In the rapidly expanding realm of cloud computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides the infrastructure for countless businesses to operate and innovate. But with an ever-increasing amount of data, applications, and workloads on the cloud protecting this data poses significant security challenges. As a firm’s data, applications, and workloads migrate to the cloud, protecting them from both sophisticated threats as well as brute force digital attacks is of paramount importance. This is where Amazon GuardDuty enters as a powerful, vigilant sentinel.
What is Amazon GuardDuty?
At its core, Amazon GuardDuty is a continuous security monitoring service designed to protect your AWS accounts and workloads. The software serves as a 24/7 security guard for your entire AWS environment, not just individual applications, and is constantly scanning for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior.
The software works by analyzing a wide variety of data sources within your firm’s AWS account—including AWS CloudTrail event logs, VPC flow logs, and DNS query logs—using machine learning, threat intelligence feeds, and anomaly detection techniques.
If an external party tries a brute-force login, a compromised instance is communicating with a known malicious IP address, or an unusual API call is made, GuardDuty is there to spot it and can be configured to trigger automated actions through services can trigger automated actions through services like Amazon CloudWatch Events and AWS Lambda when a threat is found as well as alert human administrators to take action.
When a threat is detected, GuardDuty generates a finding with a severity level (high, medium, or low) and a score. The severity and score both help minimize time spent on more routine exceptions while highlighting significant events to your data security team.
Why is GuardDuty So Important?
In today’s digital landscape, relying solely on traditional, static security measures is not sufficient. Cybercriminals are constantly evolving their tactics, which is why GuardDuty is an essential component of your AWS security strategy:
- Proactive, Intelligent Threat Detection
GuardDuty moves beyond simple rule-based systems. Its use of machine learning allows it to detect anomalies that human security administrators might miss, identifying zero-day threats and subtle changes in behavior that indicate a compromise. It continuously learns and adapts to new threats without requiring manual updates from human security administrators.
- Near Real-Time Monitoring and Alerting
Speed is critical in incident response. GuardDuty provides findings in near real-time, delivering detailed security alerts directly to the AWS Management Console, Amazon EventBridge, and Amazon Security Hub. This immediate notification allows your firm’s security teams to investigate and remediate potential issues quickly, minimizing potential damage and alerting your firm’s management.
- Broad Protection Across AWS Services
GuardDuty doesn’t just watch over your firm’s Elastic Compute Cloud (“EC2”) instances. GuardDuty also protects a wide array of AWS services, including:
- Simple Storage Service (“S3”) Buckets: Detecting potential data exfiltration or policy changes that expose sensitive data.
- EKS/Kubernetes: Monitoring for threats to your container workloads. No more running malware or mining bitcoin in your firm’s containers.
- Databases (Aurora; RDS – MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server; and Redshift): Identifying potential compromise or unauthorized access to data.
Conclusion:
In the cloud, security is a shared responsibility. While AWS manages the security of the cloud infrastructure itself, you are responsible for security in the cloud—protecting your data, accounts, and workloads. Amazon GuardDuty is an indispensable tool in fulfilling that responsibility. It provides an automated, intelligent, and scalable layer of defense that empowers you to stay ahead of malicious actors.
To enable Amazon GuardDuty, consider contacting Perficient to help enable, configure, and train staff. Perficient is an AWS partner and has achieved Premier Tier Services Partner status, the highest tier in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network. This elevated status reflects Perficient’s expertise, long-term investment, and commitment to delivering customer solutions on AWS.
Besides the firm’s Partner Status, Perficient has demonstrated significant expertise in areas like cloud migration, modernization, and AI-driven solutions, with a large team of AWS-certified professionals.
In addition to these competencies, Perficient has been designated for specific service deliveries, such as AWS Glue Service Delivery, and also has available Amazon-approved software in the AWS Marketplace.
Our financial services experts continuously monitor the financial services landscape and deliver pragmatic, scalable solutions that meet the required mandate and more. Reach out to Perficient’s Director and Head of Payments Practice Amanda Estiverne-Colas to discover why Perficient has been trusted by 18 of the top 20 banks, 16 of the 20 largest wealth and asset management firms, and 25+ leading payment + card processing companies.
