Tag Archives: Foundational (100)

CCN releases guide for Spain’s ENS landing zones using Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS

2025-01-23 Tomás Clemente Sánchez

Post Syndicated from Tomás Clemente Sánchez original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/ccn-releases-guide-for-spains-ens-landing-zones-using-landing-zone-accelerator-on-aws/

Spanish version »

The Spanish National Cryptologic Center (CCN) has published a new STIC guide (CCN-STIC-887 Anexo A) that provides a comprehensive template and supporting artifacts for implementing landing zones that comply with Spain’s National Security Framework (ENS) Royal Decree 311/2022 using the Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS. Spain’s ENS establishes a common framework of basic principles and requirements of security for Spanish public sector organizations and their service providers, including supply chain providers. Over the years, the collaboration between Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the CCN has resulted in the publication of eight secure configuration guides (Series STIC 887) that provide comprehensive advice on the configuration of AWS services to align with the ENS. The guide CCN-STIC-887 Anexo A is the last addition to this series.

The centerpiece of this new guide is the ENS template for the Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS (LZA ENS). A landing zone serves as the initial setup of an organization’s cloud account or environment, including the implementation of security controls, access management, and compliance frameworks. The Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS is a powerful open source tool created by AWS for organizations that want to quickly customize and automate implementation of landing zones that align with AWS best practices and with regulatory compliance frameworks. This tool provides a comprehensive solution that, managed entirely by code, automatically configures over 35 AWS services using a simplified set of configuration files to manage and govern a multi-account environment, helping customers with highly regulated workloads and complex compliance requirements.

The CCN-STIC-887 Anexo A guide focuses on helping organizations implement landing zones that meet ENS security requirements from the ground up. It offers detailed instructions and templates for establishing a landing zone—the foundational infrastructure required for a secure, well-managed cloud environment—and a control matrix to demonstrate compliance with ENS controls.

Key components covered in the STIC 887H guide include:

Logging and monitoring: LZA ENS performs a default and scaled activation of the necessary logging and monitoring services required to meet ENS monitoring requirements in AWS services (such as AWS CloudTrail, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Security Hub, and Amazon GuardDuty).
Access control: LZA ENS implements the management of identity and access management methods and policies at scale, which are aligned with the access control requirements of the ENS in a centralized manner using AWS IAM Identity Center.
Asset management: By default, LZA ENS activates inventory functions and resource and inventory tagging policies (for example, AWS Config) that support ENS asset management controls in the services.
Network topology: LZA ENS can be used to deploy a centralized network topology in accordance with ENS network security controls.
Cryptography: The encryption service activation capabilities built into LZA ENS can help organizations align with ENS data protection standards through mandatory encryption at rest, enforcement mechanisms with AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), and monitoring mechanisms to detect unencrypted data and communications with AWS Config rules.
Compliance and data residency: LZA ENS includes control policies to promote the use of AWS services with the ENS High certification and to provide processing on AWS in accordance with customers’ data residency requirements.

Organizations that require specific customizations to fully meet the requirements of the ENS can use LZA ENS to quickly modify and add customized security controls and then execute the scaled deployment of these controls to their accounts in the landing zone. One of the customizations included in LZA ENS is the integration of the open source security tool Prowler with Security Hub as an automated auditing tool with the objective of providing an up-to-date view of compliance with ENS controls. In addition, by providing a base designed for security and the flexibility to add custom controls, LZA ENS can support the process of achieving and maintaining compliance with the ENS in the AWS Cloud environment.

The CCN-STIC-887 Anexo A guide represents an important step forward in standardizing secure cloud deployments for Spanish public sector organizations and those working with government entities. This publication demonstrates the AWS commitment to support organizations in their secure cloud adoption journey while maintaining compliance with national security standards.

Spanish version

CCN publica la guía para las Zonas de Aterrizaje del ENS con AWS Landing Zone Accelerator

El Centro Criptológico Nacional de España (CCN) ha publicado una nueva guía STIC (CCN-STIC-887 Anexo A) que proporciona una plantilla de código y material de soporte para implementar zonas de aterrizaje (o landing zones) que cumplan con el Esquema Nacional de Seguridad del Real Decreto 311/2022 (ENS) mediante el Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS. El ENS establece un marco común de principios básicos, requisitos y medidas de seguridad para las organizaciones del sector público español y sus prestadores de servicios, incluyendo la cadena de suministro. A lo largo de los años, la colaboración entre Amazon Web Services (AWS) y el CCN se ha traducido en la publicación de ocho guías de configuración segura (serie STIC 887) que proporcionan consejo sobre la configuración de los servicios de AWS para alinearse con el ENS. La guía CCN-STIC-887 Anexo A es la última incorporación a esta serie.

La pieza central de la nueva guía es la plantilla ENS para el AWS Landing Zone Accelerator (LZA ENS). Una zona de aterrizaje (landing zone) sirve como la configuración inicial del entorno en la nube de una organización, e incluye la implementación inicial de controles de seguridad, la administración del acceso y los marcos de cumplimiento. El AWS Landing Zone Accelerator es una potente herramienta de código abierto creada por AWS para las organizaciones que desean implementar de forma rápida, segura, personalizada y automatizada zonas de aterrizaje alineadas con las prácticas recomendadas de AWS, así como con marcos de conformidad. Esta herramienta proporciona una solución integral que, mediante código, configura automáticamente más de 35 servicios de AWS con un conjunto simplificado de archivos de configuración para administrar y gobernar un entorno multicuenta, lo que ayuda a los clientes con cargas de trabajo altamente reguladas y requisitos de cumplimiento normativo.

La guía CCN-STIC-887 Anexo A se centra específicamente en ayudar a las organizaciones a implementar desde cero zonas de aterrizaje que cumplan con los requisitos de seguridad del ENS. Ofrece instrucciones y plantillas detalladas para establecer una zona de aterrizaje – la infraestructura básica necesaria para un entorno de nube seguro y bien administrado – así como una matriz de control para demostrar el cumplimiento de los controles del ENS.

Los componentes clave incluidos en la guía STIC 887H incluyen:

Registro y monitoreo: LZA ENS realiza una activación por defecto y a escala de los servicios de registro y monitoreo necesarios en AWS (como AWS CloudTrail, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Security Hub, y AWS GuardDuty) para cumplir con los requisitos de monitoreo del ENS.
Control de acceso: LZA ENS implementa los métodos y políticas de administración de identidades y accesos a escala, que se alinean con los requisitos de control de acceso del ENS de manera centralizada mediante AWS IAM Identity Center..
Administración de activos: De forma predeterminada, el LZA ENS activa las funciones de inventario y las políticas de etiquetado de recursos e inventario (por ejemplo AWS Config) que soportan los controles de administración de activos del ENS.
Topología de red: LZA ENS se puede utilizar para implementar una topología de red centralizada de acuerdo con los controles de seguridad de red ENS.
Criptografía: las capacidades de activación de cifrado integradas en la LZA ayudan a organizaciones a alinearse con los estándares de protección de datos del ENS mediante el cifrado obligatorio en reposo, los mecanismos de aplicación con AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) y los mecanismos de supervisión para detectar datos y comunicaciones no cifrados con las reglas de AWS Config.
Cumplimiento y residencia de datos: LZA ENS incluye políticas de control para promover el uso de los servicios de AWS con la certificación del ENS Alto y realizar el procesamiento en AWS de acuerdo con los requisitos de residencia de datos del cliente.

Las organizaciones que requieren personalizaciones específicas para cumplir plenamente los requisitos del ENS pueden usar el LZA ENS para modificar rápidamente y añadir fácilmente controles de seguridad personalizados y ejecutar la implementación a escala de estos controles en sus cuentas de la zona de aterrizaje. Una de las personalizaciones que hemos incluido en el LZA ENS es la integración de Prowler con AWS Security Hub como una herramienta de auditoría automatizada, con el objetivo de proporcionar una visión actualizada del cumplimiento de los controles ENS de una manera fácil y eficaz. Además, al proporcionar una base diseñada para la seguridad y la flexibilidad de agregar controles personalizados, LZA ENS puede ayudar durante el proceso de obtener la conformidad con el ENS en el entorno de nube de AWS.

La guía CCN-STIC-887 Anexo A representa un importante paso adelante en la estandarización de las implementaciones seguras en la nube para las organizaciones del sector público español. Esta publicación demuestra el compromiso de AWS de apoyar a las organizaciones en su proceso de adopción segura de la nube, manteniendo al mismo tiempo el cumplimiento de las normas de seguridad nacionales.

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

Using OSCAL to express Canadian cybersecurity requirements as compliance-as-code

2025-01-21 Michael Davie

Post Syndicated from Michael Davie original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/using-oscal-to-express-canadian-cybersecurity-requirements-as-compliance-as-code/

The Open Security Controls Assessment Language (OSCAL) is a project led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that allows security professionals to express control-related information in machine-readable formats. Expressing compliance information in this way allows security practitioners to use automated tools to support data analysis, while making it easier to address downstream requirements such as translation and accessibility. In the United States, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has collaborated closely with NIST and the FedRAMP program to advance the adoption of OSCAL, and was the first cloud service provider to submit a FedRAMP system security plan (SSP) in OSCAL format in 2022.

In Canada, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS) is the national technical authority for cybersecurity. CCCS publishes cybersecurity advice and guidance, including ITSG-33 Annex 3A, a catalog of security controls based on NIST Special Publication 800-53. When CCCS recently published new cloud security profiles based on NIST 800-53 Revision 5, we undertook a project to encode the relevant information in OSCAL. Expressing CCCS’s catalog and profile information in OSCAL facilitates automated analysis, including comparisons with OSCAL catalogs and profiles published by NIST and FedRAMP. This post explores the approach we took to express CCCS’s profiles in OSCAL, in addition to opportunities for future work.

OSCAL fundamentals

For the purposes of this discussion, there are two important OSCAL concepts to understand: catalogs and profiles. A catalog is a collection of security controls, such as NIST 800-53 or ITSG-33. An OSCAL catalog expresses control-specific information, including statements, parameters, and implementation guidance, in a structured and machine-readable format using either JSON, XML, or YAML.

OSCAL profiles import controls from catalogs (and other profiles) and express more specific implementation guidance. For example, the FedRAMP Moderate profile selects a subset of controls from NIST 800-53, specifies constraints for certain parameters, and provides assessment guidance. Profiles can also modify controls as they’re imported, which proved very useful for our purposes.

Expressing CCCS controls in OSCAL

Because CCCS’s ITSG-33 is based on NIST 800-53, most NIST controls can be used in CCCS profiles without modification. However, in some cases CCCS has modified the language of NIST 800-53 controls; for example, to replace mentions of a US agency or standard with a Canadian equivalent, or to add additional content specific to CCCS. Therefore, the first step in expressing CCCS requirements in OSCAL was to create a profile that makes the necessary control-level modifications. In some cases, CCCS has also created controls that are not part of NIST 800-53; these are specified in a separate catalog.

When an OSCAL profile is resolved, the information from the upstream catalogs and profiles that it’s importing controls from is assembled—along with modifications—and expressed as a catalog. By resolving the ITSG-33 modifications profile, we can programmatically generate the complete ITSG-33 catalog, incorporating NIST 800-53 controls, CCCS controls, and required modifications.

CCCS cloud security profiles

CCCS has created two profiles that are used to assess the security of cloud services: CCCS Medium and Protected B High Value Assets (PBHVA). Each of these profiles specifies a selection of controls from ITSG-33, in addition to the values for a number of parameters. Working backwards from the profiles published by CCCS as spreadsheets, we extracted the control and parameter information from each profile and expressed them in OSCAL. This exercise also informed the creation of the ITSG-33 modifications profile discussed previously, which captured control-level changes made by CCCS to NIST 800-53 controls, as well as the separate catalog of CCCS-specific controls.

Resources

In support of furthering this work within the Canadian security community, we’ve published the OSCAL files that we created as part of this project on GitHub, including:

CCCS-specific control catalog
ITSG-33 modifications profile and resolved catalog
CCCS Medium profile, resolved catalog, and CSV
PBVHA profile, resolved catalog, and CSV

We used an open-source tool, oscal-cli, to validate the structure of the OSCAL files that we created and to resolve the profiles into catalogs.

Future work

AWS is interested in further exploring the use of OSCAL to help us and our customers adhere to CCCS requirements as efficiently as possible. In the future, we want to explore how OSCAL data and tools can be used to support the efficient translation of the ITSG-33 catalog and CCCS profiles into French and the presentation of compliance information in accessible formats.

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

AWS achieves HDS certification for 24 AWS Regions

2025-01-14 Tea Jioshvili

Post Syndicated from Tea Jioshvili original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-achieves-hds-certification-for-24-aws-regions/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce a successful completion of the Health Data Hosting (Hébergeur de Données de Santé, HDS) certification audit, and renewal of the HDS certification for 24 AWS Regions.

