AWS Security Blog

You can use AWS security controls to detect and mitigate risks to your AWS resources. The purpose of each security control is defined by its control objective. For example, the control objective of an Amazon VPC security group is to permit only designated traffic to enter or leave a network interface. Let’s say you have […]

Today, AWS launched AWS Organizations: a new way for you to centrally manage all the AWS accounts your organization owns. Now you can arrange your AWS accounts into groups called organizational units (OUs) and apply policies to OUs or directly to accounts. For example, you can organize your accounts by application, environment, team, or any […]

You can use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles and AWS Security Token Service (STS) to set up cross-account access between AWS accounts. When you assume an IAM role in another AWS account to obtain cross-account access to services and resources in that account, AWS CloudTrail logs the cross-account activity. Starting today, CloudTrail logs […]

Today, we updated the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) console to make it easier for you to create and manage your IAM users. These improvements include an updated user creation workflow and new ways to assign and manage permissions. The new user workflow guides you through the process of setting user details, including enabling […]

Some Active Directory (AD) integrated applications require custom changes to the directory schema. Today, we have added the ability for an administrator to extend the schema of AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (Enterprise Edition), also known as Microsoft AD. Specifically, you can modify the AD schema and enable many more applications. This feature […]

Today, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) made 10 AWS managed policies available that align with common job functions. AWS managed policies enable you to set permissions using policies that AWS creates and manages, and with a single AWS managed policy for job functions, you can grant the permissions necessary for network or database administrators, […]

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) provides an additional layer of security for sensitive API calls, such as terminating Amazon EC2 instances or deleting important objects stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. In some cases, you may want to require users to authenticate with an MFA code before performing specific API requests, and by using AWS Identity and […]

Web and application users and organizations have expressed a growing desire to conduct most of their HTTP communication securely by using HTTPS. At its 2016 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced that starting in January 2017, apps submitted to its App Store will be required to support App Transport Security (ATS). ATS requires all connections to […]

August 31, 2021: AWS KMS is replacing the term customer master key (CMK) with AWS KMS key and KMS key. The concept has not changed. To prevent breaking changes, AWS KMS is keeping some variations of this term. More info. An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) provides the information required to launch an instance (a virtual […]

In June 2015, AWS Chief Information Security Officer Stephen Schmidt introduced AWS’s new Open Source implementation of the SSL/TLS network encryption protocols, Amazon s2n. s2n is a library that has been designed to be small and fast, with the goal of providing you with network encryption that is more easily understood and fully auditable. In […]