco has nearly 200 operating companies across its multiple lines of business throughout the United States, Canada, Central/South America, and Europe. As the global leader in food services, Sysco identified the need to streamline the collection, transformation, and presentation of data produced by the distributed units and systems, into a central data ecosystem. Sysco’s Business Intelligence and Analytics team addressed these requirements by creating a data lake with scalable analytics and query engines leveraging AWS services. In this session, Sysco will outline their journey from a hindsight reporting focused company to an insights driven organization. They will cover solution architecture, challenges, and lessons learned from deploying a self-service insights platform. They will also walk through the design patterns they used and how they designed the solution to provide predictive analytics using Amazon Redshift Spectrum, Amazon S3, Amazon EMR, AWS Glue, Amazon Elasticsearch Service and other AWS services.

ABD309 – How Twilio Scaled Its Data-Driven Culture
As a leading cloud communications platform, Twilio has always been strongly data-driven. But as headcount and data volumes grew—and grew quickly—they faced many new challenges. One-off, static reports work when you’re a small startup, but how do you support a growth stage company to a successful IPO and beyond? Today, Twilio’s data team relies on AWS and Looker to provide data access to 700 colleagues. Departments have the data they need to make decisions, and cloud-based scale means they get answers fast. Data delivers real-business value at Twilio, providing a 360-degree view of their customer, product, and business. In this session, you hear firsthand stories directly from the Twilio data team and learn real-world tips for fostering a truly data-driven culture at scale.

ABD310 – How FINRA Secures Its Big Data and Data Science Platform on AWS
FINRA uses big data and data science technologies to detect fraud, market manipulation, and insider trading across US capital markets. As a financial regulator, FINRA analyzes highly sensitive data, so information security is critical. Learn how FINRA secures its Amazon S3 Data Lake and its data science platform on Amazon EMR and Amazon Redshift, while empowering data scientists with tools they need to be effective. In addition, FINRA shares AWS security best practices, covering topics such as AMI updates, micro segmentation, encryption, key management, logging, identity and access management, and compliance.

ABD331 – Log Analytics at Expedia Using Amazon Elasticsearch Service
Expedia uses Amazon Elasticsearch Service (Amazon ES) for a variety of mission-critical use cases, ranging from log aggregation to application monitoring and pricing optimization. In this session, the Expedia team reviews how they use Amazon ES and Kibana to analyze and visualize Docker startup logs, AWS CloudTrail data, and application metrics. They share best practices for architecting a scalable, secure log analytics solution using Amazon ES, so you can add new data sources almost effortlessly and get insights quickly

ABD316 – American Heart Association: Finding Cures to Heart Disease Through the Power of Technology
Combining disparate datasets and making them accessible to data scientists and researchers is a prevalent challenge for many organizations, not just in healthcare research. American Heart Association (AHA) has built a data science platform using Amazon EMR, Amazon Elasticsearch Service, and other AWS services, that corrals multiple datasets and enables advanced research on phenotype and genotype datasets, aimed at curing heart diseases. In this session, we present how AHA built this platform and the key challenges they addressed with the solution. We also provide a demo of the platform, and leave you with suggestions and next steps so you can build similar solutions for your use cases

ABD319 – Tooling Up for Efficiency: DIY Solutions @ Netflix
At Netflix, we have traditionally approached cloud efficiency from a human standpoint, whether it be in-person meetings with the largest service teams or manually flipping reservations. Over time, we realized that these manual processes are not scalable as the business continues to grow. Therefore, in the past year, we have focused on building out tools that allow us to make more insightful, data-driven decisions around capacity and efficiency. In this session, we discuss the DIY applications, dashboards, and processes we built to help with capacity and efficiency. We start at the ten thousand foot view to understand the unique business and cloud problems that drove us to create these products, and discuss implementation details, including the challenges encountered along the way. Tools discussed include Picsou, the successor to our AWS billing file cost analyzer; Libra, an easy-to-use reservation conversion application; and cost and efficiency dashboards that relay useful financial context to 50+ engineering teams and managers.

ABD312 – Deep Dive: Migrating Big Data Workloads to AWS
Customers are migrating their analytics, data processing (ETL), and data science workloads running on Apache Hadoop, Spark, and data warehouse appliances from on-premise deployments to AWS in order to save costs, increase availability, and improve performance. AWS offers a broad set of analytics services, including solutions for batch processing, stream processing, machine learning, data workflow orchestration, and data warehousing. This session will focus on identifying the components and workflows in your current environment; and providing the best practices to migrate these workloads to the right AWS data analytics product. We will cover services such as Amazon EMR, Amazon Athena, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Kinesis, and more. We will also feature Vanguard, an American investment management company based in Malvern, Pennsylvania with over $4.4 trillion in assets under management. Ritesh Shah, Sr. Program Manager for Cloud Analytics Program at Vanguard, will describe how they orchestrated their migration to AWS analytics services, including Hadoop and Spark workloads to Amazon EMR. Ritesh will highlight the technical challenges they faced and overcame along the way, as well as share common recommendations and tuning tips to accelerate the time to production.

ABD402 – How Esri Optimizes Massive Image Archives for Analytics in the Cloud
Petabyte scale archives of satellites, planes, and drones imagery continue to grow exponentially. They mostly exist as semi-structured data, but they are only valuable when accessed and processed by a wide range of products for both visualization and analysis. This session provides an overview of how ArcGIS indexes and structures data so that any part of it can be quickly accessed, processed, and analyzed by reading only the minimum amount of data needed for the task. In this session, we share best practices for structuring and compressing massive datasets in Amazon S3, so it can be analyzed efficiently. We also review a number of different image formats, including GeoTIFF (used for the Public Datasets on AWS program, Landsat on AWS), cloud optimized GeoTIFF, MRF, and CRF as well as different compression approaches to show the effect on processing performance. Finally, we provide examples of how this technology has been used to help image processing and analysis for the response to Hurricane Harvey.

