Analyzing the service functionality, permissions, and configuration of resources after an event that did not provide visibility or alerting

How does AWS CloudTrail support the analysis of events that did not provide visibility or alerting?

AWS CloudTrail provides a history of AWS API calls for an account, including calls made through the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command line tools, and other AWS services. This enables you to perform a retrospective analysis of events that did not trigger an alert by searching for unusual or unauthorized API activity that may have led to the event.

Explain how you would use AWS Config to assess the compliance of resource configurations after an incident with no visibility or alerting.

AWS Config allows continuous monitoring and recording of AWS resource configurations, enabling you to audit configurations and evaluate changes over time. After an incident, you can use AWS Config to review the configuration history and determine if any non-compliant resources contributed to the lack of visibility or alerting.

Describe how IAM policies can be analyzed post-event to ensure the principle of least privilege is being followed.

Post-event, IAM policies can be analyzed using IAM Access Analyzer to identify any policies granting excessively broad permissions that do not adhere to the principle of least privilege. IAM Access Analyzer helps analyze resource-sharing and access permissions, highlighting potential privilege escalation issues or unintended resource access.

What role does Amazon CloudWatch play in the post-event analysis of an AWS environment?

Amazon CloudWatch collects and monitors metrics, logs, and events, which allows you to set up alarms for anomalous behavior indicative of security incidents. After an event, CloudWatch logs and metrics can be used for a detailed analysis of the system’s performance and operational health at the time of the incident, helping identify gaps in monitoring that led to the absence of visibility or alerting.

How could you leverage Amazon Inspector to reinforce security after an undisclosed event has occurred?

After an undisclosed event, an automated security assessment can be performed using Amazon Inspector, which assesses applications for exposure, vulnerabilities, and deviations from best practices. By running Inspector assessments, you can identify security issues like network accessibility and common vulnerabilities that could have contributed to the lack of alerting.

Can you explain how to use AWS Security Hub to manage security alerts efficiently?

AWS Security Hub aggregates, organizes, and prioritizes security alerts – or findings – from AWS services such as Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, and Amazon Macie. To manage alerts efficiently, you can centralize and analyze findings, and leverage the automatic compliance checks to assess against the standards relevant for the specific type of event, improving your response and investigation capabilities.

What steps would you take using AWS service-linked roles to review resource access permissions after a silent event?

After a silent event, I would review the service-linked roles to ensure that they have the minimum required permissions. I would validate that these roles are only used by the intended AWS services and do not have any additional permissions attached that could have led to the event occurring undetected.

How can AWS Trusted Advisor assist in the post-event analysis regarding resource optimization and security?

AWS Trusted Advisor analyzes your AWS environment and provides recommended actions for optimizing resources and increasing security posture. Post-event, Trusted Advisor can help identify poorly configured and unoptimized resources that may have contributed to the incident, and provide guidance on how to remediate these issues.

In the context of resource configuration, how would you employ AWS Systems Manager to mitigate the risk of future undetected events?

AWS Systems Manager can help manage and automate the configuration of your AWS resources at scale. You can use it to ensure consistent resource configuration by applying desired state configurations with State Manager, automating patching with Patch Manager, and managing secrets to reduce the risk of misconfiguration leading to undetected events.

If an event occurred without visibility or alerting due to misconfigured network access control, how would you use AWS Network Firewall or AWS WAF for post-event analysis?

I would review the logs from AWS Network Firewall or AWS WAF, which can provide detailed information on traffic flow and access attempts. These logs can be analyzed to identify any unchecked pathways or requests that bypassed the alerting mechanisms, aiding in understanding and mitigating the issues that led to the silent event.

What process would you use with Amazon VPC flow logs to diagnose issues after an event that was not alerted on?

Amazon VPC flow logs capture network flow information for VPC, which can be used for post-event diagnostics. I would analyze the VPC flow log data to track the requests made to and from the VPC around the time of the event, identifying potential unauthorized network activity or data exfiltration that went unnoticed.

Describe how you would utilize AWS Lambda and Amazon EventBridge to enhance automated response to incidences that lack visibility.

To enhance automated response, I would use AWS Lambda to create custom functions that can be triggered by Amazon EventBridge. EventBridge can be configured to detect patterns in AWS service events, invoking Lambda functions to respond automatically when specific conditions are met. This setup can help fill gaps in monitoring, providing a programmatic way to handle incidents that might otherwise not generate alerts.