Best Solution for Scanning Security Issues in AWS S3 Buckets
Question
A large corporation owns a huge amount of data which is located in AWS S3
There are applications that keep reading or writing data in these S3 buckets.
The security auditor was worried that there may be some sensitive data that was exposed in S3
For example, certain applications may store some text files which contain customers' PII information.
The auditor asked for a solution to quickly scan potential security related issues in these S3 buckets.
Which solution is the best?
Answers
Explanations
Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer
A. B. C. D.Correct Answer - B.
When talking about PII security issues in S3, the first service to be considered should be Amazon Macie.
Check out.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/macie/latest/userguide/macie-dashboard.html#s3objectspii.Option A is incorrect: Because AWS Inspector is a security service installed in EC2 rather than S3.
Option B is CORRECT: After Macie is enabled, it can scan S3 objects by PII priority as below:
Option C is incorrect: Because AWS GuardDuty is based on the data in AWS CloudTrail logs, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS query logs and it cannot search for common data in S3 buckets.
Option D is incorrect: Amazon Athena cannot create tables if the data in S3 is not in particular format.
Besides, the company owns a large number of S3 buckets so it is impractical to use Athena in this case.
Out of the four options, the best solution to quickly scan potential security related issues in S3 is option B - Enable Amazon Macie.
Amazon Macie is a fully managed data security and privacy service that uses machine learning and pattern matching to discover and protect sensitive data in AWS. Macie can help identify personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), intellectual property, and other sensitive data types.
Macie's features include:
Automatic detection of sensitive data - Macie continuously monitors data stored in S3 and automatically detects sensitive data using machine learning and pattern matching techniques.
Customizable policies - Macie allows you to define custom policies based on the specific data you want to monitor. You can configure policies to detect specific data types, such as credit card numbers or social security numbers.
Alerting and remediation - Macie can generate alerts based on policy violations and provide recommendations for remediation.
Integration with other AWS services - Macie integrates with other AWS services, such as CloudTrail, CloudWatch, and Lambda, to provide a comprehensive security solution.
Option A, configuring AWS Inspector in S3, is not the best solution because AWS Inspector is a service that helps you analyze the behavior of your AWS resources and identify potential security issues. While Inspector can be used to analyze EC2 instances and other resources, it is not designed to scan S3 buckets.
Option C, enabling AWS GuardDuty, is also not the best solution because GuardDuty is a threat detection service that analyzes AWS CloudTrail event logs and VPC flow logs to identify potential security threats. While GuardDuty can be used to monitor S3 activity, it is not specifically designed to scan S3 buckets for sensitive data.
Option D, configuring Amazon Athena in S3 and creating Athena SQL tables, is also not the best solution because Athena is a query service that allows you to analyze data stored in S3 using SQL queries. While you could potentially use Athena to search for sensitive data, it would not be as effective or efficient as using a dedicated security service like Amazon Macie.
In conclusion, the best solution for quickly scanning potential security related issues in S3 is to enable Amazon Macie.