ABD329 – A Look Under the Hood – How Amazon.com Uses AWS Services for Analytics at Massive Scale
Amazon’s consumer business continues to grow, and so does the volume of data and the number and complexity of the analytics done in support of the business. In this session, we talk about how Amazon.com uses AWS technologies to build a scalable environment for data and analytics. We look at how Amazon is evolving the world of data warehousing with a combination of a data lake and parallel, scalable compute engines such as Amazon EMR and Amazon Redshift.

ABD327 – Migrating Your Traditional Data Warehouse to a Modern Data Lake
In this session, we discuss the latest features of Amazon Redshift and Redshift Spectrum, and take a deep dive into its architecture and inner workings. We share many of the recent availability, performance, and management enhancements and how they improve your end user experience. You also hear from 21st Century Fox, who presents a case study of their fast migration from an on-premises data warehouse to Amazon Redshift. Learn how they are expanding their data warehouse to a data lake that encompasses multiple data sources and data formats. This architecture helps them tie together siloed business units and get actionable 360-degree insights across their consumer base.

MCL202 – Ally Bank & Cognizant: Transforming Customer Experience Using Amazon Alexa
Given the increasing popularity of natural language interfaces such as Voice as User technology or conversational artificial intelligence (AI), Ally® Bank was looking to interact with customers by enabling direct transactions through conversation or voice. They also needed to develop a capability that allows third parties to connect to the bank securely for information sharing and exchange, using oAuth, an authentication protocol seen as the future of secure banking technology. Cognizant’s Architecture team partnered with Ally Bank’s Enterprise Architecture group and identified the right product for oAuth integration with Amazon Alexa and third-party technologies. In this session, we discuss how building products with conversational AI helps Ally Bank offer an innovative customer experience; increase retention through improved data-driven personalization; increase the efficiency and convenience of customer service; and gain deep insights into customer needs through data analysis and predictive analytics to offer new products and services.

MCL317 – Orchestrating Machine Learning Training for Netflix Recommendations
At Netflix, we use machine learning (ML) algorithms extensively to recommend relevant titles to our 100+ million members based on their tastes. Everything on the member home page is an evidence-driven, A/B-tested experience that we roll out backed by ML models. These models are trained using Meson, our workflow orchestration system. Meson distinguishes itself from other workflow engines by handling more sophisticated execution graphs, such as loops and parameterized fan-outs. Meson can schedule Spark jobs, Docker containers, bash scripts, gists of Scala code, and more. Meson also provides a rich visual interface for monitoring active workflows and inspecting execution logs. It has a powerful Scala DSL for authoring workflows as well as the REST API. In this session, we focus on how Meson trains recommendation ML models in production, and how we have re-architected it to scale up for a growing need of broad ETL applications within Netflix. As a driver for this change, we have had to evolve the persistence layer for Meson. We talk about how we migrated from Cassandra to Amazon RDS backed by Amazon Aurora

MCL350 – Humans vs. the Machines: How Pinterest Uses Amazon Mechanical Turk’s Worker Community to Improve Machine Learning
Ever since the term “crowdsourcing” was coined in 2006, it’s been a buzzword for technology companies and social institutions. In the technology sector, crowdsourcing is instrumental for verifying machine learning algorithms, which, in turn, improves the user’s experience. In this session, we explore how Pinterest adapted to an increased reliability on human evaluation to improve their product, with a focus on how they’ve integrated with Mechanical Turk’s platform. This presentation is aimed at engineers, analysts, program managers, and product managers who are interested in how companies rely on Mechanical Turk’s human evaluation platform to better understand content and improve machine learning algorithms. The discussion focuses on the analysis and product decisions related to building a high quality crowdsourcing system that takes advantage of Mechanical Turk’s powerful worker community.

Service sessions: architecture and best practices

Featuring Amazon EMR, Amazon Athena, Amazon Kinesis, AWS Glue, Amazon QuickSight, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Elasticsearch Service, and Amazon DynamoDB.

ABD201 – Big Data Architectural Patterns and Best Practices on AWS
In this session, we simplify big data processing as a data bus comprising various stages: collect, store, process, analyze, and visualize. Next, we discuss how to choose the right technology in each stage based on criteria such as data structure, query latency, cost, request rate, item size, data volume, durability, and so on. Finally, we provide reference architectures, design patterns, and best practices for assembling these technologies to solve your big data problems at the right cost

ABD202 – Best Practices for Building Serverless Big Data Applications
Serverless technologies let you build and scale applications and services rapidly without the need to provision or manage servers. In this session, we show you how to incorporate serverless concepts into your big data architectures. We explore the concepts behind and benefits of serverless architectures for big data, looking at design patterns to ingest, store, process, and visualize your data. Along the way, we explain when and how you can use serverless technologies to streamline data processing, minimize infrastructure management, and improve agility and robustness and share a reference architecture using a combination of cloud and open source technologies to solve your big data problems. Topics include: use cases and best practices for serverless big data applications; leveraging AWS technologies such as Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon S3, Amazon Kinesis, AWS Lambda, Amazon Athena, and Amazon EMR; and serverless ETL, event processing, ad hoc analysis, and real-time analytics.

ABD206 – Building Visualizations and Dashboards with Amazon QuickSight
Just as a picture is worth a thousand words, a visual is worth a thousand data points. A key aspect of our ability to gain insights from our data is to look for patterns, and these patterns are often not evident when we simply look at data in tables. The right visualization will help you gain a deeper understanding in a much quicker timeframe. In this session, we will show you how to quickly and easily visualize your data using Amazon QuickSight. We will show you how you can connect to data sources, generate custom metrics and calculations, create comprehensive business dashboards with various chart types, and setup filters and drill downs to slice and dice the data.

ABD203 – Real-Time Streaming Applications on AWS: Use Cases and Patterns
To win in the marketplace and provide differentiated customer experiences, businesses need to be able to use live data in real time to facilitate fast decision making. In this session, you learn common streaming data processing use cases and architectures. First, we give an overview of streaming data and AWS streaming data capabilities. Next, we look at a few customer examples and their real-time streaming applications. Finally, we walk through common architectures and design patterns of top streaming data use cases.