The Agence du Numérique en Santé (ANS), the French governmental agency for health, introduced the HDS certification to strengthen the security and protection of personal health data. By achieving this certification, AWS demonstrates our continuous commitment to adhere to the heightened expectations for cloud service providers.

The following 24 Regions are in scope for this certification:

US East (Ohio)
US East (N. Virginia)
US West (N. California)
US West (Oregon)
Asia Pacific (Hong Kong)
Asia Pacific (Hyderabad)
Asia Pacific (Jakarta)
Asia Pacific (Mumbai)
Asia Pacific (Osaka)
Asia Pacific (Seoul)
Asia Pacific (Singapore)
Asia Pacific (Sydney)
Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
Canada (Central)
Europe (Frankfurt)
Europe (Ireland)
Europe (London)
Europe (Milan)
Europe (Paris)
Europe (Stockholm)
Europe (Zurich)
Israel (Tel Aviv)
Middle East (UAE)
South America (São Paulo)

The HDS certification demonstrates that AWS provides a framework for technical and governance measures to secure and protect personal health data according to HDS requirements. Our customers who handle personal health data can continue to manage their workloads in HDS-certified Regions with confidence.

Independent third-party auditors evaluated and certified AWS on January 13^th, 2025. The HDS Certificate of Compliance demonstrating AWS compliance status is available on the Agence du Numérique en Santé (ANS) website and 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.

For up-to-date information, see the AWS Compliance Programs page and choose HDS.

AWS strives to continuously meet your architectural and regulatory needs. If you have questions or feedback about HDS compliance, reach out to your AWS account team.

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.

AWS re:Invent 2024: Security, identity, and compliance recap

2025-01-13 Marshall Jones

Post Syndicated from Marshall Jones original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-reinvent-2024-security-identity-and-compliance-recap/

AWS re:Invent 2024 was held in Las Vegas December 2–6, with over 54,000 attendees participating in more than 2,300 sessions and hands-on labs. The conference was a hub of innovation and learning hosted by AWS for the global cloud computing community.

In this blog post, we cover on-demand sessions and major security, identity, and compliance announcements that were unveiled leading up to and during the conference. Whether you missed the event or want to revisit the key takeaways, we’ve compiled the essential information for you to provide a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in AWS security, identity, and compliance. This year’s event put best practices for zero trust, generative AI–driven security, identity, and access management, DevSecOps, network and infrastructure security, data protection, and threat detection and incident response at the forefront.

Key announcements

For identity and access management, we launched multiple new features that can help you scale permissions management across your AWS Organizations.

Resource control policies (RCPs) – RCPs are a new type of organization policy that can be used to centrally create and enforce preventative controls on AWS resources in your organization. Using RCPs, you can centrally set the maximum available permissions to your AWS resources as you scale your workloads on AWS.
Centrally manage root access – With central management for root access, you now have a capability to centrally manage your root credentials, simplify auditing of credentials, and perform tightly scoped privileged tasks across your AWS member accounts managed using AWS Organizations.
Declarative policies – Declarative policies simplify the way you enforce durable intent, such as baseline configurations for AWS services within your organization.

Amazon Cognito announced four new features:

Feature tiers – Amazon Cognito launched two user pool feature tiers: Essentials and Plus. The Essentials tier offers comprehensive and flexible user authentication and access control features, helping you to implement secure, scalable, and customized sign-up and sign-in experiences. The Plus tier offers threat protection capabilities against suspicious sign-ins for customers who have elevated security needs for their applications.
Developer-focused console – Amazon Cognito now offers a streamlined getting-started experience featuring a quick wizard and use case–specific recommendations. This approach helps you set up configurations and reach your end users faster and more efficiently than ever before.
Managed Login – This feature is a fully managed, hosted sign-in and sign-up experience that you can personalize to align with your company or application branding. Managed Login helps you offload the undifferentiated heavy lifting of designing and maintaining custom implementations such as passwordless authentication and localization.
Passwordless authentication – With passwordless authentication, you can secure user access to your application with passkeys, email, and text messages. If your users choose to use passkeys to sign in, they can do so using a built-in authenticator, such as Touch ID on Apple MacBooks and Windows Hello facial recognition on PCs.

To discover security issues in your environment, Amazon GuardDuty launched Extended Threat Detection, a capability that you can use to identify sophisticated, multi-stage threats targeting your AWS accounts, workloads, and data. You can now use new threat sequence findings that cover multiple resources and data sources over an extensive time period, allowing you to spend less time on first-level analysis and more time responding to critical severity threats to minimize business impact.

Amazon OpenSearch Service now offers a zero-ETL integration with Amazon Security Lake, enabling you to query and analyze security data in-place directly through OpenSearch Service. This integration allows you to efficiently explore voluminous data sources that were previously cost-prohibitive to analyze, helping you streamline security investigations and obtain comprehensive visibility of your security landscape. With the flexibility to selectively ingest data and without the need to manage complex data pipelines, you can now focus on effective security operations while potentially lowering your analytics costs.

AWS Security Incident Response is a new service that helps you respond to security issues in your environment. This new service combines the power of automated monitoring and investigation, accelerated communication and coordination, and direct 24/7 access to the AWS Customer Incident Response Team to quickly prepare for, respond to, and recover from security events.

In the zero trust space, AWS Verified Access AWS Verified Accessand Amazon VPC Lattice both launched support for accessing non-HTTPS resources. Verified Access enables you to provide secure, VPN-less access to your corporate applications over protocols such as TCP, SSH, and RDP. With the launch of VPC Resources for Amazon VPC Lattice, you can now access your application dependencies through a VPC Lattice service network. You’re able to connect to your application dependencies that are hosted in different VPCs, accounts, and on-premises using additional protocols, including TLS, HTTP, HTTPS, and now TCP. Watch the on demand session to learn how you can enable zero trust access over non-HTTP(S) protocols by using AWS Verified Access.

Amazon Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall launched an advanced firewall rule that has a new set of capabilities that you can use to monitor and block suspicious DNS traffic associated with advanced DNS threats.

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud launched block public access, which is a one-click declarative control that admins can implement centrally to authoritatively block internet traffic for each of their VPCs.

As more and more customers deploy generative AI workloads into production, it’s important to have proper security controls. Amazon Bedrock launched two new features to help with this:

Automated Reasoning checks – Automated Reasoning checks help detect hallucinations and provide a verifiable proof that a large language model response is accurate. With Automated Reasoning checks, domain experts can more straightforwardly build specifications called Automated Reasoning Policies that encapsulate their knowledge in fields such as operational workflows and HR policies. Users of Amazon Bedrock Guardrails can validate generated content against an Automated Reasoning Policy to identify inaccuracies and unstated assumptions, and explain why statements are accurate in a verifiable way.
Multimodal toxicity detection (Preview) – Amazon Bedrock Guardrails now supports multimodal toxicity detection for image content, enabling organizations to apply content filters to images. This capability, now in public preview, removes the heavy lifting required to build your own safeguards for image data or spend cycles with manual evaluation that can be error-prone and tedious.

AWS has continued to work closely with partners to help drive customer success. There were three new partner programs launched at AWS re:Invent:

AI Security category – The AI Security category in the AWS Security competency helps you identify AWS Partners with deep experience securing AI environments and defending AI workloads against advanced threats. Partners in this category are validated for their capabilities in areas such as prevention of sensitive data disclosure, prevention of injection threats, security posture management, and implementing responsible AI filtering.
AWS Security Incident Response Specialization – Today, AWS customers rely on various third-party tools and services to support their internal security incident response capabilities. To better help both customers and partners, AWS introduced AWS Security Incident Response, a new service that helps you prepare for, respond to, and recover from security events. Alongside approved AWS Partners, AWS Security Incident Response monitors, investigates, and escalates triaged security findings from Amazon GuardDuty and other threat detection tools through AWS Security Hub. Security Incident Response is designed to identify and escalate only high-priority incidents.
Amazon Security Lake Ready Specialization – This specialization recognizes AWS Partners who have technically validated their software solutions to integrate with Amazon Security Lake and demonstrated successful customer deployments. These solutions have been technically validated by AWS Partner Solutions Architects for their sound architecture and proven customer success.

Experience content on demand

If you were unable to join us in person or you want to watch a session again, you can view the sessions that are available on demand. Catch the CEO Keynote with Matt Garman to learn how AWS is reinventing foundational building blocks in addition to developing brand-new experiences, all to empower AWS customers and partners with what they need to build a better future. You can also replay additional re:Invent 2024 keynotes.

Watch the Security Innovation Talk, with AWS CISO Chris Betz, to hear how the latest AWS innovations are helping customers move fast and stay secure. Learn how AWS empowers organizations to confidently integrate and automate security into their products, services, and processes so security teams can focus their time on work that brings the highest value to the business. Chris also shares how AWS is helping to make the internet more secure by scaling security innovation and investing in the security community.

Stream any of the AWS security, identity, and compliance breakout sessions and new launch talks on demand to learn about the following key topics, and more:

Consider joining us for more in-person security learning opportunities by saving the date for AWS re:Inforce 2025, which will take place June 16–18 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We look forward to seeing you there!

If you want to discuss how these new announcements can help your organization improve its security posture, AWS is here to help. Contact your AWS account team today.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, start a new thread on the AWS Security, Identity, & Compliance re:Post or contact AWS Support.

AWS completes the CCCS PBHVA assessment with 149 services and features in scope

2024-12-19 Naranjan Goklani

Post Syndicated from Naranjan Goklani original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-completes-the-cccs-pbhva-assessment-with-149-services-and-features-in-scope/

We continue to expand the scope of our assurance programs at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and are pleased to announce the successful completion of our first ever Protected B High Value Assets (PBHVA) assessment with 149 assessed services and features. Completion of this assessment effective October 4, 2024, makes AWS the first cloud service provider (CSP) in Canada to meet this high security bar and provide assurance to our valued customers. This assessment also re-affirms our commitment to helping public and commercial customers achieve and maintain the highest-grade security standard for workloads with increased sensitivity.

What is the PBHVA assessment and why is it important?

The Protected B High Value Asset (PBHVA) overlay seeks to enhance the integrity and availability of customer organizational workloads that are considered to have an increased level of sensitivity. These are systems that the Government of Canada (GC) and its service providers use to support delivery of services at a national scale or that are determined to be significant for handling sensitive information. The overlay is a set of 117 controls from the ITSG-33 security control catalogue (baselined against NIST 800-53), which augments the security safeguards to enhance integrity and availability.

As of October 4, 2024, there are a total of 149 AWS services and features that were assessed by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS) under PBHVA assessment criteria. The assessment covers services and features that are available in both the Canada (Central) and Canada West (Calgary) AWS Regions.

How can you access the assessment?

The summary assessment is available through AWS Artifact. You can also learn more about the PBHVA assessment on our AWS PBHVA webpage.

AWS strives to continuously bring services into scope of its compliance programs to help you meet your architectural and regulatory needs. Please reach out to your AWS account team if you have questions or feedback about the PBHVA assessment.

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

2024 ISO and CSA STAR certificates now available with two additional services

2024-12-19 Atulsing Patil

Post Syndicated from Atulsing Patil original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/2024-iso-and-csa-star-certificates-now-available-with-two-additional-services/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) successfully completed a surveillance audit with no findings for ISO 9001:2015, 27001:2022, 27017:2015, 27018:2019, 27701:2019, 20000-1:2018, and 22301:2019, and Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) STAR Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM) v4.0. EY CertifyPoint auditors conducted the audit and reissued the certificates on November 29, 2024. The objective of the audit was to assess the level of compliance with the requirements of the applicable international standards.

During this surveillance audit, we added two additional AWS services to the scope since the last certification issued on July 22, 2024:

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.

Updated PCI DSS and PCI PIN compliance packages now available

2024-12-19 Nivetha Chandran

Post Syndicated from Nivetha Chandran original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/updated-pci-dss-and-pci-pin-compliance-packages-now-available/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pleased to announce enhancements to our Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance portfolio, further empowering AWS customers to build and manage secure, compliant payment environments with greater ease and flexibility.

PCI Data Security Standard (DSS): Our latest AWS PCI DSS v4 Attestation of Compliance (AOC) is now available and includes six additional AWS services:

This expansion allows you to use these services while maintaining PCI DSS compliance, enabling innovation without compromising security. You can see the full list of services at AWS Services in Scope by Compliance Program.

PCI Personal Identification Number (PIN): We updated our PCI PIN AOC for two critical services:

AWS CloudHSM: Manage your encryption keys on FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certified hardware in your own virtual private cloud (VPC), with a dedicated, single-tenant hardware security module (HSM) solution.
AWS Payment Cryptography: Use payment HSMs that are PCI PIN Transaction Security (PTS) HSM certified and fully managed by AWS, with PCI PIN and point-to-point encryption (P2PE)–compliant key management.

These refreshed attestations offer you greater flexibility in deploying regulated workloads while significantly reducing your compliance overhead. You can access the PCI DSS and PIN AOC reports through AWS Artifact. This self-service portal provides on-demand access to AWS compliance reports, streamlining your audit processes.

