# Amazon Web Services 1. [Networking](#networking) 1. [Elastic IP addresses](#elastic-ip-addresses) 1. [Services](#services) 1. [Billing and Cost Management](#billing-and-cost-management) 1. [CloudWatch](#cloudwatch) 1. [Config](#config) 1. [Detective](#detective) 1. [GuardDuty](#guardduty) 1. [EventBridge](#eventbridge) 1. [ImageBuilder](#imagebuilder) 1. [Inspector](#inspector) 1. [KMS](#kms) 1. [Security Hub](#security-hub) 1. [Resource constraints](#resource-constraints) 1. [Access control](#access-control) 1. [Savings plans](#savings-plans) 1. [Resource tagging](#resource-tagging) 1. [Further readings](#further-readings) 1. [Sources](#sources) ## Networking VPCs define isolated virtual networking environments.
AWS accounts include one default VPC for each AWS Region. These allow for immediate launch and connection to EC2 instances. Subnets are ranges of IP addresses in VPCs.
Each subnet resides in a single Availability Zone.
_Public_ subnets have a direct route to an Internet gateway. Resources in public subnets **can** access the public Internet.
_Private_ subnets do **not** have a direct route to an Internet gateway. Resources in private subnets **require** a NAT device to access the public internet. Gateways connect VPCs to other networks.
[_Internet gateways_][connect to the internet using an internet gateway] connect VPCs to the Internet.
[_NAT gateways_][nat gateways] allow resources in private subnets to connect to the Internet, other VPCs, or on-premises networks. They can communicate with services outside the VPC, but cannot receive unsolicited connection requests.
[_VPC endpoints_][access aws services through aws privatelink] connect VPCs to AWS services privately, without the need of Internet gateways or NAT devices. ### Elastic IP addresses Refer [Elastic IP addresses]. **Static**, **public** IPv4 addresses allocated to one's AWS account until one releases it.
One can can rapidly remapping addresses to other instances in one's account and use them as targets in DNS records. ## Services | Service | Description | | ----------------------------- | --------------------------------------------- | | [Billing and Cost Management] | FIXME | | [CloudWatch] | Observability (logging, monitoring, alerting) | | [Config] | Compliance | | [Detective] | FIXME | | [EC2] | Virtual machines | | [ECR] | Container registry | | [ECS] | Containers as a service | | [EKS] | Kubernetes clusters | | [EventBridge] | FIXME | | [GuardDuty] | Threat detection | | [IAM] | Access control | | [ImageBuilder] | Build custom AMIs | | [Inspector] | FIXME | | [KMS] | Key management | | [OpenSearch] | ELK, logging | | [RDS] | Databases | | [S3] | Storage | | [Sagemaker] | Machine learning | | [Security Hub] | Aggregator for security findings | [Service icons][aws icons] are publicly available for diagrams and such. Public service IP address ranges are [available in JSON form][aws public ip address ranges now available in json form] at . ### Billing and Cost Management Costs can be grouped by Tags applied on resources.
Tags to use for this kind of grouping need to be activated in the _Cost allocation tags_ section.
New tags might take 24 or 48 hours to appear there. ### CloudWatch Observability service. with functions for logging, monitoring and alerting. _Metrics_ are whatever needs to be monitored (e.g. CPU usage). _Data points_ are the values of a metric over time. _Namespaces_ are containers for metrics. Metrics only exist in the region in which they are created. [Many AWS services][services that publish cloudwatch metrics] offer basic monitoring by publishing a default set of metrics to CloudWatch with no charge.
This feature is automatically enabled by default when one starts using one of these services. ### Config Compliance service for assessing and auditing AWS resources. Provides an inventory of resources.
Records and monitors resource configurations and their changes.
The data is stored in a bucket (default name `config-bucket-{aws-account-number}`)
Changes can be streamed to 1 SNS topic for notification purposes.
Uses _rules_ to evaluate whether the resources configurations comply.
Rule evaluation is done once every time a configuration changes, or periodically.
Resources are marked with the evaluation result (_compliant_, _non-compliant_). Custom rules can be used to evaluate for uncommon requirements.
Custom rules leverage lambda functions. Allows for automatic remediation for non-compliant resources by leveraging Systems Manager Automation documents. _Conformance packs_ are set of rules bundled together as a deployable single entity.
Defined as YAML templates.
Immutable: users cannot make changes without updating the whole rule package.
Sample templates for compliance standards and benchmarks are available. ### Detective Uses ML and graphs to try and identify the root cause of security issues.