ABD213 – How to Build a Data Lake with AWS Glue Data Catalog
As data volumes grow and customers store more data on AWS, they often have valuable data that is not easily discoverable and available for analytics. The AWS Glue Data Catalog provides a central view of your data lake, making data readily available for analytics. We introduce key features of the AWS Glue Data Catalog and its use cases. Learn how crawlers can automatically discover your data, extract relevant metadata, and add it as table definitions to the AWS Glue Data Catalog. We will also explore the integration between AWS Glue Data Catalog and Amazon Athena, Amazon EMR, and Amazon Redshift Spectrum.

ABD214 – Real-time User Insights for Mobile and Web Applications with Amazon Pinpoint
With customers demanding relevant and real-time experiences across a range of devices, digital businesses are looking to gather user data at scale, understand this data, and respond to customer needs instantly. This requires tools that can record large volumes of user data in a structured fashion, and then instantly make this data available to generate insights. In this session, we demonstrate how you can use Amazon Pinpoint to capture user data in a structured yet flexible manner. Further, we demonstrate how this data can be set up for instant consumption using services like Amazon Kinesis Firehose and Amazon Redshift. We walk through example data based on real world scenarios, to illustrate how Amazon Pinpoint lets you easily organize millions of events, record them in real-time, and store them for further analysis.

ABD223 – IT Innovators: New Technology for Leveraging Data to Enable Agility, Innovation, and Business Optimization
Companies of all sizes are looking for technology to efficiently leverage data and their existing IT investments to stay competitive and understand where to find new growth. Regardless of where companies are in their data-driven journey, they face greater demands for information by customers, prospects, partners, vendors and employees. All stakeholders inside and outside the organization want information on-demand or in “real time”, available anywhere on any device. They want to use it to optimize business outcomes without having to rely on complex software tools or human gatekeepers to relevant information. Learn how IT innovators at companies such as MasterCard, Jefferson Health, and TELUS are using Domo’s Business Cloud to help their organizations more effectively leverage data at scale.

ABD301 – Analyzing Streaming Data in Real Time with Amazon Kinesis
Amazon Kinesis makes it easy to collect, process, and analyze real-time, streaming data so you can get timely insights and react quickly to new information. In this session, we present an end-to-end streaming data solution using Kinesis Streams for data ingestion, Kinesis Analytics for real-time processing, and Kinesis Firehose for persistence. We review in detail how to write SQL queries using streaming data and discuss best practices to optimize and monitor your Kinesis Analytics applications. Lastly, we discuss how to estimate the cost of the entire system

ABD302 – Real-Time Data Exploration and Analytics with Amazon Elasticsearch Service and Kibana
In this session, we use Apache web logs as example and show you how to build an end-to-end analytics solution. First, we cover how to configure an Amazon ES cluster and ingest data using Amazon Kinesis Firehose. We look at best practices for choosing instance types, storage options, shard counts, and index rotations based on the throughput of incoming data. Then we demonstrate how to set up a Kibana dashboard and build custom dashboard widgets. Finally, we review approaches for generating custom, ad-hoc reports.

ABD304 – Best Practices for Data Warehousing with Amazon Redshift & Redshift Spectrum
Most companies are over-run with data, yet they lack critical insights to make timely and accurate business decisions. They are missing the opportunity to combine large amounts of new, unstructured big data that resides outside their data warehouse with trusted, structured data inside their data warehouse. In this session, we take an in-depth look at how modern data warehousing blends and analyzes all your data, inside and outside your data warehouse without moving the data, to give you deeper insights to run your business. We will cover best practices on how to design optimal schemas, load data efficiently, and optimize your queries to deliver high throughput and performance.

ABD305 – Design Patterns and Best Practices for Data Analytics with Amazon EMR
Amazon EMR is one of the largest Hadoop operators in the world, enabling customers to run ETL, machine learning, real-time processing, data science, and low-latency SQL at petabyte scale. In this session, we introduce you to Amazon EMR design patterns such as using Amazon S3 instead of HDFS, taking advantage of both long and short-lived clusters, and other Amazon EMR architectural best practices. We talk about lowering cost with Auto Scaling and Spot Instances, and security best practices for encryption and fine-grained access control. Finally, we dive into some of our recent launches to keep you current on our latest features.

ABD307 – Deep Analytics for Global AWS Marketing Organization
To meet the needs of the global marketing organization, the AWS marketing analytics team built a scalable platform that allows the data science team to deliver custom econometric and machine learning models for end user self-service. To meet data security standards, we use end-to-end data encryption and different AWS services such as Amazon Redshift, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, Amazon EMR with Apache Spark and Auto Scaling. In this session, you see real examples of how we have scaled and automated critical analysis, such as calculating the impact of marketing programs like re:Invent and prioritizing leads for our sales teams.

ABD311 – Deploying Business Analytics at Enterprise Scale with Amazon QuickSight
One of the biggest tradeoffs customers usually make when deploying BI solutions at scale is agility versus governance. Large-scale BI implementations with the right governance structure can take months to design and deploy. In this session, learn how you can avoid making this tradeoff using Amazon QuickSight. Learn how to easily deploy Amazon QuickSight to thousands of users using Active Directory and Federated SSO, while securely accessing your data sources in Amazon VPCs or on-premises. We also cover how to control access to your datasets, implement row-level security, create scheduled email reports, and audit access to your data.

ABD315 – Building Serverless ETL Pipelines with AWS Glue
Organizations need to gain insight and knowledge from a growing number of Internet of Things (IoT), APIs, clickstreams, unstructured and log data sources. However, organizations are also often limited by legacy data warehouses and ETL processes that were designed for transactional data. In this session, we introduce key ETL features of AWS Glue, cover common use cases ranging from scheduled nightly data warehouse loads to near real-time, event-driven ETL flows for your data lake. We discuss how to build scalable, efficient, and serverless ETL pipelines using AWS Glue. Additionally, Merck will share how they built an end-to-end ETL pipeline for their application release management system, and launched it in production in less than a week using AWS Glue.

