Basic cloud auditing tools and frameworks

Each of the three major cloud providers has some inherent capabilities that support gathering audit evidence. These capabilities are represented in cloud-native tools. In addition, open source tools exist for added coverage where cloud-native tools are limited.

Native tools for auditing Amazon AWS

The following are some tools to audit AWS:

  • AWS Security Hub: AWS Security Hub provides a unified view of the security posture in AWS and helps benchmark the AWS environment against security industry standards and best practices.

AWS Security Hub aggregates data from multiple AWS services and third-party partner products to enable prioritization of security issues. The following is a screenshot of the interface of AWS Security Hub:

Figure 2.1 – Interface of AWS Security Hub

Information

You can refer to the AWS Security Hub documentation at https://docs.aws.amazon.

com/securityhub/index.html for more information.

  • AWS Trusted Advisor: AWS Trusted Advisor provides a set of best practice checks and guidance to provision resources following AWS best practices.

The following screenshot is from the AWS documentation that shows an example of the AWS Trusted Advisor interface:

Figure 2.2 – Trusted Advisor interface

  • AWS Config: AWS Config is a service that facilitates the evaluation of the configurations of AWS resources. AWS Config can track configuration history and provide notifications when AWS configurations change. Additionally, AWS Config provides you with a way to view and measure compliance within the cloud account based on policies. The following is a screenshot of the interface of AWS Config:

Figure 2.3 – AWS Config interface

  • Amazon Inspector: Amazon Inspector is a security vulnerability tool used to assess the network visibility and security vulnerability posture of AWS workloads. Amazon Inspector is an automated service that examines AWS workloads for security weaknesses. The following is a screenshot of the interface of Amazon Inspector:

Figure 2.4 – Amazon Inspector interface