To learn more about our PCI programs 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 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.

Fall 2024 SOC 1, 2, and 3 reports now available with 183 services in scope

2024-12-19 Paul Hong

Post Syndicated from Paul Hong original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/fall-2024-soc-1-2-and-3-reports-now-available-with-183-services-in-scope/

We continue to expand the scope of our assurance programs at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and are pleased to announce that the Fall 2024 System and Organization Controls (SOC) 1, 2, and 3 reports are now available. The reports cover 183 services over the 12-month period from October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024, so that customers have a full year of assurance with the reports. These reports demonstrate our continuous commitment to adhere to the heightened expectations for cloud service providers.

Going forward, we will issue SOC reports covering a 12-month period each quarter as follows:

Report	Period covered
Spring SOC 1, 2, and 3	April 1–March 31
Summer SOC 1	July 1–June 30
Fall SOC 1, 2, and 3	October 1–September 30
WWinter SOC 1	January 1–December 31

Customers can download the Fall 2024 SOC 1, 2, and 3 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.

AWS strives to continuously bring services into the scope of its compliance programs to help you meet your architectural and regulatory needs. If you have questions or feedback about SOC compliance, reach out to your AWS account team.

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

AWS named Leader in the 2024 ISG Provider Lens report for Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure Services (EU)

2024-12-18 Marta Taggart

Post Syndicated from Marta Taggart original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-named-leader-in-the-2024-isg-provider-lens-report-for-sovereign-cloud-infrastructure-services-eu/

For the second year in a row, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is named as a Leader in the Information Services Group (ISG) Provider Lens Quadrant report for Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure Services (EU), published on December 18, 2024. 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 the ISG Provider Lens report, “AWS develops various innovative solutions to meet different sovereignty needs, guided by inputs from regulators, cybersecurity experts, partners and customers. These solutions address factors such as location, workload sensitivity and industry standards.”

Read the report to:

Gather insight on the factors that ISG believes will influence the sovereign cloud landscape in the EU.
Discover why AWS was named as a Leader with the highest score on portfolio attractiveness by ISG.
Learn what makes the AWS Cloud sovereign-by-design and how we continue to offer more control and more choice without compromising on the full power of AWS.

The recognition of AWS as a Leader in this report for the second year in a row is a testament to our efforts to help European customers and partners meet their digital sovereignty and resilience requirements. AWS continues to deliver on the AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge, our commitment to offering AWS customers the most advanced set of sovereignty controls and features available in the cloud. Earlier this year, we announced plans to invest €7.8 billion in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud by 2040, building on our long-term commitment to Europe and ongoing support of the region’s sovereignty needs. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud, which will be a new, independent cloud for Europe, is set to launch by the end of 2025.

Download the full 2024 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.

Securing the future: building a culture of security

2024-12-11 Carter Spriggs

Post Syndicated from Carter Spriggs original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/securing-the-future-building-a-culture-of-security/

According to a 2024 Verizon report, nearly 70% of data breaches occurred because a person was manipulated by social engineering or made some type of error. This highlights the importance of human-layer defenses in an organization’s security strategy. In addition to technology, tools, and processes, security requires awareness and action from everyone in an organization to recognize anomalies, escalate potential issues, and ultimately, mitigate risk.

Organizations that invest in a culture of security see better employee adoption of security controls, improved cybersecurity behavior, and a more effective use of cybersecurity resources, according to a 2024 Gartner analysis. This aligns with our own experience at AWS, where we deeply invest in our culture of security. Our leadership prioritizes security and builds it into our organizational structure. Everyone, regardless of role, views security as a shared responsibility. Security advocates and advisors are embedded in our teams to share their expertise, and innovation empowers our people to move fast while staying secure.

Building and maintaining a culture of security requires constant investment and focus. In our recent culture of security series with The Guardian, we share perspectives from AWS leaders on some of the most common questions that people ask us about how to create a culture of security:

The journey to creating a culture of security begins with the first step. Although this journey looks different for every organization, sharing what we’ve learned may spur ideas for how you can help create a security-first mindset in your own team or organization.

We invite you to explore the series and learn more about how AWS sustains a strong culture of security.

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

AWS-LC FIPS 3.0: First cryptographic library to include ML-KEM in FIPS 140-3 validation

2024-12-10 Jake Massimo

Post Syndicated from Jake Massimo original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-lc-fips-3-0-first-cryptographic-library-to-include-ml-kem-in-fips-140-3-validation/

We’re excited to announce that AWS-LC FIPS 3.0 has been added to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP) modules in process list. This latest validation of AWS-LC introduces support for Module Lattice-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (ML-KEM), the new FIPS standardized post-quantum cryptographic algorithm. This is a significant step towards enhancing the long-term confidentiality of our most sensitive customer workflows, including U.S. federal government communications.

This validation makes AWS LibCrypto (AWS-LC) the first open source cryptographic module to provide post-quantum algorithm support within the FIPS module. Organizations that require FIPS-validated cryptographic modules—such as those operating under FedRAMP, FISMA, HIPAA, and other federal compliance frameworks—can now use these algorithms within AWS-LC.

This announcement is part of the long-term promise made by AWS-LC of continuous validation to obtain new FIPS 140-3 certificates. AWS-LC obtained its first certificate in October 2023 for AWS-LC-FIPS 1.0. A subsequent version of the library, AWS-LC-FIPS 2.0, was certified in October 2024. In this post, we discuss our FIPS-validation of post-quantum cryptographic algorithm ML-KEM, the performance improvements of existing algorithms in AWS-LC FIPS 2.0 and 3.0, and the new algorithm support added for version 3.0. We also discuss how you can use the new algorithms to implement hybrid post-quantum cipher suites, along with configuration options that you can set up today to help protect against future threats.

FIPS post-quantum cryptography

Large-scale quantum computers pose a threat to the long-term confidentiality of the data that we protect under public-key cryptography today. In what’s known as a record-now, decrypt-later attack, an adversary records internet traffic today, capturing key exchanges and encrypted communication. Then, when a sufficiently powerful quantum computer is available, the adversary can retroactively recover shared secrets and encryption keys by solving the underlying hardness problem.

ML-KEM is one of the new key encapsulation mechanisms that’s being standardized by NIST in an effort to protect the uses of public key cryptography from quantum threats. Much like RSA, Diffie-Hellman (DH), or Elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key exchange, it works by establishing a shared secret between two parties. However, unlike RSA or DH, ML-KEM bases the key exchange on an underlying problem that is believed to be hard for quantum computers to solve.

Today, we don’t know how to build such a large-scale quantum computer. Significant scientific research is needed before such a computer can be built. However, you can mitigate the risk of record-now, decrypt-later attacks by introducing post-quantum algorithms such as ML-KEM into your key exchange protocols today. We recommend adopting a hybrid key exchange approach that combines a traditional key exchange method—such as ECDH—with ML-KEM to hedge against current and future adversaries. Later in this post, we show you how you can implement hybrid post-quantum cipher suites today to protect against future threats.

AWS-LC FIPS 3.0 includes the ML-KEM algorithm for all three provided parameter sets, ML-KEM-512, ML-KEM-768, and ML-KEM-1024. The three parameter sets provide differing levels of security strength as specified by NIST (see FIPS 203 [9, Sect. 5.6] or the post-quantum security evaluation criteria). ML-KEM-768 is recommended for general-purpose use cases, ML-KEM-1024 is designed for applications that require a higher security level or adherence to explicit directives such as the Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite (CNSA) 2.0 for National Security System owners and operators.

Algorithm	NIST security category	Public key (B)	Private key (B)	Ciphertext (B)
ML-KEM-512	1	800	1632	768
ML-KEM-768	3	1184	2400	1088
ML-KEM-1024	5	1568	3168	1568

Table 1. Security strength category, public key, private key, and ciphertext sizes in bytes for the three parameter sets of ML-KEM

Integration with s2n-tls

ML-KEM is now available in our open source TLS implementation, s2n-tls, through hybrid key exchange for TLS 1.3 (draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design). We’ve also added support for hybrid ECDHE-ML-KEM key agreement for TLS 1.3 (draft-kwiatkowski-tls-ecdhe-mlkem), along with new key share identifiers for Curve x25519 and ML-KEM-768.

For hybrid key establishment in FIPS 140-approved mode, one component algorithm must be a NIST-approved mechanism (detailed in NIST post-quantum FAQs). With ML-KEM added to the list of NIST-approved algorithms, you can now include non-FIPS standardized algorithms like Curve x25519 in hybrid cipher suites. By configuring your TLS cipher suite to use ML-KEM-768 and x25519 (draft-kwiatkowski-tls-ecdhe-mlkem), you can use x25519 within a FIPS-validated cryptographic module for the first time. This can facilitate more efficient key exchange through the highly optimized and functionally verified Curve x25519 implementation provided by AWS-LC.

New algorithms and new implementations

Two integral parts of our commitment to continuous validation of AWS-LC FIPS are to include new algorithms as approved cryptographic services and new implementations of existing algorithms that provide performance improvements and functional correctness.

New algorithms

We’re committed to continually validating new algorithms so that builders can adopt FIPS-validated cryptography by including the latest revisions of approved cryptographic algorithms and supporting new primitives. Validating new algorithms in their latest standardized revision helps ensure that our cryptographic tool-kit is providing high-assurance implementations that achieve compliance with globally recognized standards.

In AWS-LC FIPS 3.0 we’ve added the latest member of the Secure Hash Algorithm standard SHA-3 to the module. The SHA-3 family is a cryptographic primitive used to support a variety of algorithms. In AWS-LC FIPS 3.0, we’ve integrated ECDSA and RSA signature generation and verification with SHA-3 and within the post-quantum algorithm ML-KEM. In AWS-LC, ML-KEM calls into our FIPS-validated SHA-3 functions, which provide optimized implementations of SHA-3 and SHAKE hashing procedures. This means that as we continually refine and optimize our AWS-LC SHA-3 implementation, we’ll continue to see performance increases across algorithms that use the primitive, such as ML-KEM.

EdDSA is a digital signature algorithm based on elliptic curves using the curve Ed25519. It was added to NIST’s updated Digital Signature Standard (DSS), FIPS 186-5. This signature algorithm is now offered as part of the AWS-LC 3.0 FIPS module. For key agreement, the Single-step Key Derivation Function (SSKDF) used to derive keys from a shared secret (SP 800-56Cr2) is available both in the digest-based and HMAC-based specifications. It can be used, for example, to derive a key from a shared secret produced by KMS when using ECDH. Further keys can be derived from that original key using a Key-based Key Derivation Function (KBKDF)—SP 800-108r1—which is available using a counter-mode based on HMAC.

Performance improvements

We focused on increasing the performance of public-key cryptography algorithms widely used in transport protocols such as the TLS protocol. For example, RSA signatures on Graviton2 are 81 percent faster for bit-length 2048, 33 percent for 3072, and 94 percent for 4096, with added formal verification of functional correctness of the main operation. Using Intel’s AVX512 Integer Fused Multiply Add (IFMA) instructions—available starting from 3rd Gen Intel Xeon—Intel developers contributed an RSA implementation that employs these instruction and the wide AVX512 registers, which are twice as fast as the existing implementation.

We increased throughput for EdDSA signing by an average of 108 percent and for verifying by 37 percent. This average is taken over three environments: Graviton2, Graviton3, and Intel Ice Lake (Intel Xeon Platinum 8375C CPU). This boost in performance is achieved by integrating assembly implementations of the core operation for each target from the s2n-bignum library. That, in addition to the careful constant-time implementation of the core operations, is how each one has been proven to be functionally correct.

In Figure 1 that follows, we highlight the percentage of performance improvements compared to AWS-LC FIPS 1.0 in versions 2.0 and 3.0. The improvements achieved in 2.0 are maintained in 3.0 and are not repeated in the graph. The graph also includes symmetric-key improvements. In AES-256-GCM, which is widely used in TLS to encrypt the communication after the session has been established, the increase is on average 115 percent across Intel Ice Lake and Graviton4 to encrypt a 16 KB message. In AES-256-XTS, which is used in disk storage, encrypting a 256 B input is 360 percent faster on Intel Ice Lake and 90 percent faster on Graviton4.

Figure 1: Graph of performance improvements in versions 2.0 and 3.0 of AWS-LC FIPS

How to use ML-KEM today

You can configure both s2n-tls and AWS-LC TLS libraries to enable hybrid post-quantum security with ML-KEM today by enabling X25519MLKEM768 and SecP256r1MLKEM768 for key exchange. We’ve integrated support for both of these hybrid algorithms in AWS-LC libssl and s2n-tls using each library’s exisiting TLS configuration APIs. To negotiate a TLS connection, use one of the following commands:

# AWS-LC Client CLI Example
./aws-lc/build/tool/bssl s_client -curves X25519MLKEM768:SecP256r1MLKEM768:X25519 -connect <hostname>:<port>

# S2N-tls Client CLI Example
./s2n/build/bin/s2nc -c default_pq -i <hostname> <port>

Conclusion

In this post, we described the ongoing development, optimization, and validation of the cryptography that we provide to our customers and products through our open source cryptographic library, AWS-LC. We introduced the addition of FIPS-validated post-quantum algorithms and provided configuration options to begin using these algorithms today to protect against future threats.