ABD318 – Architecting a data lake with Amazon S3, Amazon Kinesis, and Amazon Athena
Learn how to architect a data lake where different teams within your organization can publish and consume data in a self-service manner. As organizations aim to become more data-driven, data engineering teams have to build architectures that can cater to the needs of diverse users – from developers, to business analysts, to data scientists. Each of these user groups employs different tools, have different data needs and access data in different ways. In this talk, we will dive deep into assembling a data lake using Amazon S3, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Athena, Amazon EMR, and AWS Glue. The session will feature Mohit Rao, Architect and Integration lead at Atlassian, the maker of products such as JIRA, Confluence, and Stride. First, we will look at a couple of common architectures for building a data lake. Then we will show how Atlassian built a self-service data lake, where any team within the company can publish a dataset to be consumed by a broad set of users.

ABD 323 Extending Analytics Beyond the Data warehouse

Companies have valuable data that they may not be analyzing due to the complexity, scalability, and performance issues of loading the data into their data warehouse. However, with the right tools, you can extend your analytics to query data in your data lake—with no loading required. Amazon Redshift Spectrum extends the analytic power of Amazon Redshift beyond data stored in your data warehouse to run SQL queries directly against vast amounts of unstructured data in your Amazon S3 data lake. This gives you the freedom to store your data where you want, in the format you want, and have it available for analytics when you need it. Join a discussion with AWS solution architects to ask question.

ABD330 – Combining Batch and Stream Processing to Get the Best of Both Worlds
Today, many architects and developers are looking to build solutions that integrate batch and real-time data processing, and deliver the best of both approaches. Lambda architecture (not to be confused with the AWS Lambda service) is a design pattern that leverages both batch and real-time processing within a single solution to meet the latency, accuracy, and throughput requirements of big data use cases. Come join us for a discussion on how to implement Lambda architecture (batch, speed, and serving layers) and best practices for data processing, loading, and performance tuning

ABD335 – Real-Time Anomaly Detection Using Amazon Kinesis
Amazon Kinesis Analytics offers a built-in machine learning algorithm that you can use to easily detect anomalies in your VPC network traffic and improve security monitoring. Join us for an interactive discussion on how to stream your VPC flow Logs to Amazon Kinesis Streams and identify anomalies using Kinesis Analytics.

ABD339 – Deep Dive and Best Practices for Amazon Athena
Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that enables you to process data directly from Amazon S3 without the need for infrastructure. Since its launch at re:invent 2016, several organizations have adopted Athena as the central tool to process all their data. In this talk, we dive deep into the most common use cases, including working with other AWS services. We review the best practices for creating tables and partitions and performance optimizations. We also dive into how Athena handles security, authorization, and authentication. Lastly, we hear from a customer who has reduced costs and improved time to market by deploying Athena across their organization.

We look forward to meeting you at re:Invent 2017!

About the Author

Roy Ben-Alta is a solution architect and principal business development manager at Amazon Web Services in New York. He focuses on Data Analytics and ML Technologies, working with AWS customers to build innovative data-driven products.

How to Patch, Inspect, and Protect Microsoft Windows Workloads on AWS—Part 1

2017-11-21 Koen van Blijderveen

Post Syndicated from Koen van Blijderveen original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-patch-inspect-and-protect-microsoft-windows-workloads-on-aws-part-1/

Most malware tries to compromise your systems by using a known vulnerability that the maker of the operating system has already patched. To help prevent malware from affecting your systems, two security best practices are to apply all operating system patches to your systems and actively monitor your systems for missing patches. In case you do need to recover from a malware attack, you should make regular backups of your data.

In today’s blog post (Part 1 of a two-part post), I show how to keep your Amazon EC2 instances that run Microsoft Windows up to date with the latest security patches by using Amazon EC2 Systems Manager. Tomorrow in Part 2, I show how to take regular snapshots of your data by using Amazon EBS Snapshot Scheduler and how to use Amazon Inspector to check if your EC2 instances running Microsoft Windows contain any common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs).

What you should know first

To follow along with the solution in this post, you need one or more EC2 instances. You may use existing instances or create new instances. For the blog post, I assume this is an EC2 for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 instance installed from the Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). If you are not familiar with how to launch an EC2 instance, see Launching an Instance. I also assume you launched or will launch your instance in a private subnet. A private subnet is not directly accessible via the internet, and access to it requires either a VPN connection to your on-premises network or a jump host in a public subnet (a subnet with access to the internet). You must make sure that the EC2 instance can connect to the internet using a network address translation (NAT) instance or NAT gateway to communicate with Systems Manager and Amazon Inspector. The following diagram shows how you should structure your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). You should also be familiar with Restoring an Amazon EBS Volume from a Snapshot and Attaching an Amazon EBS Volume to an Instance.

Later on, you will assign tasks to a maintenance window to patch your instances with Systems Manager. To do this, the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user you are using for this post must have the iam:PassRole permission. This permission allows this IAM user to assign tasks to pass their own IAM permissions to the AWS service. In this example, when you assign a task to a maintenance window, IAM passes your credentials to Systems Manager. This safeguard ensures that the user cannot use the creation of tasks to elevate their IAM privileges because their own IAM privileges limit which tasks they can run against an EC2 instance. You should also authorize your IAM user to use EC2, Amazon Inspector, Amazon CloudWatch, and Systems Manager. You can achieve this by attaching the following AWS managed policies to the IAM user you are using for this example: AmazonInspectorFullAccess, AmazonEC2FullAccess, and AmazonSSMFullAccess.

Architectural overview

The following diagram illustrates the components of this solution’s architecture.

For this blog post, Microsoft Windows EC2 is Amazon EC2 for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 instances with attached Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes, which are running in your VPC. These instances may be standalone Windows instances running your Windows workloads, or you may have joined them to an Active Directory domain controller. For instances joined to a domain, you can be using Active Directory running on an EC2 for Windows instance, or you can use AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory.

