Category: AWS Systems Manager

Session Manager is a fully managed AWS Systems Manager capability that you can use to manage your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, on-premises instances, and virtual machines (VMs) through an interactive one-click browser-based shell or through the AWS CLI. Session Manager also provides secure and auditable instance management without the need to open […]

As BBVA USA began its digital transformation journey, the security operations team had to improve its processes around provisioning and baselining of AWS accounts. The demand for new AWS accounts continued to increase from multiple application teams within the bank. In an effort to standardize new accounts within the enterprise, BBVA USA built an automated […]

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service built for DevOps engineers, developers, Site Reliability Engineers (SRE), and IT managers. CloudWatch provides you with data and actionable insights to monitor your applications, respond to system-wide performance changes, optimize resource utilization, and get a unified view of operational health. Are you looking for an automated way […]

AWS Systems Manager Explorer is a customizable operations dashboard that reports information about your AWS resources. Explorer displays an aggregated view of operations data (OpsData) for your AWS accounts and across Regions. In Explorer, OpsData includes metadata about your Amazon EC2 instances, patch compliance details, and operational work items (OpsItems). AWS Trusted Advisor is an […]

Cut costs by minimizing infrastructure when it’s not under heavy use, for example turning off EC2 and RDS instances nights and weekends. In this post you will learn how to do this using Systems Manager Automation Documents, State Manager, and CloudWatch Events.

Software Asset Governance or Software Asset Management is a key component of an organization’s cyber security strategy. Different aspects of Software Asset Governance find notable mentions in renowned security frameworks and standards such as SANS CIS Critical Security Controls, NIST Special Publication 800-53, and Cloud Security Alliance’s Cloud Control Matrix. The subject goes beyond cyber-security […]

This is our second installment of the latest news from AWS Organizations, which allows you to centrally manage and govern your AWS environment across accounts. We have had some exciting launches over the past few months, including new service integrations and Region expansions. Here’s the latest since April 2020: Create a backup policy that applies […]

Port forwarding is a useful way to redirect network traffic from one IP address and port number combination to another. With port forwarding, you can access an EC2 instance located in a private subnet from your workstation. In this post, we walk through a use case where customers have a strict security requirement for their […]

Are you an operations administrator trying to enable common configurations such as agent updates or patch scanning across your company? AWS Systems Manager Quick Setup now supports AWS Organizations. With this feature, Organization master accounts can now easily define configurations for Systems Manager to engage on your behalf across accounts in your Organization. You can […]

As organizations migrate their traditional data centers and applications into the AWS cloud, they also want to modernize their patching mechanisms in order to reap the benefits of operating in the cloud. We find that many customers are looking to move away from Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) for patching, and move towards an […]