Configuring network monitoring and logging by using AWS solutions

AWS CloudWatch is a monitoring service for AWS cloud resources and the applications you run on AWS. It can be used to collect and track metrics, collect and monitor log files, set alarms, and automatically react to changes in your AWS resources.

Configuring Network Monitoring

To monitor network traffic, you can enable VPC Flow Logs, which capture information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in your VPC. Here’s how to configure VPC Flow Logs to send data to CloudWatch:

1. Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/.
2. In the navigation pane, choose “Your VPCs”.
3. Select the VPC you want to monitor.
4. In the “Actions” dropdown, choose “Create Flow Log”.
5. For “Filter”, choose the traffic to log (ACCEPT, REJECT, or ALL).
6. For “Destination”, choose “Send to CloudWatch Logs”.
7. Specify the “Log group name” and “IAM role” with the necessary permissions.
8. Create the flow log.

Monitoring Your Log Data

Once flow logs are enabled, you can create metric filters in CloudWatch Logs to turn log data into numerical CloudWatch metrics that you can graph or set an alarm on.

AWS CloudTrail

AWS CloudTrail is a service that provides a record of actions taken by a user, role, or an AWS service in AWS CloudWatch. It is useful for auditing and monitoring activities across your AWS infrastructure.

Setting Up CloudTrail Logging

1. Go to the AWS CloudTrail console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudtrail/.
2. Click on “Create trail”.
3. Enter a “Trail name”.
4. Set “Apply trail to all regions” to Yes if you want to collect logs from multiple regions.
5. For “Management Events”, choose “Read-only” or “All”.
6. In “Data events”, choose the resources you want to audit in detail.
7. For “Storage location”, select an existing S3 bucket or create a new one.
8. To have your trail deliver log files to CloudWatch Logs, in the CloudWatch Logs section, select “Yes”.
9. You need to specify a “Log group” and “IAM Role”. The IAM role needs the necessary permissions to send logs to CloudWatch Logs.

Once configured, actions taken within your AWS environment will be logged and sent to the specified S3 bucket and CloudWatch Logs for monitoring and analysis.

AWS Athena

AWS Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data directly in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. For network traffic and log analysis, you can use Athena to query VPC Flow Logs and CloudTrail logs stored in S3.

Configuring Athena for VPC Flow Logs Analysis

1. Go to the AWS Athena console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/athena/.
2. Before you run your first query, set up a query result location in Amazon S3.
3. Using DDL statements, create a table that corresponds to the structure of VPC Flow Logs.
4. Once the table is created, you can run queries to analyze your network traffic data.

Here is an example DDL statement to create a table for VPC Flow Logs:

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE IF NOT EXISTS vpc_flow_logs (
version int,
account_id string,
interface_id string,
srcaddr string,
dstaddr string,
srcport int,
dstport int,
protocol int,
packets int,
bytes bigint,
start bigint,
end bigint,
action string,
log_status string
)
PARTITIONED BY (dt string)
ROW FORMAT DELIMITED
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ' '
LOCATION 's3://your-bucket/prefix/';

After the Athena table is created, you can query your VPC Flow Logs data, looking for trends, analyzing traffic patterns, or investigating security incidents.

AWS GuardDuty

AWS GuardDuty is a threat detection service that continuously monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior to protect your AWS accounts and workloads.

Configuring GuardDuty

1. Go to the AWS GuardDuty console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/guardduty/.
2. Click on “Get Started” and follow the wizard to enable GuardDuty.
3. GuardDuty begins analyzing your log data for unusual activity after it is enabled. Results and findings can be viewed within the GuardDuty console.

Each AWS tool plays a unique role in network monitoring and logging. CloudWatch provides metrics and alerts, CloudTrail logs user activities, Athena analyzes data using SQL queries, and GuardDuty offers intelligent threat detection. These services help prepare for the AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty (ANS-C01) exam by providing comprehensive insight into your AWS network infrastructure.