Amazon EC2 Systems Manager is a scalable tool for remote management of your EC2 instances. You will use the Systems Manager Run Command to install the Amazon Inspector agent. The agent enables EC2 instances to communicate with the Amazon Inspector service and run assessments, which I explain in detail later in this blog post. You also will create a Systems Manager association to keep your EC2 instances up to date with the latest security patches.

You can use the EBS Snapshot Scheduler to schedule automated snapshots at regular intervals. You will use it to set up regular snapshots of your Amazon EBS volumes. EBS Snapshot Scheduler is a prebuilt solution by AWS that you will deploy in your AWS account. With Amazon EBS snapshots, you pay only for the actual data you store. Snapshots save only the data that has changed since the previous snapshot, which minimizes your cost.

You will use Amazon Inspector to run security assessments on your EC2 for Windows Server instance. In this post, I show how to assess if your EC2 for Windows Server instance is vulnerable to any of the more than 50,000 CVEs registered with Amazon Inspector.

In today’s and tomorrow’s posts, I show you how to:

Launch an EC2 instance with an IAM role, Amazon EBS volume, and tags that Systems Manager and Amazon Inspector will use.
Configure Systems Manager to install the Amazon Inspector agent and patch your EC2 instances.
Take EBS snapshots by using EBS Snapshot Scheduler to automate snapshots based on instance tags.
Use Amazon Inspector to check if your EC2 instances running Microsoft Windows contain any common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs).

Step 1: Launch an EC2 instance

In this section, I show you how to launch your EC2 instances so that you can use Systems Manager with the instances and use instance tags with EBS Snapshot Scheduler to automate snapshots. This requires three things:

Create an IAM role for Systems Manager before launching your EC2 instance.
Launch your EC2 instance with Amazon EBS and the IAM role for Systems Manager.
Add tags to instances so that you can automate policies for which instances you take snapshots of and when.

Create an IAM role for Systems Manager

Before launching your EC2 instance, I recommend that you first create an IAM role for Systems Manager, which you will use to update the EC2 instance you will launch. AWS already provides a preconfigured policy that you can use for your new role, and it is called AmazonEC2RoleforSSM.

Sign in to the IAM console and choose Roles in the navigation pane. Choose Create new role.
In the role-creation workflow, choose AWS service > EC2 > EC2 to create a role for an EC2 instance.
Choose the AmazonEC2RoleforSSM policy to attach it to the new role you are creating.
Give the role a meaningful name (I chose EC2SSM) and description, and choose Create role.

Launch your EC2 instance

To follow along, you need an EC2 instance that is running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 and that has an Amazon EBS volume attached. You can use any existing instance you may have or create a new instance.

When launching your new EC2 instance, be sure that:

The operating system is Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2.
You attach at least one Amazon EBS volume to the EC2 instance.
You attach the newly created IAM role (EC2SSM).
The EC2 instance can connect to the internet through a network address translation (NAT) gateway or a NAT instance.
You create the tags shown in the following screenshot (you will use them later).

If you are using an already launched EC2 instance, you can attach the newly created role as described in Easily Replace or Attach an IAM Role to an Existing EC2 Instance by Using the EC2 Console.

Add tags

The final step of configuring your EC2 instances is to add tags. You will use these tags to configure Systems Manager in Step 2 of this blog post and to configure Amazon Inspector in Part 2. For this example, I add a tag key, Patch Group, and set the value to Windows Servers. I could have other groups of EC2 instances that I treat differently by having the same tag key but a different tag value. For example, I might have a collection of other servers with the Patch Group tag key with a value of IAS Servers.

Note: You must wait a few minutes until the EC2 instance becomes available before you can proceed to the next section.

At this point, you now have at least one EC2 instance you can use to configure Systems Manager, use EBS Snapshot Scheduler, and use Amazon Inspector.

Note: If you have a large number of EC2 instances to tag, you may want to use the EC2 CreateTags API rather than manually apply tags to each instance.

Step 2: Configure Systems Manager

In this section, I show you how to use Systems Manager to apply operating system patches to your EC2 instances, and how to manage patch compliance.

To start, I will provide some background information about Systems Manager. Then, I will cover how to:

Create the Systems Manager IAM role so that Systems Manager is able to perform patch operations.
Associate a Systems Manager patch baseline with your instance to define which patches Systems Manager should apply.
Define a maintenance window to make sure Systems Manager patches your instance when you tell it to.
Monitor patch compliance to verify the patch state of your instances.

Systems Manager is a collection of capabilities that helps you automate management tasks for AWS-hosted instances on EC2 and your on-premises servers. In this post, I use Systems Manager for two purposes: to run remote commands and apply operating system patches. To learn about the full capabilities of Systems Manager, see What Is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?

Patch management is an important measure to prevent malware from infecting your systems. Most malware attacks look for vulnerabilities that are publicly known and in most cases are already patched by the maker of the operating system. These publicly known vulnerabilities are well documented and therefore easier for an attacker to exploit than having to discover a new vulnerability.

Patches for these new vulnerabilities are available through Systems Manager within hours after Microsoft releases them. There are two prerequisites to use Systems Manager to apply operating system patches. First, you must attach the IAM role you created in the previous section, EC2SSM, to your EC2 instance. Second, you must install the Systems Manager agent on your EC2 instance. If you have used a recent Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 AMI published by AWS, Amazon has already installed the Systems Manager agent on your EC2 instance. You can confirm this by logging in to an EC2 instance and looking for Amazon SSM Agent under Programs and Features in Windows. To install the Systems Manager agent on an instance that does not have the agent preinstalled or if you want to use the Systems Manager agent on your on-premises servers, see the documentation about installing the Systems Manager agent. If you forgot to attach the newly created role when launching your EC2 instance or if you want to attach the role to already running EC2 instances, see Attach an AWS IAM Role to an Existing Amazon EC2 Instance by Using the AWS CLI or use the AWS Management Console.

