Enhance AWS Cloud Security with AWS Security Hub
Strengthen your cloud defense with advanced security measures
Cloud infrastructure uses are increasing at a rapid pace, and businesses are adopting the cloud for their infrastructure as never before. Ensuring robust security measures while using the cloud is critical to securing confidential data as well as the smooth functioning of business operations and its reputation.
AWS Security Hub provides a centralized mechanism for security monitoring and compliance management across AWS accounts and services. This article will explore the features, benefits, and implementation of AWS Security Hub.
What is AWS Security Hub?
AWS Security Hub is a cloud security posture management service that performs security best practice checks against your AWS resources. It provides a centralized, aggregated, and prioritized overview of security findings and compliance status in a standard format for a single AWS account and multiple AWS accounts.
Key Features of AWS Security Hub
- Centralized security monitoring: AWS Security Hub aggregates security findings from various AWS services such as Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, AWS Systems Manager, AWS Health, AWS Config, Amazon Macie, AWS IAM Access Analyzer and AWS Firewall Manager. It offers a unified dashboard, enabling security teams to monitor, prioritize, and act upon security alerts from a single location.
- Continuous security assessment: AWS Security Hub works on event-based monitoring and runs on periodic schedules. AWS Security Hub performs continuous security assessments and generates findings. It helps identify misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and any deviations from security best practices, providing actionable recommendations for remediation.
- Prioritized alerting: AWS Security Hub provides a specific severity rating for each alert to prioritize the remediation efforts.
- Custom insights and compliance checks: AWS Security Hub allows organizations to create custom insights and compliance checks specific to their environment. It uses AWS Config to create custom rules.
- Integration with third-party security tools: AWS Security Hub integrates with third-party security solutions and services. This integration allows for centralized visibility and management of security findings.
- Automation: AWS Security Hub supports automation through AWS Lambda, enabling automatic notification and remediation actions in response to security findings. This automation capability helps organizations quickly be aware of vulnerabilities/threats, respond with corrective actions, and enforce security policies efficiently.
- Management: AWS Security Hub provides an aggregated view of cross-regional findings across all the services, including partner integrations. It provides a single and standardized format for all the findings. AWS Security Hub operates at both the multi-account level and the AWS Organizations level. It provides capabilities for filtering and grouping of findings.
- Compliance framework alignment: AWS Security Hub supports various compliance frameworks such as AWS Foundational Security Best Practices, CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework, and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). It provides pre-built compliance checks and simplifies compliance reporting and auditing processes.
- Security scores and summary dashboards: AWS Security Hub provides a simple 0–100 security score for each standard, a consolidated one for all the standards and each account, and a total score for all accounts associated with your administrator account. This score is based on the number of controls that have passed vs. failed for a standard. The summary dashboard also provides other key insights, such as which resources have the most failed security checks, region-wise findings, service-specific findings, etc., to help you monitor your security posture.
Benefits of AWS Security Hub
- Simplified security operations: AWS Security Hub automatically collects data from multiple sources and performs security data analysis. It provides a centralized view, simplifying security operations, and enabling faster response to threats.
- Enhanced threat visibility: By integrating with various AWS security services and third-party tools, AWS Security Hub provides a wide range of security insights, ensuring comprehensive visibility into potential threats and vulnerabilities.
- Proactive risk mitigation: The continuous and automated compliance checks of AWS Security Hub allow organizations to proactively identify and remediate security gaps, reducing the risk of breaches, data leaks, and compliance violations.
- Simplified compliance management: AWS Security Hub simplifies compliance management by aligning with industry-standard frameworks and providing pre-built compliance checks. It simplifies reporting, and audits, and ensures compliance with regulatory requirements.
- Efficient collaboration: AWS Security Hub enables seamless collaboration between security teams by providing a centralized and shared view of security findings, allowing them to work together on analysis, remediation, and incident response.
Step-by-Step Guide: How to enable AWS Security Hub?
Below are the steps to configure AWS Security Hub:
1. Sign in to the AWS account using the management console and open the AWS Security Hub console.
2. Click on “Go to Security Hub”:
3. To accurately report findings for controls that rely on AWS Config rules, you must enable recording for the relevant resources in AWS Config:
3.1 Select the relevant “Recording strategy” and “Recording frequency” as per your requirement:
3.2 Configure “Override settings” to override the recording frequency for specific resource types or exclude specific resource types from recording and create a new IAM Role or select the existing IAM Role for AWS Config in “Data governance”:
3.3 AWS Config needs an S3 bucket to store configuration history and configuration snapshots. Configure S3 bucket details, then click on “Next”:
3.4 AWS Config Managed Rules provide a set of predefined rules that you can use to evaluate the compliance of your AWS resources according to best practices and security standards. Select the AWS-managed rules as per your requirements and click on “Next”:
3.5. Review AWS Config details and click on “Confirm” to finish the AWS Config setup:
4. Select the “Security standards” as per your requirement from built-in security standards and click on “Enable Security Hub” to finish the setup:
5. Once setup is complete, you’ll be directed to the Security Hub dashboard. Here, you can access a unified view of security findings, compliance status, and actionable insights across your AWS accounts. Explore the dashboard in detail and familiarize yourself with the available features and navigation options.
By following these steps, you can successfully configure AWS Security Hub and leverage its capabilities for centralized security monitoring, compliance management, and proactive threat detection and response within your AWS environment.
Once you enable an AWS Security Hub, it will take some time to complete the initial analysis and to appear the results on the dashboard. This is because AWS Security Hub needs to scan your entire AWS environment to identify all the relevant resources to the standard.
After the initial analysis is done, AWS Security Hub will continue to scan your AWS environment regularly to identify any new resources or modifications to existing resources. The results will be posted on the dashboard in real-time. You can then check the findings and prioritize the remediation of the threats/vulnerabilities detected.
Below are some sample reports from the AWS Security Hub dashboard:
1. Security score from AWS Security Hub summary. Security score is a measure of how well your AWS resources are protected against security threats and vulnerabilities:
2. Findings from all linked Regions are visible from the aggregation Region:
3. Track New findings over time by severity and the provider, and see the top resources at risk across multiple resource types:
4. Security score for specific security standards:
Conclusion
AWS Security Hub is an essential component in securing AWS cloud infrastructure by providing a comprehensive and centralized view of security posture. With its continuous monitoring, automation capabilities, and integration with various AWS services and third-party tools, organizations can effectively detect, manage, and remediate security issues quickly and ensure compliance with industry standards. By leveraging AWS Security Hub, businesses can enhance their AWS cloud security strategy and protect their valuable assets from evolving threats in the digital landscape.