AWS-LC-FIPS 3.0 is part of our commitment to continually validate new versions of AWS-LC as we add new algorithms within the FIPS boundary as they become specified, and as we raise the performance and formal verification bar on existing algorithms. Through this commitment, we continue to support the wider developer community of Rust, Java and Python developers by providing integrations into the AWS Libcrypto for Rust (aws-lc-rs) and ACCP 2.0 libraries. We facilitate integration into CPython so that you can build against AWS-LC and use it for all cryptography in the Python standard library. We enabled rustls to provide FIPS support.

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

Preparing for take-off: Regulatory perspectives on generative AI adoption within Australian financial services

2024-12-03 Julian Busic

Post Syndicated from Julian Busic original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/preparing-for-take-off-regulatory-perspectives-on-generative-ai-adoption-within-australian-financial-services/

The Australian financial services regulator, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), has provided its most substantial guidance on generative AI to date in Member Therese McCarthy Hockey’s remarks to the AFIA Risk Summit 2024. The guidance gives a green light for banks, insurance companies, and superannuation funds to accelerate their adoption of this transformative technology, but reminded the financial services industry of the need for adequate guardrails to make sure that the benefits of generative AI don’t come at an unacceptable cost to the community.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is committed to developing AI responsibly and strongly supports APRA’s message to proceed with generative AI adoption with appropriate guardrails implemented. AWS is at the forefront of generative AI research and innovation, and many of our financial services customers are already harnessing the benefits of our artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and generative AI services. AWS is committed to the responsible development and use of AI so that we can help our customers achieve their business goals while meeting—and aiming to exceed—their regulators’ expectations.

A green light for AI, ML, and generative AI

APRA’s guidance, as outlined in APRA Member Therese McCarthy Hockey’s remarks to the AFIA Risk Summit 2024, offers a clear pathway for adoption of AI, ML, and generative AI technologies by APRA-regulated entities. Ms. McCarthy Hockey says that there is “keen support” within APRA and across government for companies to realize the benefits of technology-led innovation, and she highlights the significant advantages that effective use of generative AI can deliver, such as improved productivity, cost efficiencies, more personalized customer experiences, and the ability to divert valuable resources to higher-level areas of need.

“Within APRA and across governments and regulators there is keen support for the realisation of tangible improvements through innovation.” — APRA Member Therese McCarthy Hockey’s remarks to AFIA Risk Summit May 2024

AWS financial services customers are starting to use more advanced AI for a variety of purposes, such as customer service, marketing, application development, fraud detection, and regulatory compliance. Specific use cases cited by APRA were the use of generative AI to rapidly review long documents against criteria such as policy requirements, use of generative AI-powered coding tools to produce better code faster, and creating generative AI bots to simulate customer testing of products and services. This is an extension of less sophisticated forms of AI which have been in operation for some time, with APRA citing internet chat bots and natural language processing as examples where businesses have already realized efficiencies by automating and speeding up manual or time-consuming processes.

APRA and other financial services regulators are experimenting internally with AI themselves. In Ms. McCarthy Hockey’s speech, she noted that APRA itself is using text analysis tools on an ongoing basis to review responses to APRA risk culture surveys, with the results helping APRA risk specialists direct focus to where it’s most required. APRA is also experimenting with natural language processing tools to review incident reporting data from regulated entities and to highlight incidents that are worthy of further investigation. This helps to reduce the human effort required by APRA staff and increase regulatory efficiency. Finally, APRA is collaborating with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) on a proof of concept to reduce the effort required to compare, analyze, and summarize the reams of documentation the three agencies must review as part of their regular entity supervision duties.

Risks must be understood and managed

APRA advocates for a prudent approach to experimentation with these technologies. As was the case with cloud adoption, organizations with more mature risk and data management capabilities will be able to move faster than those without.

“APRA’s message to the entities we regulate is that firm board oversight, robust technology platforms and strong risk management are essential for companies that want to begin experimenting with new ways of harnessing AI.” — APRA Member Therese McCarthy Hockey’s remarks to AFIA Risk Summit May 2024

APRA’s current regulatory framework is fit-for-purpose

APRA also made the specific point that its existing prudential framework remains fit-for-purpose for the increased uptake of AI, ML, and generative AI.

APRA’s primary focus is on governance, citing three key areas:

Do boards have sufficient capability to determine an appropriate AI strategy and make sound risk management decisions? Are they able to effectively challenge management? What sort of learning and development programs are in train, and do the boards have access to external skills and advice if required?
How mature is the risk culture? Is a risk management mindset embedded and functioning effectively across all three lines of defense? What controls and monitoring are in place to help prevent employees making unauthorized use of AI, ML, and generative AI tools?
Is there adequate data quality and reliability? AI outputs depend directly on the quality of the inputs. APRA states that data management is an area where many regulated entities have a long way to go.

APRA also focuses on accountability, reminding regulated entities that as with any form of outsourcing or use of third-party services, the regulated entity retains accountability for the outputs of the AI, ML, and generative AI programs they deploy. There must always be a human in the loop: a person accountable for verifying that AI operates as intended. The level of human involvement can vary—for example, APRA does not suggest that a human should be involved in every AI decision made by a fraud detection service, but there should be a human who is accountable for the algorithm it runs, its operations, and the outcomes it drives.

How AWS is helping customers locally and globally use AI responsibly

From the outset, AWS has prioritized responsible AI innovation by embedding safety, fairness, robustness, security, and privacy into our development processes, and continuously educating our employees. We extend this commitment through to our customers by designing services that help customers derive business value from AI in a safe and responsible way.

AWS collaborates with organizations such as the OECD AI working groups, the Partnership on AI, the Responsible AI Institute, and strategic partnerships with universities worldwide. In Australia, AWS collaborates with key institutions like the National AI Centre, CSIRO, the Australian Information Industry Association, and the Tech Council of Australia to provide insights on responsible AI adoption and to maximize the benefits of AI technology for the country. The recent Voluntary AI Safety Standard developed by the National AI Centre is the start of clear guidance for Australian organizations to follow, and AWS is engaging with Australia and other governments on the responsible use adoption and use of generative AI.

Recently, AWS has supported global financial services customers in critical areas such as risk management, financial crime prevention, and cybersecurity by using generative AI to analyze and respond to large data volumes in real-time. Verafin (a Nasdaq company) used Amazon Bedrock to improve anti-money laundering and fraud prevention processes. This application of AI enhances the effectiveness of financial crime management programs. Mastercard employs AWS AI and machine learning services to detect and prevent fraud while providing the most seamless customer experience possible.

Generative AI’s role in modernizing legacy systems is increasingly recognized, especially among Australian financial services customers who are undertaking transformation programs to reduce technology debt and enhance process resilience. CommBank, PEXA, and National Australia Bank (NAB) employ generative AI technology to improve speed, quality, and security when building and modifying applications.

How to implement responsible AI within your organization

The core dimensions of responsible AI at AWS align to the key regulatory considerations of both APRA and regulators globally:

Fairness – Considering impacts on different groups of stakeholders
Explainability – Understanding and evaluating system outputs
Privacy and security – Appropriately obtaining, using, and protecting data and models
Safety – Working to prevent harmful system output and misuse
Controllability – Having mechanisms to monitor and steer AI system behaviour
Veracity and robustness – Achieving correct system outputs, even with unexpected or adversarial inputs
Governance – Incorporating best practices into the AI supply chain, including providers and deployers
Transparency – Enabling stakeholders to make informed choices about their engagement with an AI system

Note that responsible AI is a continually evolving field. Customers can keep updated with developments in this area on our Responsible AI webpage.

The Cloud Adoption Framework for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Generative AI provides extensive guidance, and serves as both a starting point and a guide to help customers meet, and in many cases exceed, regulatory expectations.

We have integrated features into our generative AI services to facilitate the application of responsible AI policies for organizations. For example, Amazon Bedrock Guardrails can help financial services organizations comply with APRA guidance on AI use in several key ways:

Content filtering – Guardrails allows organizations to configure content filters to block harmful or inappropriate content in AI model inputs and outputs. This helps AI applications to adhere to with APRA’s expectations for responsible AI use.
Topic restrictions – Organizations can define specific topics to be avoided in AI interactions. For example, a banking chatbot could be configured so it won’t provide investment advice, aligning with regulatory restrictions.
Sensitive information protection – Guardrails can detect and redact personally identifiable information (PII) in AI inputs and outputs. This helps protect customer privacy and aids in compliance with data protection requirements.
Custom word filters – Companies can set up lists of words or phrases to block, helping maintain appropriate communication.
Contextual grounding checks – This feature helps detect and filter AI hallucinations in model responses where a reference source and a user query are provided, improving the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated responses. This aligns with APRA’s focus on making sure that AI systems provide accurate and trustworthy information.
Customizable policies – Guardrails allows organizations to tailor AI safeguards to their specific needs and regulatory requirements, helping them align with APRA’s principles-based approach.
Consistent safeguards – Guardrails can be applied across multiple AI models and applications, enabling a standardized approach to responsible AI use across the organization.
Transparency and testing – The ability to test guardrails and iterate on configurations supports APRA’s expectations for due diligence and appropriate monitoring of AI systems.

We have a comprehensive user guide detailing how to implement, configure, and test Amazon Bedrock Guardrails.

AWS AI Service Cards also provide detailed information on AWS AI services, including intended use cases, limitations, and responsible AI design choices. This transparency helps financial institutions understand and responsibly use AI technologies.

APRA’s existing prudential standards do not set specific rules for managing AI/ML and generative AI risks. Instead, APRA outlines desired risk management outcomes, leaving it to each regulated entity to assess AI deployment risks and implement appropriate controls. AWS offers the User Guide to Financial Services Regulations and Guidelines in Australia to help customers meet APRA’s requirements.

Ultimately, the rate of AI, ML, and generative AI adoption amongst APRA-regulated entities will be determined by the risk appetite and risk management capability of individual entities. APRA openly encourages its regulated entities—our financial services customers—who are considering AI, ML, and generative AI experimentation and adoption to reach out to APRA directly and initiate dialogue. APRA is a highly experienced, knowledgeable, and approachable regulator, and will be able to provide valuable insights and guidance to regulated entities.

Conclusion and next steps

APRA’s messaging to industry is a significant milestone for AI, ML, and generative AI adoption in the Australian financial services industry. Boards, executives, and technology decision-makers should review APRA’s Risk Summit speech and consider APRA’s support for the adoption of these technologies when refining their strategies and plans.

AWS, and our AWS Partner Network, are experienced in working with financial services customers, and there are already a number of examples both internationally and locally where generative AI has been implemented to create value for our customers. AWS is ready to help our customers meet and exceed APRA’s risk management expectations.

Contact your AWS representative to discuss how the AWS solution architects, AWS Professional Services teams, AWS Training and Certification, and the AWS Partner Network can assist with your AI, ML, and generative AI adoption journey. If you don’t have an AWS representative, please contact us at https://aws.amazon.com/contact-us.

Exploring the benefits of artificial intelligence while maintaining digital sovereignty

2024-11-29 Max Peterson

Post Syndicated from Max Peterson original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/exploring-benefits-of-artificial-intelligence-while-maintaining-digital-sovereignty/

Around the world, organizations are evaluating and embracing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to drive innovation and efficiency. From accelerating research and enhancing customer experiences to optimizing business processes, improving patient outcomes, and enriching public services, the transformative potential of AI is being realized across sectors. Although using emerging technologies helps drive positive outcomes, leaders worldwide must balance these benefits with the need to maintain security, compliance, and resilience. Many organizations, including those in the public sector and regulated industries, are investing in generative AI applications powered by large language models (LLMs) and other foundation models (FMs) because these applications can transform and scale their work and provide better experiences for customers. Beyond computing power, unlocking this AI potential resides in the AI applications that organizations can create based on a variety of AI/ML development services, models, and data sources. Organizations must navigate the complexity of building AI applications in light of existing and emerging regulatory regimes while verifying that their AI applications and related data are secure, protected, and resilient to risks and threats.

AWS offers a wide range of AI/ML services and capabilities, built on our sovereign-by-design foundation, that are making it simpler for our customers to meet their digital sovereignty needs while getting the security, control, compliance, and resilience that they need. For example, Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service that offers a choice of high-performing FMs from leading AI companies such as AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, and Stability AI through a single API, along with a broad set of capabilities to build generative AI applications with security, privacy, and responsible AI. Amazon SageMaker provides tools and infrastructure to build, train, and deploy ML models at scale while supporting responsible AI with governance controls and access to pretrained models.