Creates visualizations with details and context by leveraging events from VPC Flow Logs, CloudTrail and GuardDuty. ### GuardDuty Threat detection service. It continuously monitors accounts and workloads for malicious activity and delivers security findings for visibility and remediation.
Done by pulling streams of data from CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs or EKS. Member accounts can administer GuardDuty by delegation if given the permissions to do so. _Findings_ are **potential** security issues for malicious events.
Those are also sent to EventBridge for notification (leveraging SNS).
Each is assigned a severity value (0.1 to 8+). _Trusted IP List_ is a whitelist of **public IPs** that will be ignored by the rules.
_Threat IP List_ is a blacklist of **public IPs and CIDRs** that will be used by the rules.
### EventBridge TODO ### ImageBuilder Also refer [Image baking in AWS using Packer and Image builder]. ### Inspector TODO ### KMS _Key material_ is the cryptographic secret of Keys that is used in encryption operations. Enabling automatic key rotation for a KMS key makes the service generate new cryptographic material for the key every year by default.
Specify a custom rotation period to customize that time frame. Perform on-demand rotation should you need to immediately initiate key material rotation.
This works regardless of whether the automatic key rotation is enabled or not. On-demand rotations do **not** change existing automatic rotation schedules. KMS saves **all** previous versions of the cryptographic material in perpetuity to allow decryption of any data encrypted with keys.
Rotated key material is **not** deleted until the key itself is deleted. Track the rotation of key material [CloudWatch], CloudTrail, and the KMS console.
Alternatively, use the `GetKeyRotationStatus` operation to verify whether automatic rotation is enabled for a key and identify any in progress on-demand rotations. Use the `ListKeyRotations` operation to view the details of completed rotations. When using a rotated KMS key to encrypt data, KMS uses the **current** key material.
When using the same rotated KMS key to decrypt ciphertext, KMS uses the version of the key material that was used for encryption.
One **cannot** select a particular version of key materials for decrypt operations. This automation allows to safely use rotated KMS keys in applications and AWS services without code changes. Automatic key rotation has no effect on the data that KMS keys protect: it does **not** rotate the data generated by rotated keys, re-encrypts any data protected by the keys, nor it will mitigate the effect of compromised data keys. KMS supports automatic and on-demand key rotation only for symmetric encryption keys with key material that KMS itself creates.
Automatic rotation is optional for customer managed KMS keys. KMS rotates the key material for AWS managed keys on an yearly basis. Rotation of AWS owned KMS keys is managed by the AWS service that owns the key. Key rotation only changes the key material, not the key's properties.
The key is considered the same logical resource, regardless of whether or how many times its key material changes. Creating a new key and using it in place of the original one has the same effect as rotating the key material in an existing key.
This is considered a _manual_ key rotation and is a good choice to rotate keys that are not eligible for automatic key rotation. AWS charges a monthly fee for the first and second rotation of key material maintained for each key.
This price increase is capped at the second rotation. Any subsequent rotations will **not** be billed. Each key counts as one when calculating key resource quotas, regardless of the number of rotated key material versions. ### Security Hub Aggregator of findings for security auditing. > Uses [Config] to check resources' configuration by leveraging compliancy rules. Security standards are offered as ret of rules for [Config]. Data can be aggregated from different regions.
If the integration is enabled, findings from AWS services ([GuardDuty]) are used too within 5 minutes on average, while ones from 3rd parties can take longer. Data can be imported from or exported to 3rd parties if the integration is enabled.
Kinda acts as a middle layer for AWS accounts. Findings are consumed in _AWS Security Finding Format_ (ASFF).
Those are automatically updated and deleted. Findings after 90 days are automatically deleted even if **not** resolved. Can use custom insights. Custom actions can be sent to EventBridge for automation. Member accounts can administer Security Hub by delegation if given the permissions to do so. ## Resource constraints | Data type | Component | Summary | Description | Type | Length | Pattern | Required | | ------------ | --------- | ------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------ | -------- | --------------------------------- | -------- | | Statement ID | Value | Optional identifier for a policy statement | The element supports only ASCII uppercase letters (A-Z), lowercase letters (a-z), and numbers (0-9). | String | FIXME | `[A-Za-z0-9]` | No | | Tag | Key | Required name of the tag | The string value can be Unicode characters and cannot be prefixed with "aws:".
