Amazon Web Services (AWS) has become the most popular cloud platform, with millions of customers trusting AWS to host their critical workloads and data. However, the shared responsibility model means that while AWS secures the underlying infrastructure, you are responsible for properly configuring and securing the services you launch in AWS.
Misconfigurations and overlooked vulnerabilities in your AWS account can lead to serious security incidents and data breaches. Remember the Capital One data breach in 2019 which exposed 100+ million customer records? The attacker gained access by exploiting an improperly configured AWS S3 bucket.
To avoid such incidents and ensure the security of your AWS environment, comprehensive vulnerability scanning and configuration monitoring are essential. In this detailed guide, we will cover:
- Why AWS vulnerability scanning is critical
- Types of risks and misconfigurations to check for
- Overview of AWS tools and 3rd party scanners
- Key features to look for in an AWS scanner
- 12 top AWS vulnerability scanners compared
- Tips to further lock down your AWS security
Let‘s get started!
Why Continuous AWS Vulnerability Scanning is a Must
With containers, serverless and thousands of services, AWS environments can quickly become large and complex. This complexity makes it easy for security misconfigurations and dangerous oversights to slip in unnoticed.
Some common examples include:
- Exposed S3 Buckets: Improperly secured S3 buckets can enable attackers to access sensitive data or upload malware.
- Overly Permissive IAM Policies: Catching overly broad IAM policies that give more access than needed is difficult without automated checks.
- Security Groups Misconfigurations: Errors here can exposed databases, containers and other services to the public internet.
- Unprotected API Access: APIs enables automation but if not properly secured, it provides an easy attack vector.
To make matters worse, your environment doesn‘t stand still. Engineers are continuously releasing changes that can undo previously safe settings.
Regular automated scanning is therefore essential to catch issues quickly before hackers can find and exploit them.
Just some of the key vulnerabilities and compliance checks you need include:
Identity & Access Scanning
- IAM policy analysis for least privilege and potential privilege escalation risks
- Detection of IAM keys and passwords stored in code repositories
- Review of human and machine authenticated identities and related authorization policies
Resource Scanning & Monitoring
- Regular inventory of AWS assets like EC2, S3, Lambda functions etc
- Monitoring security groups, NACLs and other network access related configs
- Encryption status of databases, object storage and messaging services
Continuous Compliance Checks
- Validation of configs, asset hardening benchmarks and access policies against compliance frameworks like PCI-DSS, HIPAA etc.
Running all these checks manually is complex and time consuming. Automated cloud scanners and monitoring tools are therefore critical for identifying risks before disasters strike.
Next, let‘s take a look at some of the native AWS tools and 3rd party scanners available.
AWS Native Tools vs 3rd Party Scanners
AWS provides a number of native tools to improve cloud security:
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) helps manage access and apply policies across AWS services.
AWS Config provides continuous infrastructure auditing and inventory of deployed resources.
Amazon Inspector is an automated vulnerability scanner for assessing application workloads.
AWS Security Hub gives a unified view of security alerts, findings and compliance status across various accounts and services.
While these tools are great for basic security monitoring, numerous gaps remain for comprehensive scanning:
- Limited coverage of checks compared to standards like CIS benchmarks
- No integration of findings between tools for unified reporting
- Manual analysis and remediation with no risk scoring or prioritization
- No whole environment visibility as scans are isolated to specific services
This is why most enterprises use specialized 3rd party vulnerability scanners and monitoring systems in addition to native tools.
Key capabilities offered by third party tools include:
Unified Dashboard
- Single dashboard for identity, data, apps, infra vulnerability monitoring
- Contextual linking of related findings across services
- Multi-account, hybrid cloud visibility
Automated Scanning & Monitoring
- Scheduled scans across various services: S3, Lambda, CloudFront etc
- Agents for host scanning without externally facing IPs
- Monitoring of auth events, policy changes, resource configuration changes
Prioritized Remediation Plans
- Risk scoring based on severity, compliance impacts
- Detailed remediation guidance for every finding
- Reporting for compliance audits
Responsive Alerting
- Event-triggered alerts on priority warnings
- Flexible alert delivery to email, IT systems
- Auto-response playbooks to block attacks
Next, let‘s explore some of the top solutions in this space.