Innovating securely across the AI lifecycle

Security is and always has been our top priority at AWS. AWS customers benefit from our ongoing investment in data centers, networks, custom hardware, and secure software services, built to satisfy the requirements of the most security-sensitive organizations, including the government, healthcare, and financial services. We have always believed that it is essential that customers have control over their data and its location. That’s why we architected the AWS Cloud to be secure and sovereign-by-design from day one. We remain committed to giving our customers more control and choice so that they can use the full power of AWS while meeting their unique digital sovereignty needs.

As organizations develop and implement generative AI, they want to make sure that their data and applications are secured across the AI lifecycle, including data preparation, training, and inferencing. To help ensure the confidentiality and integrity of customer data, all of our Nitro-based Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances that run ML accelerators such as AWS Inferentia and AWS Trainium, and graphics processing units (GPUs) such as P4, P5, G5, and G6, are backed by the industry-leading security capabilities of the AWS Nitro System. By design, there is no mechanism for anyone at AWS to access Nitro EC2 instances that customers use to run their workloads. The NCC Group, an independent cybersecurity firm, has validated the design of the Nitro System.

We take a secure approach to generative AI and make it practical for our customers to secure their generative AI workloads across the generative AI stack so that they can focus on building and scaling. All AWS services—including generative AI services—support encryption, and we continue to innovate and invest in controls and encryption features that allow our customers to encrypt everything everywhere.

For example, Amazon Bedrock uses encryption to protect data in transit and at rest, and data remains in the AWS Region where Amazon Bedrock is being used. Customer data, such as prompts, completions, custom models, and data used for fine-tuning or continued pre-training, is not used for Amazon Bedrock service improvement and is never shared with third-party model providers. When customers fine-tune a model in Amazon Bedrock, the data is never exposed to the public internet, never leaves the AWS network, is securely transferred through a customer’s virtual private cloud (VPN), and is encrypted in transit and at rest.

SageMaker protects ML model artifacts and other system artifacts by encrypting data in transit and at rest. Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker integrate with AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) so that customers can securely manage cryptographic keys. AWS KMS is designed so that no one—not even AWS employees—can retrieve plaintext keys from the service.

Developing responsibly

The responsible development and use of AI is a priority for AWS. We believe that AI should take a people-centric approach that makes AI safe, fair, secure, and robust. We are committed to supporting customers with responsible AI and helping them build fairer and more transparent AI applications to foster trust, meet regulatory requirements, and use AI to benefit their business and stakeholders. AWS is the first major cloud service provider to announce ISO/IEC 42001 accredited certification for AI services, covering Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q Business, Amazon Textract, and Amazon Transcribe. ISO/IEC 42001 is an international management system standard that outlines requirements and controls for organizations to promote the responsible development and use of AI systems.

We take responsible AI from theory into practice by providing the necessary tools, guidance, and resources, including Amazon Bedrock Guardrails to help implement safeguards tailored to customer generative AI applications and aligned with their responsible AI policies, or Model Evaluation on Amazon Bedrock to evaluate, compare, and select the best FMs for specific use cases based on custom metrics, such as accuracy, robustness, and toxicity. Additionally, Amazon SageMaker Model Monitor automatically detects and alerts customers of inaccurate predictions from deployed models. We continue to publish AI Service Cards to enhance transparency by providing a single place to find information on the intended use cases and limitations, responsible AI design choices, and performance optimization best practices for our AI services and models.

Building resilience

Resilience plays a pivotal role in the development of any workload, and AI/ML workloads are no different. Customers need to know that their workloads in the cloud will continue to operate in the face of natural disasters, network disruptions, or disruptions due to geopolitical crises. AWS delivers the highest network availability of any cloud provider and is the only cloud provider to offer three or more Availability Zones (AZs) in all Regions, providing more redundancy. Understanding and prioritizing resilience is crucial for generative AI workloads to meet organizational availability and business continuity requirements. We have published guidance on designing generative AI workloads for resilience. To enable higher throughput and enhanced resilience during periods of peak demands in Amazon Bedrock, customers can use cross-region inference to distribute traffic across multiple Regions. For customers with specific European Union data sovereignty requirements, we are launching the AWS European Sovereign Cloud in 2025 to offer an additional layer of control and resilience.

Supporting choice and flexibility

It’s important that customers have access to diverse AI technologies, while having the freedom to choose the right solutions to meet their needs. AWS provides more diversity, choice, and flexibility so that customers can select the AI solution that best aligns with their specific requirements, whether that’s using open-source models, proprietary solutions, or their own custom AI models. For example, we understand the importance of open-source AI in fostering transparency, collaboration, and rapid innovation. Open-source models enable scrutiny of vulnerabilities, drive security improvements, and support research on AI safety. Amazon SageMaker JumpStart provides pretrained, open-source models for a wide range of common use cases. To provide practitioners and developers with the guidance and tools that they need to create secure-by-design AI systems, we are a founding member of the open-source initiative Coalition for Secure AI (CoSAI).

Also, our commitment to portability and interoperability helps ensure that customers can move easily between environments. For customers changing IT providers, we’ve taken concrete steps to lower costs, and AWS is actively engaged in efforts to facilitate switching between cloud providers, including through our support of the Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) Cloud Switching Framework, which lays out guidance to assist providers and customers in the switching process. This gives organizations the flexibility to adapt their cloud and AI strategies as their needs evolve.

We remain committed to providing customers with a choice of diverse AI technologies, along with secure and compliant ways to build their AI applications throughout the development lifecycle. Through this approach, customers can enhance the security, compliance, and resilience of their systems.

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

How SmugMug Increased Data Modeling Productivity with Amazon Q Developer

2024-11-26 Will Matos

Post Syndicated from Will Matos original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/how-smugmug-increased-data-modeling-productivity-with-amazon-q-developer/

This post is co-written with Dr. Geoff Ryder, Manager, at SmugMug.

Introduction

SmugMug operates two very large online photo platforms: SmugMug and Flickr. These platforms enable more than 100 million customers to safely store, search, share, and sell tens of billions of photos every day. However, the data science and engineering team at SmugMug and Flickr often faces complex data modeling challenges that require significant time to resolve.

These challenges arise due to several factors. First, the team has to contend with diverse datasets from different sources. Additionally, the database schema and tables are highly complex, and the team needs to quickly understand application (PHP) code and database table structures in order to generate the necessary complex database queries. Specifically, SmugMug uses Amazon Redshift as its cloud data warehouse to analyze patterns in petabyte-scale data stored in Amazon S3, as well as transactional data in Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB. This allows them to generate dozens of business reports daily.

However, the complexity increases further as many database tables also need to be imported from third-party organizations into Amazon Redshift, where they are joined with SmugMug and Flickr’s internal tables. In extreme cases, properly modeling all these database tables and handling issues like granularity, cardinality, timestamps and missing data could take years – an impractical timeline for the business. We are excited to walk through SmugMug’s data modeling use cases and how SmugMug uses Amazon Q Developer to improve the data science and engineering team’s productivity.

Discovering Amazon Q Developer

SmugMug was one of the first customers to pilot Amazon Q Developer (previously Amazon CodeWhisperer), the most capable AI-powered assistant for software development that re-imagines the experience across the entire software development lifecycle, making it easier and faster to build, secure, manage, optimize, operate, and transform applications on AWS. There are multiple Amazon Q Developer use cases at SmugMug and Flickr, such as using Amazon Q Developer agent (/dev) for software development (i.e. generating implementation plans and the accompanying code), generating inline code suggestions, asking Amazon Q Developer in chat about AWS services and best practices, and analyzing AWS usage and costs for Cloud Financial Management (CFM) needs. For the data science and engineering team specifically, the key feature is chatting with Amazon Q Developer in integrated development environments (IDEs) like Intellij DataGrip. The data analysts and data scientists at SmugMug and Flickr ask questions in Amazon Q Developer chat to analyze database schemas, generate data model diagrams from DDL (Data Definition Language) statements, convert queries between languages, automatically generate complex database queries for data analysis, generate code to validate table contents, and predict trends using ML (Machine Learning).

Implementing Amazon Q Developer

To solve the data modeling challenges SmugMug faced, the team collaborated closely with their AWS Account Team, AWS Professional Services, and the Amazon Q Developer service team to create and test a data modeling assistant solution using Amazon Q Developer.

As a first step, the data modeler needs to bring the right metadata to bear. For simpler cases, the commands “show view myschema.v” or “show table myschema.t“ retrieve DDL schema information about the specified view or table from Amazon Redshift into the IDE console.

Here’s an example using simulated data for a hypothetical company. For this typical company that handles orders for products, the result of typing “show table sample.orderinfo” and “show table sample.skuinfo”might be:

Image of SQL statement generated by the show table statement. "CREATE TABLE sample.orderinfo ( order_id bigint ENCODE raw, shipper_id bigint ENCODE az64 distkey, product_id bigint ENCODE az64, quantity_ordered integer ENCODE az64, date_order_placed timestamp without time zone ENCODE az64 ) DISTSTYLE KEY SORTKEY ( order_id );"

This DDL text is now in the open tab. By selecting the text to highlight it, that DDL text becomes part of the context that Amazon Q Developer sees. The modeler can start asking questions about them in the Amazon Q Developer chat window in the IDE.

Diagram showing what is considered part of the context included in a request including the RAG query result, related documents when using the at-workspace key word, the highlighted text in the IDE open tab,the chat history, and the prompt.

In complex scenarios, establishing the correct modeling context requires a combination of schema information, legacy SQL, application source code in various programming languages, sample values, and natural language documentation. Amazon Q Developer addresses this by creating a local index of relevant files and content. When a question is asked using @workspace, this index is consulted to identify and include pertinent sections of code and information in the request. (See this article for additional details on workspace). The prompt plays a crucial role in measuring similarity, so providing comprehensive context within it is essential. To optimize this process, the IDE settings feature a tunable workspace index function, allowing for enhanced performance in identifying and incorporating relevant context.

Image showing the Amazon Q Settings window where you enable the Workspace feature by checking the "Workspace index" box. You can also change the number of worker threads used, and the maximum workspace index size in MB.

Workspace Index Settings

By adopting Amazon Q Developer as a team, we are able to jointly develop and share proprietary prompt text to address the four steps in our modeling process, as follows.

Step 1. Define the goal for the data modeling project

From prior knowledge, sketch a high-level goal for a data model. Gather the data for it manually, or by e.g. querying a vector database and adding its documents to the project.

For this example, we choose as the goal to compute aggregated metrics from a new table or view composed of two existing tables, sample.orderinfo and sample.skuinfo. These contain simulated data about product sales that are common to many companies. The order table is in the style of a fact table that logs customer orders, and the stock keeping unit (SKU) table is a dimension table that provides additional data points of interest about each order. The order and SKU information need to be combined by a join operation before we can compute the metrics. We would like Amazon Q Developer to tell us how to write that SQL join statement.

Step 2. Conduct an exploratory analysis and generate candidates

Next, prompt Amazon Q Developer for candidate foreign keys to join the tables, and for SQL code to execute those joins. Generate an entity-relationship diagram (ERD) as a visual aid. Prompts do not have to be complicated. For example:

@workspace What columns of database tables sample.orderinfo and sample.skuinfo 
would be best to join the two tables? Provide SQL code for the join. Draw an 
entity relationship diagram that shows the joins between the two tables, and 
includes only the fields involved in the join. Add a crow's foot cardinality 
marker to indicate a 1:many relationship, and add it next to the high 
cardinality table.

Image with the first part of the response to the prompt with the following text: "Based on the table schemas, sku_id is the appropriate column to join these tables. The relationship is likely one-to-many (1:M) where one SKU can appear in multiple orders. Here's the SQL join: SELECT o.order_id, o.sku_id, s.sku_description FROM sample.orderinfo o JOIN sample.skuinfo s ON o.sku_id = s.sku_id;

Image with the second part of the response to the prompt with the ASCII relationship diagram showing the join relationship.

Each time tables are joined together, new aggregated metrics become available to drive business insights. Now, for instance, we can find the top selling SKUs in October thanks to our results:

Image shows the top 5 results from the prior query showing the top skus in October.

Sometimes we need to look at code written in languages other than SQL to complete the data model. For example, the names of some vendors this company works with happen to appear in application PHP code as human readable strings, but are saved in the application database as numbers. The analytics data staged in Redshift only contain the numbers. So, we pull a copy of the PHP text file into @workspace, and ask Amazon Q Developer to translate the relevant string-integer mappings into a SQL case statement.

Image shows the selected PHP code with a switch statement mapping Vendor Ids to Vendor Names.

PHP Switch statement showing the mapping of Vendor Ids to String Names.

I am a Redshift database administrator and I am working on a data modeling 
problem. I would like to write SQL statements to join tables sample.orderinfo 
and sample.skuinfo. Please write that SQL to join the two tables. Also, I 
would like to write a SQL case statement to recover all string values defined 
in PHP that are represented as integer values in the database table.

The output of that prompt is shown below.

Image showing the updated SQL query that maps the Vendor Id to the Vendor Name.