To make sure your EC2 instance receives operating system patches from Systems Manager, you will use the default patch baseline provided and maintained by AWS, and you will define a maintenance window so that you control when your EC2 instances should receive patches. For the maintenance window to be able to run any tasks, you also must create a new role for Systems Manager. This role is a different kind of role than the one you created earlier: Systems Manager will use this role instead of EC2. Earlier we created the EC2SSM role with the AmazonEC2RoleforSSM policy, which allowed the Systems Manager agent on our instance to communicate with the Systems Manager service. Here we need a new role with the policy AmazonSSMMaintenanceWindowRole to make sure the Systems Manager service is able to execute commands on our instance.

Create the Systems Manager IAM role

To create the new IAM role for Systems Manager, follow the same procedure as in the previous section, but in Step 3, choose the AmazonSSMMaintenanceWindowRole policy instead of the previously selected AmazonEC2RoleforSSM policy.

Finish the wizard and give your new role a recognizable name. For example, I named my role MaintenanceWindowRole.

By default, only EC2 instances can assume this new role. You must update the trust policy to enable Systems Manager to assume this role.

To update the trust policy associated with this new role:

Navigate to the IAM console and choose Roles in the navigation pane.
Choose MaintenanceWindowRole and choose the Trust relationships tab. Then choose Edit trust relationship.

Update the policy document by copying the following policy and pasting it in the Policy Document box. As you can see, I have added the ssm.amazonaws.com service to the list of allowed Principals that can assume this role. Choose Update Trust Policy.

{
   "Version":"2012-10-17",
   "Statement":[
      {
         "Sid":"",
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Principal":{
            "Service":[
               "ec2.amazonaws.com",
               "ssm.amazonaws.com"
           ]
         },
         "Action":"sts:AssumeRole"
      }
   ]
}

Associate a Systems Manager patch baseline with your instance

Next, you are going to associate a Systems Manager patch baseline with your EC2 instance. A patch baseline defines which patches Systems Manager should apply. You will use the default patch baseline that AWS manages and maintains. Before you can associate the patch baseline with your instance, though, you must determine if Systems Manager recognizes your EC2 instance.

Navigate to the EC2 console, scroll down to Systems Manager Shared Resources in the navigation pane, and choose Managed Instances. Your new EC2 instance should be available there. If your instance is missing from the list, verify the following:

Go to the EC2 console and verify your instance is running.
Select your instance and confirm you attached the Systems Manager IAM role, EC2SSM.
Make sure that you deployed a NAT gateway in your public subnet to ensure your VPC reflects the diagram at the start of this post so that the Systems Manager agent can connect to the Systems Manager internet endpoint.
Check the Systems Manager Agent logs for any errors.

Now that you have confirmed that Systems Manager can manage your EC2 instance, it is time to associate the AWS maintained patch baseline with your EC2 instance:

Choose Patch Baselines under Systems Manager Services in the navigation pane of the EC2 console.
Choose the default patch baseline as highlighted in the following screenshot, and choose Modify Patch Groups in the Actions drop-down.
In the Patch group box, enter the same value you entered under the Patch Group tag of your EC2 instance in “Step 1: Configure your EC2 instance.” In this example, the value I enter is Windows Servers. Choose the check mark icon next to the patch group and choose Close.

Define a maintenance window

Now that you have successfully set up a role and have associated a patch baseline with your EC2 instance, you will define a maintenance window so that you can control when your EC2 instances should receive patches. By creating multiple maintenance windows and assigning them to different patch groups, you can make sure your EC2 instances do not all reboot at the same time. The Patch Group resource tag you defined earlier will determine to which patch group an instance belongs.

To define a maintenance window:

Navigate to the EC2 console, scroll down to Systems Manager Shared Resources in the navigation pane, and choose Maintenance Windows. Choose Create a Maintenance Window.
Select the Cron schedule builder to define the schedule for the maintenance window. In the example in the following screenshot, the maintenance window will start every Saturday at 10:00 P.M. UTC.
To specify when your maintenance window will end, specify the duration. In this example, the four-hour maintenance window will end on the following Sunday morning at 2:00 A.M. UTC (in other words, four hours after it started).
Systems manager completes all tasks that are in process, even if the maintenance window ends. In my example, I am choosing to prevent new tasks from starting within one hour of the end of my maintenance window because I estimated my patch operations might take longer than one hour to complete. Confirm the creation of the maintenance window by choosing Create maintenance window.
After creating the maintenance window, you must register the EC2 instance to the maintenance window so that Systems Manager knows which EC2 instance it should patch in this maintenance window. To do so, choose Register new targets on the Targets tab of your newly created maintenance window. You can register your targets by using the same Patch Group tag you used before to associate the EC2 instance with the AWS-provided patch baseline.
Assign a task to the maintenance window that will install the operating system patches on your EC2 instance:
1. Open Maintenance Windows in the EC2 console, select your previously created maintenance window, choose the Tasks tab, and choose Register run command task from the Register new task drop-down.
2. Choose the AWS-RunPatchBaseline document from the list of available documents.
3. For Parameters:
  1. For Role, choose the role you created previously (called MaintenanceWindowRole).
  2. For Execute on, specify how many EC2 instances Systems Manager should patch at the same time. If you have a large number of EC2 instances and want to patch all EC2 instances within the defined time, make sure this number is not too low. For example, if you have 1,000 EC2 instances, a maintenance window of 4 hours, and 2 hours’ time for patching, make this number at least 500.
  3. For Stop after, specify after how many errors Systems Manager should stop.
  4. For Operation, choose Install to make sure to install the patches.

Now, you must wait for the maintenance window to run at least once according to the schedule you defined earlier. Note that if you don’t want to wait, you can adjust the schedule to run sooner by choosing Edit maintenance window on the Maintenance Windows page of Systems Manager. If your maintenance window has expired, you can check the status of any maintenance tasks Systems Manager has performed on the Maintenance Windows page of Systems Manager and select your maintenance window.

Monitor patch compliance

You also can see the overall patch compliance of all EC2 instances that are part of defined patch groups by choosing Patch Compliance under Systems Manager Services in the navigation pane of the EC2 console. You can filter by Patch Group to see how many EC2 instances within the selected patch group are up to date, how many EC2 instances are missing updates, and how many EC2 instances are in an error state.

