Question

Amazon web services have become a global platform for individuals to retailers to sell their products. These services like any other online service falls prey to cyber-attacks. Discuss ANY FIVE (5) security threats affecting Amazon.com and suggest possible measures to overcome these threats. (20)

Answer 1

The various security threats affecting Amazon web services are

1. Internet Access Management (IAM control) - Internet access management is one of the major security issue for the users. IAM access gives the ultimate control over the account so one should be extremely careful while assigning it.

Solution- While authenticating the account the gain access should be given to limited number of users who actually will need it in the future.

2. Controlled data flow and properly configured modifications - regular monetary checks in order to monitor activities over the cloud platform and awareness of any modifications made. All reports regarding any unusual activity of a suspicious user should be made and control over all deployments.

Solution - Amazon provides wide variety of additional security tools such as Amazon Inspector, Amazon Cognito that helps checking and providing protection against such system attacks.

3. Improperly configured group policies - improperly configured group policies on the side of users can make the system open to large number cyber security attacks. There are large number of bots that are specially designed that attacks such weak scripts.

Solution - While creating AWS instance simply close all the ports and always create special security groups for each separate instance.

4. S3 data configuration - while configuring the S3 cloud storage there are lot of configuration options available. However, poor configuration can lead to creation of "S3 memory buckets" that can be read by anyone.This attracts large number of hackers who try to access the data within.

Solution - while configuring the S3 cloud storage proper configuration for S3 buckets should be done so that it doesn't lead to poor security.

5. Integration, visibility and logging - poor integration within the system can cause security issues for the AWS system. The tool visibility is an important aspect that has to taken into consideration. Poor logging and reporting is not able to identify patterns within the system and look for security issues.

Solution - Always user proper tools and practices that manage your users and secure your data and applications.Moreover implementing a third party cloud security solution will ensure security for the system.