Amazon Q Developer automatically detected the PHP switch case statement, converted to SQL, and added it to the final query. Many other programming languages are supported, and modelers should try this technique with other kinds of source code. Note that data scientists and analysts may not know where to look in complex application code for these details, so this discovery-plus-code translation step is a net new benefit to our company that is only possible thanks to Amazon Q Developer.

Step 3. Create code to test the analysis

Now we request SQL source code for a battery of small test queries. These can return cardinality, grain, arithmetic, and null count results.

Please write a short SQL test to compute counts of the key fields that are used 
in the joins, which will verify the cardinality assignments indicated in the 
entity relationship diagram above. The SQL test should compare distinct counts 
to total counts and null counts when it verifies the cardinality.

Image of resulting SQL queries to check cardinality.

Step 4. Validate the results of the analysis

Run the test queries to see if the candidate solution from step 2 meets our goals. The “Insert at cursor” button at the bottom of the response is handy for this. The data modeler can easily spot an error in the join logic and ERD from inspecting the output of the test query. (Or, if it’s hard to interpret the results, keep making the test queries simpler.) If errors arise from the AI misinterpreting or miscalculating a result, or from a vaguely worded prompt, simply adjust the prompt in step 2 to fix the known errors, and repeat steps 2 – 4.

Image showing the query results from the cardinality query.

After a few iterations, taking from seconds to at most tens of minutes each, the modeling errors have been worked out and we arrive at a valid production query.

Key Benefits and Results

With this Amazon Q Developer powered solution and iterative approach, SmugMug has achieved highly accurate data modeling results across numerous database tables. Once the correct modeling configuration is established, various useful outputs may become available.

We already described production SQL, unit tests, and ERDs for documentation. By the end of the process, because Amazon Q Developer has a good understanding of the data it just modeled in its chat history, it will also generate useful Python machine learning programs to predict business trends. Here is a prompt for that, and a partial screenshot of the Python output:

Please write Python code to implement a linear regression that predicts the 
quantity_ordered value based on other fields in the data set. Choose predictor 
variables that are less likely to cause multi-collinearity problems.

Image showing the python code generated to predict quantity_ordered value.

This only shows the model training step, but the full response included all library imports, a Redshift query, feature engineering steps, ML performance metrics, and code for plotting the metrics. And the AI can produce other types of predictive models. For example, you can try:

Please write Python code to implement an XGBoost model that predicts the 
quantity_ordered value based on other fields in the data set.

Ultimately, the solution has improved team productivity for both existing and new team members, while maintaining legacy knowledge needed to onboard new team members more efficiently. Key benefits include:

Reducing SmugMug data analyst and scientist’s time spent on data modeling tasks from days to hours, allowing them to reallocate this time to other high-priority projects.
Automating the generation of BI documentation and predictive ML, also saving crucial time.
Providing net new value by translating application code constant definitions into SQL. Due to organizational boundaries, we would not have achieved this without an assist from the AI.

Future Plans and Expansion

SmugMug conducted the initial data modeling use case testing with over a dozen data science team members and analysts. We are moving on to analyze more complex tables and data schemas, and generating Python code in Amazon SageMaker for ML tasks like data preparation, training, inference, and MLOps. From our experience, Amazon Q Developer has become a preferred internal tool for development that has a data modeling component, and its use continues to expand to different groups around the company.

For SmugMug’s data modeling projects, we continue to enhance the four-step process described above. In order to gather the most relevant context to solve a problem, we build vector database collections to pull from schemas, older SQL code, application source code, BI tool content, and curated documentation. The vector search operation surfaces the right content, and spares data modelers from manually searching in different code archives. We use ChromaDB to do the searches, and bring the results from ChromaDB into the workspace as additional files.

Conclusion

Using Amazon Q Developer for data modeling use cases, SmugMug has managed to increase data science and engineering team productivity by up to 100% when compared to prior workflows. To explore how Amazon Q Developer can benefit your organization, get started here. If you have questions or suggestions, please leave a comment below.

About the Authors

Secure by Design: AWS enhances centralized security controls as MFA requirements expand

2024-11-15 Arynn Crow

Post Syndicated from Arynn Crow original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/secure-by-design-aws-enhances-centralized-security-controls-as-mfa-requirements-expand/

At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we’ve built our services with secure by design principles from day one, including features that set a high bar for our customers’ default security posture. Strong authentication is a foundational component in overall account security, and the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) is one of the simplest and most effective ways to help prevent unauthorized individuals from gaining access to systems or data. We have found that enabling MFA prevents greater than 99% of password-related attacks. Today, we’re sharing progress from the past year since we first announced that we would require customers to improve their default security posture by requiring the use of MFA for root users in the AWS Management Console.

In recent years, the typical workplace has evolved significantly. With an increase in practices like hybrid work and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, defining security boundaries became much more complex. Most organizations have adjusted their security perimeters to emphasize identity-based controls, which often made user passwords the new weakest link in the perimeter. Users sometimes choose low-complexity passwords for ease of use, or reuse complex passwords across multiple websites, which substantially increases risk when a website experiences a data breach.

We take many steps to improve our customers’ resilience against these types of risks. For example, we monitor online sources for compromised credentials and block customers from using these in AWS. We also guard against setting weak passwords, never suggest default passwords for users to use, and when we detect unusual sign-in activity for customers who haven’t yet enabled MFA, we validate the sign-in with one-time PIN challenges to their primary email address. Despite these measures, passwords alone remain inherently risky.

We recognized two key opportunities to improve the situation. The first is to accelerate our customers’ MFA adoption, raising the bar for default security posture at AWS by requiring MFA for highly privileged users. In May 2024, we began requiring MFA for AWS Organizations management account root users, starting with users in larger environments. Then, in June, we launched support for FIDO2 passkeys as an MFA method, to offer customers an additional highly secure but also user-friendly way to align with their security requirements. At the same time, we announced that our MFA requirements expanded to include root users in standalone accounts. After AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) launched FIDO2 passkey support in June 2024, customer registration rates for phishing-resistant MFA increased by over 100%. Between April and October 2024, more than 750,000 AWS root users enabled MFA.

The second opportunity we recognized is to eliminate unnecessary passwords altogether. On top of the security issues with passwords, attempting to secure password-based authentication introduces operational overhead for customers, especially those operating at scale and those with regulatory requirements to rotate passwords periodically. Today, we are launching a new capability to centrally manage root access for accounts managed in AWS Organizations. This capability enables customers to greatly reduce the number of passwords they have to manage while still maintaining strong controls over the use of root principals. Customers can now enable centralized root access with a simple configuration change through the IAM console or the AWS CLI, a process which is described further in this post. Then, customers can remove the long-term credentials (including passwords or long-term access keys) of member account root users in their organizations. This will improve the security posture of our customers while simultaneously reducing their operational effort.

We strongly recommend that Organizations customers get started enabling our centralized root access feature today to experience these benefits. However, in cases where customers continue to maintain root users, it’s essential to make sure that these highly privileged credentials are well-protected. With enhanced support for our customers operating at scale, as well as additional features like passkeys, we’re expanding our MFA requirements to member accounts in AWS Organizations. Beginning in the Spring of 2025, customers who have not enabled central management of root access will be required to register MFA for their AWS Organizations member account root users in order to access the AWS Management Console. As with our previous expansions to management and standalone accounts, we will roll this change out gradually and notify individual customers who are required to take action in advance, to help customers adhere to the new requirements while minimizing impact to their day-to-day operations.

You can learn more about our new feature to centrally manage root access in the IAM User Guide, and more about using MFA at AWS in the AWS MFA in IAM User Guide.

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

Maximize your cloud security experience at AWS re:Invent 2024: A comprehensive guide to security sessions

2024-11-11 Apurva More

Post Syndicated from Apurva More original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/maximize-your-cloud-security-experience-at-aws-reinvent-2024-a-comprehensive-guide-to-security-sessions/

AWS re:Invent 2024, which takes place December 2–6 in Las Vegas, will be packed with invaluable sessions for security professionals, cloud architects, and compliance leaders who are eager to learn about the latest security innovations. This year’s event puts best practices for zero trust, generative AI–driven security, identity and access management (IAM), DevSecOps, network and infrastructure security, data protection, and threat detection and incident response at the forefront. The event will provide invaluable learning and networking opportunities for professionals focused on cloud security.

To help you navigate the extensive list of sessions and maximize your learning, we’ve curated a list of must-attend security sessions at re:Invent 2024. To join us, register today, and we’ll see you in Vegas!

Keynotes and innovation talks

The re:Invent 2024 keynote and innovation talks offer the opportunity to gain direct, transformative insights from senior AWS leaders. Delve into the latest breakthroughs in generative AI, cloud security, and cutting-edge architectural innovations that are redefining the future of application development and the AWS Cloud.

KEY002 – CEO Keynote with Matt Garman. Discover how AWS is innovating across the cloud, from reinventing core services to creating new experiences, empowering customers and partners to build a secure and better future.
SEC203-INT – Security insights and innovation from AWS with Chris Betz. Discover how groundbreaking security innovations and generative AI empower your organization to accelerate innovation securely, as AWS CISO Chris Betz reveals transformative strategies to integrate and automate security, freeing your team to focus on high-value initiatives.

Check out the full list of innovation talks. Not attending live this year? The keynote and innovation talks will be live streamed.

Sessions

To add sessions to your re:Invent 2024 agenda and find time and location information, choose the session title link.

Accelerating least privilege with advanced access analysis

Explore identity management and access control best practices to minimize your attack surface and enable a zero-trust architecture.

SEC325 | Chalk talk | A least privilege journey made easier by IAM Access Analyzer: Learn how centralized security teams and IAM policy authors are using IAM Access Analyzer to gain visibility into unused, overly permissive access and use actionable recommendations to achieve least privilege at scale.
SEC337 | Chalk talk | Scaling IAM: advanced administration and delegation patterns: Discover innovative strategies for effective access management, balancing security and agility as your organization expands. Learn from real-world scenarios, best practices, and cutting-edge techniques to optimize your IAM infrastructure for scalability, performance, and future growth.
SEC202 | Builders’ session | API Authorization with Amazon Cognito and Verified Permissions: In this session, gain hands-on experience with modern authorization in a microservices-based architecture on AWS and learn how to externalize and customize authentication with Amazon Cognito, apply fine-grained authorization with policy-based access controls using Amazon Verified Permissions, and integrate with APIs that are protected by Amazon API Gateway. You must bring your laptop to participate.
SEC334 | Chalk talk | Building zero trust architectures with AWS practical guidance: This chalk talk delves into building zero-trust network architectures using AWS services. Learn how to secure user-to-application, application-to-application, and other access scenarios through a zero-trust lens.
SEC232 | Breakout session | Secure by design: Enhancing the posture of root with central control: This session explores how to manage root access securely across your AWS environment, while maintaining centralized control and governance. Additionally, discover the latest tools and initiatives AWS offers to enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA), align with industry initiatives, and help your environment to remain secure.

Fortifying your security posture with threat detection and incident response

Use AWS security services to help you enhance your security posture and streamline security operations by continuously identifying and prioritizing security risks.

SEC321 | Breakout session | Innovations in AWS detection and response: This session focuses on practical use cases, such as threat detection, workload and data protection, automated and continual vulnerability management, centralized monitoring, continuous cloud security posture management, unified security data management, investigation and response, and generative AI. Gain a deeper understanding of how you can seamlessly integrate AWS detection and response services to help protect your workloads at scale, enhance your security posture, and streamline security operations across your entire AWS environment.
SEC332 | Chalk talk | Anatomy of a ransomware event targeting data within AWS: In this chalk talk, learn the anatomy of a ransomware event that targets data within AWS, including detection, response, and recovery. Leave with a deeper understanding of the AWS services and features you can use to protect against ransomware events in your environment and the knowledge to investigate possible ransomware events if they occur.
SEC301 | Workshop | Threat detection and response using AWS security services: This workshop simulates several security events across different resources and behaviors. Get hands-on in a provided sandbox environment to review and respond to findings from the simulated events. You must bring your laptop to participate.
SEC219 | Breakout session |Uncovering sophisticated cloud threats with Amazon GuardDuty: Learn how Amazon GuardDuty offers fully managed threat detection that gives you end-to-end visibility across your AWS environment. The unique detection capabilities of GuardDuty are guided by AWS visibility into the cloud threat landscape and can help responders address issues faster, minimizing the mean time to repair (MTTR) and optimizing security resources—so your teams can spend more time innovating and less time chasing down security risks.
SEC343 | Chalk talk | Identify a prioritization strategy for security response & remediation: Join this chalk talk to learn about a framework for automating your response and remediation to security findings for your accounts. With AWS Security Hub as the foundation, explore the decision-making process regarding which findings could be auto-remediated, the implications of an auto-remediation approach, and how to achieve a quick and thorough response.
SEC401 | Code talk| Inspect and secure your application with generative AI: Explore how to use generative AI to improve the security of your applications. Learn how AI-powered tools can help rapidly identify and then recommend remediations for security issues. Learn about how Amazon Inspector detects software and code vulnerabilities in your applications, and discover how to scan for issues and remediate them using generative AI in your integrated development environment (IDE).