In this section, you have set everything up for patch management on your instance. Now you know how to patch your EC2 instance in a controlled manner and how to check if your EC2 instance is compliant with the patch baseline you have defined. Of course, I recommend that you apply these steps to all EC2 instances you manage.

Summary

In Part 1 of this blog post, I have shown how to configure EC2 instances for use with Systems Manager, EBS Snapshot Scheduler, and Amazon Inspector. I also have shown how to use Systems Manager to keep your Microsoft Windows–based EC2 instances up to date. In Part 2 of this blog post tomorrow, I will show how to take regular snapshots of your data by using EBS Snapshot Scheduler and how to use Amazon Inspector to check if your EC2 instances running Microsoft Windows contain any CVEs.

If you have comments about this post, submit them in the “Comments” section below. If you have questions about or issues implementing this solution, start a new thread on the EC2 forum or the Amazon Inspector forum, or contact AWS Support.

– Koen

How AWS Managed Microsoft AD Helps to Simplify the Deployment and Improve the Security of Active Directory–Integrated .NET Applications

2017-11-20 Peter Pereira

Post Syndicated from Peter Pereira original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-aws-managed-microsoft-ad-helps-to-simplify-the-deployment-and-improve-the-security-of-active-directory-integrated-net-applications/

Companies using .NET applications to access sensitive user information, such as employee salary, Social Security Number, and credit card information, need an easy and secure way to manage access for users and applications.

For example, let’s say that your company has a .NET payroll application. You want your Human Resources (HR) team to manage and update the payroll data for all the employees in your company. You also want your employees to be able to see their own payroll information in the application. To meet these requirements in a user-friendly and secure way, you want to manage access to the .NET application by using your existing Microsoft Active Directory identities. This enables you to provide users with single sign-on (SSO) access to the .NET application and to manage permissions using Active Directory groups. You also want the .NET application to authenticate itself to access the database, and to limit access to the data in the database based on the identity of the application user.

Microsoft Active Directory supports these requirements through group Managed Service Accounts (gMSAs) and Kerberos constrained delegation (KCD). AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory, also known as AWS Managed Microsoft AD, enables you to manage gMSAs and KCD through your administrative account, helping you to migrate and develop .NET applications that need these native Active Directory features.

In this blog post, I give an overview of how to use AWS Managed Microsoft AD to manage gMSAs and KCD and demonstrate how you can configure a gMSA and KCD in six steps for a .NET application:

Create your AWS Managed Microsoft AD.
Create your Amazon RDS for SQL Server database.
Create a gMSA for your .NET application.
Deploy your .NET application.
Configure your .NET application to use the gMSA.
Configure KCD for your .NET application.

Solution overview

The following diagram shows the components of a .NET application that uses Amazon RDS for SQL Server with a gMSA and KCD. The diagram also illustrates authentication and access and is numbered to show the six key steps required to use a gMSA and KCD. To deploy this solution, the AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory must be in the same Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) as RDS for SQL Server. For this example, my company name is Example Corp., and my directory uses the domain name, example.com.

Deploy the solution

The following six steps (numbered to correlate with the preceding diagram) walk you through configuring and using a gMSA and KCD.

1. Create your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory

Using the Directory Service console, create your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory in your Amazon VPC. In my example, my domain name is example.com.

2. Create your Amazon RDS for SQL Server database

Using the RDS console, create your Amazon RDS for SQL Server database instance in the same Amazon VPC where your directory is running, and enable Windows Authentication. To enable Windows Authentication, select your directory in the Microsoft SQL Server Windows Authentication section in the Configure Advanced Settings step of the database creation workflow (see the following screenshot).

In my example, I create my Amazon RDS for SQL Server db-example database, and enable Windows Authentication to allow my db-example database to authenticate against my example.com directory.

3. Create a gMSA for your .NET application

Now that you have deployed your directory, database, and application, you can create a gMSA for your .NET application.

To perform the next steps, you must install the Active Directory administration tools on a Windows server that is joined to your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory domain. If you do not have a Windows server joined to your directory domain, you can deploy a new Amazon EC2 for Microsoft Windows Server instance and join it to your directory domain.

To create a gMSA for your .NET application:

Log on to the instance on which you installed the Active Directory administration tools by using a user that is a member of the Admins security group or the Managed Service Accounts Admins security group in your organizational unit (OU). For my example, I use the Admin user in the example OU.

Identify which .NET application servers (hosts) will run your .NET application. Create a new security group in your OU and add your .NET application servers as members of this new group. This allows a group of application servers to use a single gMSA, instead of creating one gMSA for each server. In my example, I create a group, App_server_grp, in my example OU. I also add Appserver1, which is my .NET application server computer name, as a member of this new group.

Create a gMSA in your directory by running Windows PowerShell from the Start menu. The basic syntax to create the gMSA at the Windows PowerShell command prompt follows.

PS C:\Users\admin> New-ADServiceAccount -name [gMSAname] -DNSHostName [domainname] -PrincipalsAllowedToRetrieveManagedPassword [AppServersSecurityGroup] -TrustedForDelegation $truedn <Enter>

In my example, the gMSAname is gMSAexample, the DNSHostName is example.com, and the PrincipalsAllowedToRetrieveManagedPassword is the recently created security group, App_server_grp.

PS C:\Users\admin> New-ADServiceAccount -name gMSAexample -DNSHostName example.com -PrincipalsAllowedToRetrieveManagedPassword App_server_grp -TrustedForDelegation $truedn <Enter>

To confirm you created the gMSA, you can run the Get-ADServiceAccount command from the PowerShell command prompt.