The string can contain only the set of Unicode letters, digits, white-space, `_`,' `.`, `/`, `=`, `+`, `-`, `:`, `@` (Java regex: `^([\\p{L}\\p{Z}\\p{N}_.:/=+\\-]*)$`) | String | 1 to 128 | `^([\p{L}\p{Z}\p{N}_.:/=+\-@]*)$` | Yes | | Tag | Value | The optional value of the tag | The string value can be Unicode characters. The string can contain only the set of Unicode letters, digits, white-space, `_`, `.`, `/`, `=`, `+`, `-`, `:`, `@` (Java regex: `^([\\p{L}\\p{Z}\\p{N}_.:/=+\\-]*)$"`, `[\p{L}\p{Z}\p{N}_.:\/=+\-@]*` on AWS) | String | 0 to 256 | `^([\p{L}\p{Z}\p{N}_.:/=+\-@]*)$` | Yes | ## Access control Refer [IAM]. ## Savings plans Refer [Savings Plans user guide]. Pricing models offering lower prices compared to On-Demand prices. They require specific usage commitments ($/hour) for 1-**year** or 3-**years** terms. Dedicated Instances, Spot Instances and Reserved Instances are **not** discounted by Savings Plans. | Savings Plan | Included resources | Up to | | ---------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----- | | Compute | EC2 instances regardless of family, size, AZ, region, OS or tenancy
Lambda
Fargate | 66% | | EC2 Instance | **Individual** EC2 instance families in a specific region (e.g. M5 usage in N. Virginia) regardless of AZ, size, OS or tenancy | 72% | | Amazon SageMaker | **Eligible** SageMaker ML instances, including SageMaker Studio Notebook, SageMaker On-Demand Notebook, SageMaker Processing, SageMaker Data Wrangler, SageMaker Training, SageMaker Real-Time Inference, and SageMaker Batch Transform regardless of instance family, size, or region | 64% | Both Compute and EC2 Instance plan types apply to EC2 instances that are a part of Amazon EMR, Amazon EKS, and Amazon ECS clusters. They do **not** apply to RDS instances.
Charges for the EKS service itself will not be covered by Savings Plans, but the underlying EC2 instances will be. Savings Plans are available in the following payment options: - _No Upfront_: no upfront payments, commitment charged purely on a monthly basis. - _Partial Upfront_: lower prices, at least half of one's commitment upfront, remainder charged on a monthly basis. - _All Upfront_: lowest prices, entire commitment charged in one payment at the start. Savings Plans can be purchased in any account within an AWS Organization/Consolidated Billing family.
By default, the benefits of the Plans are applicable to usage across **all** accounts. One can **choose** to restrict the benefit of the Plans to only the account that purchased them. One account **can** have multiple Savings Plans active at the same time. Plans **cannot** be cancelled during their term.
Plans **can** be _returned_ only if: - They consist in an hourly commitment of $100 or less. - They have been purchased in the past 7 days **and** in the same calendar month. Once returned, one will receive a 100% refund for any upfront charges for the Savings Plan.
Refunds will be reflected in one's bill within 24 hours of return. Any usage covered by the plan **will be charged at On-Demand rates**, or get covered by a different Savings Plans _if applicable_. Plans do **not** provide capacity reservations.
One **can** however reserve capacity with On Demand Capacity Reservations and pay lower prices on them with Savings Plans. EC2 Instance Savings Plans are applied **before** Compute Savings Plans. Savings Plans are applied to the highest savings percentage first. If there are multiple usages with equal savings percentages, Savings Plans are applied to the first usage with the lowest Savings Plans rate.
