Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a public cloud platform that is preferred by many enterprises. It is not a surprise, considering this platform provides several features that make sure the business resources are secure. However, AWS cloud security risks are always there. Even though AWS recently releases a new security service known as Amazon Macie that prevents data loss, the potential on security attacks is inevitable.
Potential AWS Cloud Security Risks You Should Know
Being the most preferred platform by many enterprises, Amazon Web Services desire to provide the best service for the users. As aforementioned, Amazon Macie that has been released recently offers facilities such as discovering, classifying, and protecting data in order to prevent data loss. Nevertheless, it does not make AWS entirely flawless. Here are some security risks potentially happen to AWS:
1. Lack of Security Invisibility
The resources and data on AWS can be accessed by many people across enterprises and organizations. There is no administrator that monitors the resources which are accessed by individual users. Therefore, there is potential malicious activity, which surely becomes a threat for cloud security. This one of AWS cloud security risks, however, can be detected by analyzing the logs. This can be performed by the administrator. Doing so, it means the administrator will focus on the internal activities that may cause some other security issues such as unusual network activity, abnormal login attempts, and many more.
2. Excess Privilege and Access for Users
AWS provides Identity and Access Management that allows the enterprises to control users in accessing and controlling sources. This also enables the administrator to easily create and manage privilege for individual users. However, this may cause cloud security issue that the administrator grant excess privilege and access to certain users. The administrator has to ensure that there is no unnecessary permission is granted.
3. Misconfiguring Security Groups
The other AWS cloud security risks come from security groups configuration. This platform allows the administrator to control traffic across instances using security groups which serves as virtual firewall. When specific instance is launched, it should be associated with security groups. The risk potential comes from administrator that often ignores the necessity of keeping the instance isolated and secure. Misconfiguration security groups may lead to performance issue such as service unavailability and timeout. Therefore, the administrators need to configure the groups accurately to avoid problem, especially security issue.
4. Rely on Passwords
Administrators are allowed to use custom passwords, so do the individual users. However, password is not strong enough in protecting the enterprise data. There are many hackers who can easily break into a system because of weak security system that only relies on passwords. Even though this is an issue, AWS can manage it by applying two-factor authentication to strengthen the security.
Overall, AWS as the most used public cloud platforms come with significances and shortcomings. AWS cloud security risks such as lack of security invisibility to less-strong password system makes enterprises are able to take the best action to minimize the risks.