AWS managed security services (for example, AWS Shield, AWS WAF, Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Security Hub)

Interview Questions on AWS Managed Security Services:

Can you explain how AWS Shield protects against DDoS attacks and the difference between AWS Shield Standard and AWS Shield Advanced?

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield Standard provides automatic protection for all AWS customers at no additional charge and protects against most common network and transport layer DDoS attacks. AWS Shield Advanced offers more comprehensive protection with additional features such as 24/7 access to the AWS DDoS Response Team (DRT), enhanced detection, and mitigation against larger and more complex attacks, cost protection to guard against scaling charges due to a DDoS attack, and detailed attack diagnostics.

How does AWS WAF help to secure web applications, and what types of web traffic filtering rules can it implement?

AWS WAF is a web application firewall that helps protect web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, compromise security or consume excessive resources. AWS WAF allows users to create customizable web filtering rules that can block, allow, or monitor (count) web requests based on various conditions, including IP addresses, HTTP headers, HTTP body, or URI strings. These rules can prevent common attack vectors such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS).

What is Amazon GuardDuty, and how does it enhance an organization’s threat detection capabilities?

Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service that continuously monitors for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior to protect AWS accounts, workloads, and data stored in Amazon S It uses machine learning, anomaly detection, and integrated threat intelligence to identify and prioritize potential threats. GuardDuty analyzes various data sources, including VPC flow logs, AWS CloudTrail event logs, and DNS logs, to detect unexpected and potentially unauthorized and malicious activity within an AWS environment.

Describe the purpose of AWS Security Hub and how it helps in managing security across an AWS environment.

AWS Security Hub is a service that gives users a comprehensive view of their high-priority security alerts and compliance status across their AWS accounts. It aggregates, organizes, and prioritizes security findings from various AWS services such as Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, and AWS Config, as well as from AWS Partner solutions. AWS Security Hub also helps in automating compliance checks, consolidating security findings, and enables automated remediation actions, which streamlines the monitoring and management of security and compliance across AWS resources.

What mechanisms does Amazon GuardDuty use to detect compromised instances or credentials?

Amazon GuardDuty uses machine learning, anomaly detection, and integrated threat intelligence such as known malicious IP addresses and domains to detect unauthorized or malicious activity within your AWS environment. It can detect compromised instances through unusual API calls or potentially unauthorized deployments that deviate from normal patterns. It also detects compromised credentials by identifying unusual patterns in accessing AWS resources, such as unexpected and anomalous login attempts from new or unusual locations.

How can AWS Shield Advanced users benefit from the DDoS Resilient Reference Architecture?

AWS Shield Advanced users can benefit from the DDoS Resilient Reference Architecture by implementing a set of best practices and architectures recommended by AWS to enhance the resilience of their applications against DDoS attacks. This includes techniques such as deploying AWS services in a multi-layered approach, leveraging AWS Global Accelerator for non-http traffic, and setting up application deployments across multiple AWS regions and Availability Zones to provide a failover mechanism and to distribute traffic.

How do you assess the effectiveness of your AWS WAF rules, and what practices should be implemented for maintaining their efficiency over time?

The effectiveness of AWS WAF rules can be assessed by analyzing the metrics and sampled requests provided in the AWS WAF console and Amazon CloudWatch. Users should review the rules regularly and monitor the allowed and blocked traffic to identify any necessary adjustments. Best practices for maintaining efficiency include regularly updating the rules based on evolving threat patterns, testing new rules in a staging environment before deployment, and using managed rule groups that are maintained by AWS or AWS Marketplace sellers to stay updated with the latest threat intelligence.

How does AWS Security Hub ensure compliance with regulatory standards?

AWS Security Hub facilitates compliance with regulatory standards by automating compliance checks against industry best practices and standards, such as CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). It provides detailed security insights and recommendations that are aligned with compliance standards, helping organizations to understand and manage their compliance status continually.

What types of attacks does AWS WAF not protect against, and how can users mitigate these risks?

AWS WAF does not protect against attacks such as DDoS attacks targeting non-http/https traffic, software exploits within the application that do not involve web traffic, and attacks on the underlying infrastructure. To mitigate these risks, users should employ additional AWS services like AWS Shield for DDoS protection, Amazon Inspector for automated security assessments, as well as implement strong security measures at the application level, including regular vulnerability scanning, patch management, and following security best practices.

How does AWS Security Hub integrate with other AWS services to automate response and remediation of security findings?

AWS Security Hub integrates with services like Amazon CloudWatch Events (now AWS EventsBridge) and AWS Lambda to automate responses to security findings. When Security Hub generates a finding, an event can trigger a Lambda function or other automated workflows to take immediate remediation actions. These integrations enable an automatic and proactive response to common security issues such as deactivating compromised credentials, isolating compromised instances, or updating AWS WAF rules.