PS C:\Users\admin> Get-ADServiceAccount gMSAexample <Enter>

DistinguishedName : CN=gMSAexample,CN=Managed Service Accounts,DC=example,DC=com
Enabled           : True
Name              : gMSAexample
ObjectClass       : msDS-GroupManagedServiceAccount
ObjectGUID        : 24d8b68d-36d5-4dc3-b0a9-edbbb5dc8a5b
SamAccountName    : gMSAexample$
SID               : S-1-5-21-2100421304-991410377-951759617-1603
UserPrincipalName :

You also can confirm you created the gMSA by opening the Active Directory Users and Computers utility located in your Administrative Tools folder, expand the domain (example.com in my case), and expand the Managed Service Accounts folder.
Screenshot of confirming the creation of the gMSA

4. Deploy your .NET application

Deploy your .NET application on IIS on Amazon EC2 for Windows Server instances. For this step, I assume you are the application’s expert and already know how to deploy it. Make sure that all of your instances are joined to your directory.

5. Configure your .NET application to use the gMSA

You can configure your .NET application to use the gMSA to enforce strong password security policy and ensure password rotation of your service account. This helps to improve the security and simplify the management of your .NET application. Configure your .NET application in two steps:

Grant to gMSA the required permissions to run your .NET application in the respective application folders. This is a critical step because when you change the application pool identity account to use gMSA, downtime can occur if the gMSA does not have the application’s required permissions. Therefore, make sure you first test the configurations in your development and test environments.
Configure your application pool identity on IIS to use the gMSA as the service account. When you configure a gMSA as the service account, you include the $ at the end of the gMSA name. You do not need to provide a password because AWS Managed Microsoft AD automatically creates and rotates the password. In my example, my service account is gMSAexample$, as shown in the following screenshot.

You have completed all the steps to use gMSA to create and rotate your .NET application service account password! Now, you will configure KCD for your .NET application.

6. Configure KCD for your .NET application

You now are ready to allow your .NET application to have access to other services by using the user identity’s permissions instead of the application service account’s permissions. Note that KCD and gMSA are independent features, which means you do not have to create a gMSA to use KCD. For this example, I am using both features to show how you can use them together. To configure a regular service account such as a user or local built-in account, see the Kerberos constrained delegation with ASP.NET blog post on MSDN.

In my example, my goal is to delegate to the gMSAexample account the ability to enforce the user’s permissions to my db-example SQL Server database, instead of the gMSAexample account’s permissions. For this, I have to update the msDS-AllowedToDelegateTo gMSA attribute. The value for this attribute is the service principal name (SPN) of the service instance that you are targeting, which in this case is the db-example Amazon RDS for SQL Server database.

The SPN format for the msDS-AllowedToDelegateTo attribute is a combination of the service class, the Kerberos authentication endpoint, and the port number. The Amazon RDS for SQL Server Kerberos authentication endpoint format is [database_name].[domain_name]. The value for my msDS-AllowedToDelegateTo attribute is MSSQLSvc/db-example.example.com:1433, where MSSQLSvc and 1433 are the SQL Server Database service class and port number standards, respectively.

Follow these steps to perform the msDS-AllowedToDelegateTo gMSA attribute configuration:

Log on to your Active Directory management instance with a user identity that is a member of the Kerberos Delegation Admins security group. In this case, I will use admin.
Open the Active Directory Users and Groups utility located in your Administrative Tools folder, choose View, and then choose Advanced Features.
Expand your domain name (example.com in this example), and then choose the Managed Service Accounts security group. Right-click the gMSA account for the application pool you want to enable for Kerberos delegation, choose Properties, and choose the Attribute Editor tab.
Search for the msDS-AllowedToDelegateTo attribute on the Attribute Editor tab and choose Edit.
Enter the MSSQLSvc/db-example.example.com:1433 value and choose Add.
Choose OK and Apply, and your KCD configuration is complete.

Congratulations! At this point, your application is using a gMSA rather than an embedded static user identity and password, and the application is able to access SQL Server using the identity of the application user. The gMSA eliminates the need for you to rotate the application’s password manually, and it allows you to better scope permissions for the application. When you use KCD, you can enforce access to your database consistently based on user identities at the database level, which prevents improper access that might otherwise occur because of an application error.

Summary

In this blog post, I demonstrated how to simplify the deployment and improve the security of your .NET application by using a group Managed Service Account and Kerberos constrained delegation with your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory. I also outlined the main steps to get your .NET environment up and running on a managed Active Directory and SQL Server infrastructure. This approach will make it easier for you to build new .NET applications in the AWS Cloud or migrate existing ones in a more secure way.

For additional information about using group Managed Service Accounts and Kerberos constrained delegation with your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory, see the AWS Directory Service documentation.

To learn more about AWS Directory Service, see the AWS Directory Service home page. If you have questions about this post or its solution, start a new thread on the Directory Service forum.

– Peter

Updated AWS SOC Reports Are Now Available with 19 Additional Services in Scope

2017-11-11 Chad Woolf

Post Syndicated from Chad Woolf original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/updated-aws-soc-reports-are-now-available-with-19-additional-services-in-scope/

AICPA SOC logo

Newly updated reports are available for AWS System and Organization Control Report 1 (SOC 1), formerly called AWS Service Organization Control Report 1, and AWS SOC 2: Security, Availability, & Confidentiality Report. You can download both reports for free and on demand in the AWS Management Console through AWS Artifact. The updated AWS SOC 3: Security, Availability, & Confidentiality Report also was just released. All three reports cover April 1, 2017, through September 30, 2017.

With the addition of the following 19 services, AWS now supports 51 SOC-compliant AWS services and is committed to increasing the number:

Amazon API Gateway
Amazon Cloud Directory
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon Cognito
Amazon Connect
AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory
Amazon EC2 Container Registry
Amazon EC2 Container Service
Amazon EC2 Systems Manager
Amazon Inspector
AWS IoT Platform
Amazon Kinesis Streams
AWS Lambda
AWS [email protected]
AWS Managed Services
Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration
AWS Shield
AWS Step Functions
AWS WAF

With this release, we also are introducing a separate spreadsheet, eliminating the need to extract the information from multiple PDFs.

If you are not yet an AWS customer, contact AWS Compliance to access the SOC Reports.

– Chad

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