Securing the edge against evolving risks with confidence

Use AWS edge security services to help protect against distributed denial of service (DDoS) and exploits directed against applications and achieve a more consistent security posture.

SEC322 | Breakout session | Reduce your risk exposure with least privilege egress controls: Join this session to learn how to align your egress control strategy with the principle of least privilege. Learn how the recent launches for AWS Network Firewall, Amazon Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall, and other security services can help you to reduce your exposure to a variety of risks. Simplify implementation and make rule recommendations that are specific to your use cases. Gain the confidence that your security policies meet their intended needs.
SEC344 | Chalk talk | Lessons learned from DDoS mitigation: Insights from AWS Shield Response Team (AWS SRT) escalations: In this chalk talk, dive into past DDoS events and find out how the AWS SRT helped to mitigate security escalations. Gain insights into this type of intrusion and how you can apply mitigation strategies to make your application more DDoS-resilient.
SEC327| Chalk talk | Building secure network designs for generative AI applications: In this chalk talk, learn how to build layered network security controls to protect, detect, and respond to issues faster and to accelerate your generative AI applications securely on AWS. Discover key considerations, best practices, and reference architectures to achieve your defense-in-depth network design objectives.
SEC304 | Workshop | Mitigate zero-day events and ransomware risks with VPC egress controls: In this network security workshop, learn how to implement AWS best practices for egress controls to mitigate risks from software supply chain dependencies, zero-day events, cryptocurrency mining, and ransomware. You must bring your laptop to participate.
SEC317 | Breakout session | How Amazon threat intelligence helps protect your infrastructure: Explore AWS threat intelligence capabilities and learn how they power managed firewall rules and security findings in security services such as AWS WAF, AWS Network Firewall, and Amazon Route 53 Resolver DNS Firewall. Learn about the threat intelligence AWS uses to protect AWS infrastructure, build new security features, and empower customers to enhance their application protection on AWS.

Safeguarding sensitive data in the age of generative AI

Discover advanced techniques and AWS services to help you protect the confidentiality and privacy of your data when you implement emerging AI technologies.

SEC323 | Breakout session | The AWS approach to secure generative AI: Join this session to learn how AWS thinks about security across the three layers of our generative AI stack, from the bottom infrastructure layer to the middle layer (which provides access to the models and tools customers need to build and scale generative AI applications) to the top layer (which includes applications that make use of large language models (LLMs) and other foundation models (FMs) to make work easier).
SEC310 | Workshop | Persona-based access to data for generative AI applications: In this workshop, manage document access in a chatbot application tailored to various user roles within an organization. Learn how to address challenges around secure information distribution, enhancing efficiency and compliance by aligning access rights with job functions. You must bring your laptop to participate.
SEC336 | Chalk talk |Security and compliance considerations using Amazon Q Business: This chalk talk covers best practices for securing your Amazon Q Business application, including access control, data protection, and compliance considerations.

To find more generative AI–focused sessions, see this blog post.

Empowering developers with a security-minded culture

Integrate security seamlessly within your DevSecOps practices to accelerate time to market and reduce risk.

SEC216 | Breakout session | Build trust in your CI/CD pipeline: Codify container security at scale: In this session, learn how to automate container security and compliance at scale. Explore how Amazon Q Developer, Amazon Inspector, and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Image Builder complement each other, helping to automate the creation of secured container images and their eventual storage in Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR). Leave knowing how to support your builders and allow them to develop quickly without compromising on security.
SEC217 | Breakout session | Building a resilient and effective culture of security: This talk offers guidance on cultivating a resilient, empowered culture of security, including gaining leadership support, distributing security ownership, and embedding psychological safety to build trust, transparency, and a proactive security-first mindset.
SEC218 | Breakout session | Emotionally intelligent security leadership to drive business impact: Elevate your leadership and learn to align security needs with strategic business outcomes, spearhead impactful transformations, and cultivate a sustainable security culture. Get an inside look how AWS and its customers lead security with empathy, translate security purpose into results, inspire innovation, and foster connections to improve positive escalation culture. Become empowered to lead with precision, acquire the art of connecting security objectives to meaningful business impact, and steer your organization toward a future where security is a catalyst for success and resilience.
SEC314 | Code talk | Accelerate your DevOps pipeline and remain secure with policy as code: In this code talk, learn how to define compliance rules for your AWS infrastructure and evaluate them using AWS CloudFormation Guard, which is an open source, general-purpose, policy-as-code evaluation tool. Explore how to seamlessly integrate automated policy validation into your existing deployment pipeline, empowering DevOps engineers to build policy assessment steps into their CI/CD pipelines. Security assessors will experience streamlined review processes while maintaining a robust security posture.
SEC302 | | Breakout session | Better together: Protecting data through culture and technology: This session examines the full range of data protection capabilities that are available with AWS and how best practices and culture can complement these capabilities to improve security outcomes. Learn more about the defense-in-depth perspective, which details how organizations can protect their data and bolster their security culture by consistently building security into every layer.

Expo

Want to talk directly with an AWS expert on cloud security? Then don’t miss this opportunity to have one-on-one conversations with leading AWS security experts in the Security Activation area of the expo floor to help you take your organization’s security posture to new heights.

Delve into key security domains such as:

Detection and response: Explore techniques for detecting and responding to security risks to help protect your workloads at scale.
Network and infrastructure security: Learn how to build and manage a secure global network with AWS services.
Application security: Discover strategies to ship secure software and address the challenges of application security.
Identity and access management: Adopt modern cloud-native identity solutions and apply least-privilege access controls.
Digital sovereignty and data protection: Maintain control over your data and choose how to secure and manage it in the AWS Cloud.

Still time for fun!

After an inspiring week of transformative insights and deep learning, join us for the world renowned re:Play party—the ultimate re:Invent sendoff! Immerse yourself in live entertainment from headlining musical artists, scrumptious cuisine, and flowing refreshments as we come together to unwind, connect, and toast to a future of limitless possibilities.

Register today

It’s going to be an amazing event, and we can’t wait to see you at re:Invent 2024! Register now to secure your spot.

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

New AWS Secure Builder training available through SANS Institute

2024-11-01 Mecca Nnacheta

Post Syndicated from Mecca Nnacheta original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/new-aws-secure-builder-training-available-through-sans-institute/

Education is critical to effective security. As organizations migrate, modernize, and build with Amazon Web Services (AWS), engineering and development teams need specific skills and knowledge to embed security into workloads. Lack of support for these skills can increase the likelihood of security incidents.

AWS has partnered with SANS Institute to create SEC480: AWS Secure Builder—a new training course that can help you confidently build and deploy secure workloads in the AWS Cloud.

The training, authored and delivered by the experts at SANS Institute, is designed to equip architects, engineers, and developers with the ability to implement and enhance security controls, and strengthen your security posture with a secure by design approach to product development.

What you’ll learn

The course features eight comprehensive modules that focus on different aspects of AWS security. Each is accompanied by a hands-on lab to provide practical experience and boost confidence in building secure AWS environments.

Responsibility to, for, and of security: Understand the shared responsibility model, the difference between cloud and on-premises security, AWS security architecture, compliance requirements, and how to apply effective security controls.
Identification and authorization: Implement best practices for AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), explore workforce identity management, address common authentication failures, and apply secure access controls.
Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD): Learn how to configure and use CI/CD pipelines, automate code deployment with AWS CodePipeline, integrate security tools, and help prevent misconfigurations through hands-on labs and real-world demos.
Workload and services: Manage AWS workloads and services such as Amazon API Gateway, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), address misconfigurations, and align configurations to your risk profile through practical labs and real-world examples.
Security monitoring: Implement comprehensive security monitoring with logging at all levels, use monitoring tools, enhance alerting with artificial AI, and set up early warning systems.
Exposure and attack vectors: Identify and mitigate exposure and attack vectors through open source intelligence (OSINT), understand the anatomy of exploitations, and minimize threat surfaces using threat modeling and compliance tools.
Incident response: Master the six-step incident response process, implement best practices with roles, playbooks, and technology, and prepare with tools and exercises.
Trust, control, and the supply chain: Evaluate vendor reliance and onboarding processes, implement Zero Trust principles, and defend against supply chain attacks to ensure secure vendor interactions.

Anyone technical who will be building in, operating in, configuring, or managing AWS cloud environments can benefit from the training, including AWS customers and partners. The training is offered online, and learnings are validated by an associated GIAC exam.

Arming your teams with the insight provided by this training can help your organization design, build, and maintain applications in the cloud with a security-first mindset, increase product development velocity, and enhance business agility through secure cloud practices.

We encourage you to learn more about SEC480: AWS Secure Builder through SANS Institute.

Notes

This course will be offered online. SANS provides in-person training only for private, high-volume trainings.
GIAC is providing a micro-credential for the AWS Secure Builder certification. It will be the first course to have this designation by GIAC. Micro-certifications are short, competency-based courses that demonstrate mastery in a particular area.

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

Exploring digital sovereignty: learning opportunities at re:Invent 2024

2024-10-24 Marta Taggart

Post Syndicated from Marta Taggart original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/exploring-digital-sovereignty-learning-opportunities-at-reinvent-2024/

AWS re:Invent 2024, a learning conference hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the global cloud computing community, will take place December 2–6, 2024, in Las Vegas, Nevada, across multiple venues. At re:Invent, you can join cloud enthusiasts from around the world to hear the latest cloud industry innovations, meet with AWS experts, and build connections. Whether you want to build deep technical expertise, understand how to prioritize your investments, learn more about the infrastructure offerings of the sovereign-by-design AWS Cloud, or see how the AWS Nitro System enables enhanced security for your workloads, re:Invent is a great opportunity to explore our digital sovereignty solutions.

This year, there will be many ways that you can learn about our advanced sovereignty controls, security features, and infrastructure options that can help meet your unique digital sovereignty needs, including sessions and hands-on activities with AWS hybrid and edge services including AWS Local Zones, AWS Dedicated Local Zones, and AWS Outposts. In the Expo, you can visit the Digital Sovereignty & Data Protection kiosk in the AWS Village to watch demos, learn about the upcoming AWS European Sovereign Cloud, and get your questions answered by AWS team members. To see AWS designed chips and Outposts devices, check out the AWS Next Gen Infrastructure Hub in the AWS Village. You can also visit the AWS Partner Network (APN) booth to connect with AWS Digital Sovereignty Partners to learn about the benefits of partner programs.

Breakout sessions and lightning talks

To add sessions to your AWS re:Invent agenda and find time and location information, choose the session title link.

SEC229 | Breakout | Digital sovereignty: overcome complexity and enable future-readiness
Max Peterson, VP, Sovereign Cloud, AWS
Organizations are facing increasing complexity in an evolving sovereignty landscape. Building a strong digital foundation can help simplify efforts to meet requirements today and prepare your organization for the future, without slowing innovation. Join this session to learn how AWS sovereign cloud offerings, ranging from encryption services to the announced AWS European Sovereign Cloud, provides more control and choice to help meet your unique needs. Discover how customers are keeping critical workloads secure and protected when leveraging new technologies on AWS, including generative AI, and learn about new digital sovereignty solutions offered by AWS Partners.

HYB201 | Breakout | AWS wherever you need it: From the cloud to the edge
Jan Hofmeyr, VP, EC2 Networking and Hybrid Edge, AWS, and Jeff Feist, Executive Director – Hosting Solutions, Merck & Co., Inc.
While most workloads can be migrated to the cloud, some remain on premises or at the edge due to low latency, local data processing, or digital sovereignty needs. In this session, learn how AWS services like AWS Outposts, AWS Local Zones, AWS Dedicated Local Zones, and AWS IoT Core support hybrid cloud and edge computing workloads such as multiplayer gaming, high-frequency trading, medical imaging, smart manufacturing, and generative AI applications with data residency requirements.

HYB309 | Breakout | Well-architected for data residency with hybrid cloud services
Sherry Lin, Principal Product Manager, AWS; Lakshmi VP, Specialist SA – Hybrid Edge, AWS; and Kevin Ng, Senior Director, Core Engineering Products, GovTech
With concerns over data privacy, security, and digital sovereignty, many countries across the world are strengthening data residency laws to keep personal and sensitive data within their borders. For organizations operating across multiple geographies, it can be challenging to meet the evolving data residency laws. In this session, following the AWS Well-Architected Framework, explore the best practices around data residency when using hybrid cloud services, including AWS Local Zones, AWS Dedicated Local Zones, and AWS Outposts.

IOT202 | Breakout | AWS IoT for edge LLM deployment and execution
Nikit Pednekar, Principal Product Manager, AWS, and Stefano Marzani, WW Tech Leader, SDX, AWS
With the advent of generative AI and large language models (LLMs), you must be wondering, how can these technologies be applied at the IoT edge? After all, there are many benefits of running LLMs at the edge—from network bandwidth efficiencies, offline processing, lower latency, and data sovereignty to cost savings, security, and differentiation. In this session, learn how using AWS IoT services and LLMs at the edge can uplift your solutions with actionable outcomes and innovative capabilities, such as gesture recognition, natural language processing for voice control, real-time predictive maintenance, energy optimization, anomaly detection, and more.

