AWS services that generate, capture, and process events (for example, AWS Health, EventBridge, CloudTrail)

Can you describe what AWS CloudTrail is and how it can be used to improve security and compliance?

AWS CloudTrail is a service that provides event logging for AWS account activity. It records API calls and related events made by or on behalf of an AWS account. These logs can be used for security analysis, resource change tracking, and compliance auditing. By continuously monitoring and retaining account activity, CloudTrail helps in identifying and responding to security incidents while ensuring compliance with internal policies and regulatory standards.

How does Amazon EventBridge differ from CloudWatch Events and when would you prefer using it?

Amazon EventBridge is the next evolution of CloudWatch Events, with added features and capabilities. EventBridge has a default event bus and supports custom event buses, facilitates event-driven application architectures by providing better integration with SaaS applications, and offers enhanced content-based routing of events. You would prefer using EventBridge when dealing with large-scale event systems, particularly when integrating with third-party SaaS applications and services, or when you require more granular event filtering and routing options.

What are AWS Health events and how can AWS Health provide value to a DevOps team?

AWS Health provides ongoing visibility into the state of AWS resources, services, and accounts. Health events are system-generated notifications that alert users to service outages, scheduled maintenance, and other important events. AWS Health can be of great value to a DevOps team by providing proactive alerting about issues that could impact the application’s performance or availability, enabling the team to take timely actions to mitigate potential problems.

Could you explain how you would use AWS CloudTrail logs for automated remediation of non-compliant resources?

AWS CloudTrail logs capture all API activities on your AWS account, including actions that result in non-compliant resource configurations. One could set up event pattern matching in Amazon EventBridge to watch for specific API calls that indicate compliance violations. Then, using EventBridge rules, these events can trigger AWS Lambda functions for automated remediation. The Lambda function could be coded to adjust the resource configuration to bring it back into compliance, such as tightening security group rules or ensuring encryption is enabled on storage buckets.

How can you ensure that sensitive data in CloudTrail logs is protected?

Sensitive data in CloudTrail logs can be protected by enabling CloudTrail log file encryption with AWS Key Management Service (KMS). Logs are encrypted using customer-managed keys by default, but you can also specify a key that you manage. Additionally, access to CloudTrail log files should be limited via Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, and sensitive data within log files should be redacted using the data event selectors to prevent logging of the data itself.

In what way does AWS EventBridge facilitate serverless application architectures?

AWS EventBridge allows for the decoupling of serverless components by enabling event-driven architectures. It acts as an event bus that connects data from your applications, AWS services, and SaaS applications without the need for maintaining server infrastructure. Serverless functions like AWS Lambda can be triggered in response to events passing through EventBridge, making it easy to build scalable and highly responsive serverless applications.

Can you explain how Amazon EventBridge Schema Registry can assist developers during event-driven application design?

Amazon EventBridge Schema Registry stores, retrieves, and manages schema definitions for events. It helps developers during the design phase by supplying them with schema information which defines the structure and format of events. This enables developers to automatically generate the code for event handling and ensures that the applications are designed to handle the event payloads correctly, thus improving the development efficiency and reducing the likelihood of runtime errors.

What type of AWS CloudTrail event helps in detecting unauthorized resource modifications and how?

Management events in AWS CloudTrail help in detecting unauthorized resource modifications. Management events provide information about management operations performed on resources in your AWS account. These include actions like changes to security groups or modification of IAM policies. By analyzing these events or setting up alerting rules based on unusual patterns, one can detect unauthorized attempts or changes to existing resources.

What best practices would you recommend for monitoring application health using AWS Health?

Best practices for using AWS Health for application monitoring include: enabling AWS Health events integration with Amazon EventBridge for automated reactions; subscribing to AWS Health Dashboard for a centralized view of the health of AWS services and maintaining communication channels up-to-date in AWS Personal Health Dashboard to receive alerts and guidance during events. A DevOps team should also automate response to common issues detected by AWS Health, using AWS Systems Manager or Lambda for rapid resolution.

Discuss how you can archive and analyze AWS CloudTrail log data for long-term storage and analysis?

AWS CloudTrail log data can be continuously delivered to an Amazon S3 bucket for long-term storage. For archiving, you can apply lifecycle policies to transition logs to Amazon S3 Glacier to reduce storage costs. To analyze log data, you can leverage services like Amazon Athena for querying logs directly in S3 using standard SQL, or use Amazon Elasticsearch Service for more sophisticated analysis and visualizations. Additionally, integrating CloudTrail with AWS CloudWatch Logs provides real-time monitoring capabilities.

How can Amazon CloudWatch Events and AWS Lambda work together to automate responses to CloudTrail events?

Amazon CloudWatch Events can be configured to trigger in response to specific AWS CloudTrail events. Once a matching event occurs, a CloudWatch Event rule can invoke an AWS Lambda function to perform automated actions. This can include making API calls to change resource configurations, invoking serverless workflows, or sending notifications. This integration allows for a quick, automated, and scalable response to changes and incidents in the AWS environment.

Describe the function of Amazon EventBridge partner event sources and how they are set up within an AWS account?

Amazon EventBridge partner event sources are provided by SaaS partners and integrate with EventBridge to provide a seamless flow of events from the partner application into AWS. To set up a partner event source, you first need to create an event source within EventBridge, which generates a partner event source name. Then, in the partner’s application or service, you configure a connection to AWS EventBridge using the provided name, allowing the partner to send events directly to your EventBridge event bus for processing within your AWS environment.