Savings Plans continue to apply until there are no more remaining usages, or one's commitment is exhausted. Any remaining usage is then charged at the On-Demand rates. ## Resource tagging Suggested: | Tag | Purpose | Example | Notes | | ----------------------- | ------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- | ----- | | `Name` | AWS UI | `GitlabRunner` | | | `Owner` | | `SecurityLead`, `SecOps`, `Workload-1-Development-team` | | | `BusinessUnitId` | | `Finance`, `Retail`, `API-1`, `DevOps` | | | `Environment` | | `Sandbox`, `Dev`, `PreProd`, `QA`, `Prod`, `Testing` | | | `CostCenter` | | `FIN123`, `Retail-123`, `Sales-248`, `HR-333` | | | `FinancialOwner` | | `HR`, `SecurityLead`, `DevOps-3`, `Workload-1-Development-team` | | | `ComplianceRequirement` | | `NIST`, `HIPAA`, `GDPR` | | [Create tag policies][creating organization policies with aws organizations] to enforce values, and to prevent the creation of non-compliant resources. ## Further readings - [EC2] - [Services that publish CloudWatch metrics] - [Best Practices for Tagging AWS Resources] - [Automating DNS-challenge based LetsEncrypt certificates with AWS Route 53] - AWS' [CLI] ### Sources - [Constraints for tags][constraints tag] - [What is CloudWatch] - [What is Amazon VPC?] - [Subnets for your VPC] - [What is AWS Config?] - [AWS Config tutorial by Stephane Maarek] - [Date & time policy conditions at AWS - 1-minute IAM lesson] - [Elastic IP addresses] - [Test Your Roles' Access Policies Using the AWS Identity and Access Management Policy Simulator] - [Exporting DB snapshot data to Amazon S3] - [I'm trying to export a snapshot from Amazon RDS MySQL to Amazon S3, but I'm receiving an error. Why is this happening?] - [Rotating AWS KMS keys] - [Image baking in AWS using Packer and Image builder] - [Using AWS KMS via the CLI with a Symmetric Key] - [AWS Public IP Address Ranges Now Available in JSON Form] - [Savings Plans user guide] - [AWS Savings Plans Vs. Reserved Instances: When To Use Each] - [How can I use AWS KMS asymmetric keys to encrypt a file using OpenSSL?] - [A guide to tagging resources in AWS] - [Guidance for Tagging on AWS] - [Creating organization policies with AWS Organizations] [billing and cost management]: #billing-and-cost-management [cloudwatch]: #cloudwatch [config]: #config [detective]: #detective [eventbridge]: #eventbridge [guardduty]: #guardduty [imagebuilder]: #imagebuilder [inspector]: #inspector [kms]: #kms [security hub]: #security-hub [cli]: cli.md [ec2]: ec2.md [ecr]: ecr.md [ecs]: ecs.md [eks]: eks.md [iam]: iam.md [opensearch]: opensearch.md [rds]: rds.md [s3]: s3.md [sagemaker]: sagemaker.md [access aws services through aws privatelink]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/privatelink/privatelink-access-aws-services.html [aws icons]: https://aws-icons.com/ [aws public ip address ranges now available in json form]: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-ip-ranges-json/ [best practices for tagging aws resources]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/tagging-best-practices/tagging-best-practices.html [connect to the internet using an internet gateway]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/VPC_Internet_Gateway.html [constraints tag]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/directoryservice/latest/devguide/API_Tag.html [creating organization policies with aws organizations]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_policies_create.html [elastic ip addresses]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/elastic-ip-addresses-eip.html [exporting db snapshot data to amazon s3]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_ExportSnapshot.html [guidance for tagging on aws]: https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/guidance/tagging-on-aws/ [how can i use aws kms asymmetric keys to encrypt a file using openssl?]: https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/kms-openssl-encrypt-key [i'm trying to export a snapshot from amazon rds mysql to amazon s3, but i'm receiving an error. why is this happening?]: https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/rds-mysql-export-snapshot [nat gateways]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/vpc-nat-gateway.html [rotating aws kms keys]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kms/latest/developerguide/rotate-keys.html [savings plans user guide]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/latest/userguide/ [services that publish cloudwatch metrics]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/aws-services-cloudwatch-metrics.html [subnets for your vpc]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/configure-subnets.html [test your roles' access policies using the aws identity and access management policy simulator]: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/test-your-roles-access-policies-using-the-aws-identity-and-access-management-policy-simulator/ [what is amazon vpc?]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/what-is-amazon-vpc.html [what is aws config?]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/config/latest/developerguide/WhatIsConfig.html [what is cloudwatch]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/WhatIsCloudWatch.html [a guide to tagging resources in aws]: https://medium.com/@staxmarketing/a-guide-to-tagging-resources-in-aws-8f4311afeb46 [automating dns-challenge based letsencrypt certificates with aws route 53]: https://johnrix.medium.com/automating-dns-challenge-based-letsencrypt-certificates-with-aws-route-53-8ba799dd207b [aws config tutorial by stephane maarek]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHdFoYSrUvk [aws savings plans vs. reserved instances: when to use each]: https://www.cloudzero.com/blog/savings-plans-vs-reserved-instances/ [date & time policy conditions at aws - 1-minute iam lesson]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wpKP1HLEXg [image baking in aws using packer and image builder]: https://dev.to/santhoshnimmala/image-baking-in-aws-using-packer-and-image-builder-1ed3 [using aws kms via the cli with a symmetric key]: https://nsmith.net/aws-kms-cli