KUB310 | Breakout | Amazon EKS for edge and hybrid use cases
Chris Splinter, Product Manager, AWS, and Gokul Chandra Purnachandra Reddy, Senior Solutions Architect, AWS
There are some workloads that may need to run on-premises, at the edge, or in a hybrid scenario due to low-latency, data dependencies, data sovereignty, or other regulatory reasons, especially in industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, telco, and financial services. Data dependent workloads may have to wait for the data to be on AWS services before fully migrating. In this session, we will share production-ready architectures leveraging services like Amazon EKS Anywhere to run container workloads on-premises and support modernizing VMware-based workloads. Also learn best practices on migration of on-premises Kubernetes deployments to AWS Cloud.

PEX110 | Lightening Talk | Supercharge your growth and capabilities with partner programs
Mike Cannady, Director, Partner Core Public Sector, AWS
Discover the latest AWS Partner program updates that propel your public sector business forward. Join this lightning talk to explore innovations tailored to partners: generative AI programs, digital sovereignty, solution building, and managed services. Whether you’re starting out or seasoned, glean insights and use cases to elevate your journey. Don’t miss this opportunity to supercharge your development and stay ahead in this ever-evolving landscape.

Interactive sessions (chalk talks and workshops)

HYB304 | Workshop | Implement RAG without compromising on digital sovereignty
Aditya Lolla, Senior Solutions Architect, Hybrid Edge, AWS, and Robert Belson, Senior Developer Advocate, AWS
As governments and standards bodies develop data protection and privacy regulations, organizations increasingly need to combine the use of generative AI tooling in the cloud with regulated data that need to remain on premises to meet data sovereignty requirements. In this workshop, learn how to extend Agents for Amazon Bedrock to hybrid and edge services like AWS Outposts and AWS Local Zones to build distributed Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) applications with on-premises data for improved model outcomes. Get hands-on with Amazon Bedrock, AWS Lambda, and AWS hybrid and edge services, and build Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) compliant workflows using a hybrid S3 compatible solution. You must bring your laptop to participate.

WPS207 | Chalk Talk | How AWS can help you meet your digital sovereignty requirements
Mehmet Bakkaloglu, Principal Solutions Architect, AWS, and Addy Upreti, Principal Technical Product Manager – Digital Sovereignty, AWS
Customers in the public sector and regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services and telecom have shared how they face digital sovereignty concerns in their cloud journey. In this talk, you can learn about how AWS is sovereign-by-design and the range of capabilities that can enable you to meet your digital sovereignty needs. Plus, discover how the AWS European Sovereign Cloud is being built to provide further choice to meet these needs. We’ll talk through how AWS can help accelerate your cloud journey while meeting your requirements.

HYB310 | Chalk Talk | Addressing data residency requirements with hybrid and edge services
Sedji Gaouaou, Senior Solutions Architect, AWS, and Fabio Rodriguez, Head of Hybrid Cloud Solutions Architect, AWS
Data residency is a critical consideration for organizations that collect and store sensitive information, including personal identifiable information (PII), financial data, healthcare data, or information pertaining to national security. To help organizations operating across multiple geographies drive innovation while meeting data residency requirements, AWS offers multiple global infrastructure offerings like AWS Regions, AWS Dedicated Local Zones, AWS Local Zones, and AWS Outposts. In this interactive chalk talk, learn how these infrastructure offerings can help you accelerate digital transformation while meeting data residency needs.

For a full view of digital sovereignty content, including sessions with partners, explore the AWS re:Invent catalog and filter on the Digital Sovereignty area of interest. Not able to attend in-person? Register for free for the virtual-only pass to livestream keynotes and innovation talks, and access on-demand breakout sessions today. See you in Las Vegas or on the livestream!

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

170 AWS services achieve HITRUST certification

2024-10-22 Mark Weech

Post Syndicated from Mark Weech original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/170-aws-services-achieve-hitrust-certification/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is excited to announce that 170 AWS services have achieved HITRUST certification for the 2024 assessment cycle, including the following 12 services that were certified for the first time:

AWS AppFabric
AWS Application Migration Service
Amazon Bedrock (Including the Titan Model)
AWS Clean Rooms
Amazon DataZone
AWS Entity Resolution
AWS HealthImaging
AWS IoT Device Defender
AWS IoT TwinMaker
Amazon Managed Grafana
AWS Resilience Hub
AWS User Notifications

The full list of AWS services, which a third-party assessor audited and certified under the HITRUST CSF, is now available on our Services in Scope by Compliance Program page. Customers can view and download our 2024 HITRUST certification on demand through AWS Artifact.

AWS HITRUST certification is available for customer inheritance

As an added benefit to our customers, organizations no longer have to assess inherited controls for their HITRUST validated assessment because AWS already has. You can deploy business solutions to the AWS Cloud and inherit our HITRUST certification, provided that you use only in-scope services and properly apply the controls detailed on the HITRUST website according to the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.

Our HITRUST certification is based on the version 11.2 control framework, so you can inherit the latest controls and related scoring, knowing that AWS has attested to the latest framework standards available. Leading organizations in a variety of industries have adopted HITRUST CSF as part of their approach to security and privacy. For more information, see the HITRUST website.

As always, we value your feedback and questions and are committed to helping you achieve and maintain the highest standard of security and compliance. Feel free to contact the team through AWS Compliance Support. If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.

Options for AWS customers who use Entrust-issued certificates

2024-10-18 Zach Miller

Post Syndicated from Zach Miller original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/options-for-aws-customers-who-use-entrust-issued-certificates/

Multiple popular browsers have announced that they will no longer trust public certificates issued by Entrust later this year. Certificates that are issued by Entrust on dates up to and including October 31, 2024 will continue to be trusted until they expire, according to current information from browser makers. Certificates issued by Entrust after that date will not be trusted.

If you’ve imported Entrust certificates into AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for use with integrated services such as Amazon CloudFront or Elastic Load Balancing, consider reissuing these certificates through Entrust before October 31, 2024, and re-importing them. This will provide you with a longer timeline to evaluate your alternatives. In this blog post, we discuss how you can determine whether certificates you imported to ACM will be affected, and suggest potential alternatives, including public certificates issued by Amazon Trust Services.

How to tell if you’ve imported Entrust certificates to ACM

If you’re unsure whether you’ve imported certificates to ACM, there are a few different ways to verify. You can use the ACM console to view your certificates for that AWS account. Certificates that are imported to ACM have the type Imported, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Viewing certificates in AWS Certificate Manager

You can also list the certificates in your AWS account by using the AWS CLI or APIs. You can use the list-certificates command with the AWS CLI:

aws acm list-certificates

You can then filter the response to only show the certificate ARN of certificates that are imported into ACM by using the following command:

aws acm list-certificates --query 'CertificateSummaryList[?Type==`IMPORTED`].CertificateArn'

After you’ve identified the ARNs of imported certificates, you can use the describe-certificate CLI command to get more information about each of the imported certificates. One of the returned fields is Issuer—this field indicates who originally issued the certificate in question. See the following example command and output, where in this case the issuer is Amazon:

aws acm describe-certificate --certificate-arn arn:aws:acm:region:account:certificate/12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012

{
"Certificate": {
"CertificateArn": "arn:aws:acm:region:account:certificate/12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012",
"CreatedAt": 1446835267.0,
"DomainName": "www.example.com",
"DomainValidationOptions": [
{
"DomainName": "www.example.com",
"ValidationDomain": "www.example.com",
"ValidationEmails": [
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]"
]
},
{
"DomainName": "www.example.net",
"ValidationDomain": "www.example.net",
"ValidationEmails": [
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]",
"[email protected]"
]
}
],
"InUseBy": [],
"IssuedAt": 1446835815.0,
"Issuer": "Amazon",
"KeyAlgorithm": "RSA-2048",
"NotAfter": 1478433600.0,
"NotBefore": 1446768000.0,
"Serial": "0f:ac:b0:a3:8d:ea:65:52:2d:7d:01:3a:39:36:db:d6",
"SignatureAlgorithm": "SHA256WITHRSA",
"Status": "ISSUED",
"Subject": "CN=www.example.com",
"SubjectAlternativeNames": [
"www.example.com",
"www.example.net"
]
}
}

You can use one of these methods to determine whether you’ve imported certificates to ACM, and use the Issuer field of the DescribeCertificate response to check whether any of your imported certificates were issued by Entrust and will be affected by the coming changes in popular browsers.

Lastly, you can also use this sample code from our GitHub repository to discover imported certificates that were issued by a certain CA or issuer. The project evaluates the ACM certificates for a given AWS account, flagging certificates with an Issuer value that matches against a specific, customizable list of CAs. This can be run as a Python script, an AWS Config query, or a custom rule in AWS Config.

Consider replacing Entrust certificates with public certificates issued through ACM

If you’re using Extended Validation (EV) or Organization Validation (OV) certificates, we recommend that you use Domain Validated (DV) certificates from ACM instead. Popular browsers do not differentiate between EV/OV and DV certificates when indicating whether a site is trusted. Additionally, EV/OV certificate issuance and renewals cannot be automated and require manual effort, unlike DV certificates.

You can use ACM to get DV certificates at no additional cost for use with Amazon CloudFront, Elastic Load Balancing, or Amazon API Gateway. Our public certificates are issued by Amazon Trust Services and are trusted by popular browsers and operating systems. When you issue certificates through ACM, you get the benefit of fully managed certificate renewal, where ACM automatically renews and redeploys the certificate when it is 60 days from expiration.

Evaluate use of private certificates for internal-facing use cases

We also recommend that you re-evaluate your use of certificates to reconsider whether you need private or public certificates for your use cases. For internal-facing workloads, you should consider using private certificates. This will allow you to control the certificate parameters, such as the certificate type or the validity period, to align with your specific TLS requirements. For example, ACM issued public certificates are valid for 395 days, but you might have use cases in which certificates with a longer validity period make more sense, and in such cases you can issue private certificates from AWS Private Certificate Authority (AWS Private CA).

Conclusion

In summary, if you are importing Entrust-issued certificates to ACM, evaluate whether you need public or private certificates, especially for internal-facing workloads—for which private certificates are typically better suited. For public certificates, take this opportunity to re-evaluate your usage of EV and OV certificates, and whether they could be replaced with DV certificates. If you want to use public certificates with services such as Amazon CloudFront, Elastic Load Balancing, or Amazon API Gateway, issue the certificates directly from ACM. Lastly, if you need more time to evaluate your options before making a decision, consider re-issuing and re-importing your certificates from Entrust before October 31, 2024. Popular browsers stated their intention to trust certificates issued by Entrust prior to October 31, 2024 until these certificates expire, giving you until the next certificate renewal to make an informed decision. You can learn more about ACM by reviewing the AWS documentation, and get started issuing certificates from ACM in the AWS Management Console.

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

Spanish version

CCN publica la guía para las Zonas de Aterrizaje del ENS con AWS Landing Zone Accelerator

OSCAL fundamentals

Expressing CCCS controls in OSCAL

CCCS cloud security profiles

Resources

Future work

Key announcements

Experience content on demand

What is the PBHVA assessment and why is it important?

How can you access the assessment?

FIPS post-quantum cryptography

Integration with s2n-tls

New algorithms and new implementations

New algorithms

Performance improvements

How to use ML-KEM today

Conclusion

A green light for AI, ML, and generative AI

Risks must be understood and managed

APRA’s current regulatory framework is fit-for-purpose

How AWS is helping customers locally and globally use AI responsibly

How to implement responsible AI within your organization

Conclusion and next steps

Innovating securely across the AI lifecycle

Developing responsibly

Building resilience

Supporting choice and flexibility

Introduction

Discovering Amazon Q Developer

Implementing Amazon Q Developer

Step 1. Define the goal for the data modeling project

Step 2. Conduct an exploratory analysis and generate candidates

Step 3. Create code to test the analysis

Step 4. Validate the results of the analysis

Key Benefits and Results

Future Plans and Expansion

Conclusion

About the Authors

Keynotes and innovation talks

Sessions

Accelerating least privilege with advanced access analysis

Fortifying your security posture with threat detection and incident response

Securing the edge against evolving risks with confidence

Safeguarding sensitive data in the age of generative AI

Empowering developers with a security-minded culture

Expo

Still time for fun!

Register today

What you’ll learn

Notes

Breakout sessions and lightning talks

Interactive sessions (chalk talks and workshops)

AWS HITRUST certification is available for customer inheritance

How to tell if you’ve imported Entrust certificates to ACM

Consider replacing Entrust certificates with public certificates issued through ACM

Evaluate use of private certificates for internal-facing use cases

Conclusion

The collective thoughts of the interwebz