Top 12 AWS Vulnerability Scanners Compared
Here is an overview of 12 popular AWS vulnerability scanners for cloud security monitoring and hardening:
| Scanner | Key Characteristics |
|---|---|
| Intruder | Enterprise-grade scanning & monitoring via cloud native agent Compliance reporting |
| Prowler | Open source, CIS benchmark scanner Command line interface |
| Scout Suite | Open source tool, Python based |
| CloudSploit | Prioritized risk findings Free for small environments |
| Cloud Conformity | Compliance-centric Free tier available |
| Skyhigh | Data security focus Advanced threat detection capabilities |
| Astra Pentest | Manual + automated testing Dashboards and reporting |
| Qualys | Top vulnerability assessment tool Web app scanning capabilities |
| Check Point CloudGuard | Leader in next-gen firewall space Specialized AWS protection |
| AlertLogic | Broad compliance report coverage Threat intelligence capabilities |
| Turbot | Infrastructure as code based Ops-centric |
| Prisma Cloud (Palo Alto) | Container and serverless security focus Compliance reporting |
You can choose AWS scanners based on your budget, use case and specific vulnerabilities you want to detect on an ongoing basis.
Most tools offer free trials so you can easily test coverage, dashboards and automation capabilities before deciding.
Key Scanner Capabilities to Review
While exploring solutions, keep an eye out for these key features:
Comprehensive Coverage – Check that it covers resources, data, identities, apps, network configs and more both from misconfiguration and IAM privilege risks.
Unified Dashboard – Can it consolidate and correlate findings across services for instant visibility?
Risk Focused – Does it provide contextual risk scoring and action plans for smarter remediation?
Compliance Mandates – Which compliance standards like SOC2, ISO 27001 does it report on out-of-the-box?
Automated Scanning – Does it offer scheduled scanning and policy monitoring instead of just on-demand audits?
Alert Integration – Can findings trigger alerts in Slack, PagerDuty, ServiceNow and other IT systems?
Cloud Security Posture Management – Does it track security trends over time and guide cloud-specific hardening?
Prioritizing scanners with these capabilities will ensure you get actionable, holistic visibility of risks across your entire AWS environment.
Locking Down AWS Security
While scanners help monitor configurations, additional steps are needed to fully harden cloud security:
- Enforce least privilege access with IAM role policies and permission boundaries
- Turn on MFA for privileged accounts and AWS console/API access
- Enable CloudTrail logging across all regions and aggregate logs centrally
- Leverage AWS Config and Security Hub for additional compliance checks and monitoring
- Analyze VPC Flow Logs, ELB Logs, CloudFront Logs for anomaly detection
- Enable automated incident response to quickly mitigate emerging threats
- Frequently audit that new resources and changes comply with security standards
- Train engineers on cloud-specific risks and best practices
Finally, be sure to complement your AWS security scanner with overall IT systems visibility via a security information and event management (SIEM) platform.
A SIEM correlates findings across cloud, endpoints, networks and apps for faster incident response.
Conclusion: Achieve Continuous AWS Security Confidence
The native security tools from Amazon Web Services solve only part of the cloud security challenge. Misconfigurations, risky identities and unauthorized changes can still enable devastating breaches.
Automated AWS vulnerability scanning and monitoring is essential for comprehensive protection.
Use this guide to help select specialized scanners that provide complete visibility, smart risk analysis and compliance assurance for your AWS workloads.
Combining these scanners with adoption of least privilege and DevSecOps best practices will help you build an end-to-end security program.
The result is peace of mind that your AWS environment adheres to security best practices and is resilient against attacks.
