AWS Security Blog
Category: Networking & Content Delivery
How to use ACM Private CA for enabling mTLS in AWS App Mesh
Securing east-west traffic in service meshes, such as AWS App Mesh, by using mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS) adds an additional layer of defense beyond perimeter control. mTLS adds bidirectional peer-to-peer authentication on top of the one-way authentication in normal TLS. This is done by adding a client-side certificate during the TLS handshake, through which […]
Authenticate AWS Client VPN users with AWS IAM Identity Center
September 12, 2022: This blog post has been updated to reflect the new name of AWS Single Sign-On (SSO) – AWS IAM Identity Center. Read more about the name change here. AWS Client VPN is a managed client-based VPN service that enables users to use an OpenVPN-based client to securely access their resources in Amazon […]
How to restrict IAM roles to access AWS resources from specific geolocations using AWS Client VPN
You can improve your organization’s security posture by enforcing access to Amazon Web Services (AWS) resources based on IP address and geolocation. For example, users in your organization might bring their own devices, which might require additional security authorization checks and posture assessment in order to comply with corporate security requirements. Enforcing access to AWS […]
Protect public clients for Amazon Cognito by using an Amazon CloudFront proxy
September 8, 2023: It’s important to know that if you activate user sign-up in your user pool, anyone on the internet can sign up for an account and sign in to your apps. Don’t enable self-registration in your user pool unless you want to open your app to allow users to sign up. Sep 6 […]
Use EC2 Instance Connect to provide secure SSH access to EC2 instances with private IP addresses
In this post, I show you how to use Amazon EC2 Instance Connect to use Secure Shell (SSH) to securely access your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances running on private subnets within an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). EC2 Instance Connect provides a simple and secure way to connect to your EC2 […]
How to protect sensitive data for its entire lifecycle in AWS
April 25, 2023: We’ve updated this blog post to include more security learning resources. Many Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer workflows require ingesting sensitive and regulated data such as Payments Card Industry (PCI) data, personally identifiable information (PII), and protected health information (PHI). In this post, I’ll show you a method designed to protect sensitive […]
How to protect a self-managed DNS service against DDoS attacks using AWS Global Accelerator and AWS Shield Advanced
In this blog post, I show you how to improve the distributed denial of service (DDoS) resilience of your self-managed Domain Name System (DNS) service by using AWS Global Accelerator and AWS Shield Advanced. You can use those services to incorporate some of the techniques used by Amazon Route 53 to protect against DDoS attacks. […]
Configuring AWS VPN for UK public sector use
In this post, we explain the United Kingdom (UK) National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)’s guidance on VPN profiles configuration, and how the configuration parameters for the AWS Virtual Private Network (AWS VPN) align with the NCSC guidance. At the end of the post, there are links to code to deploy the AWS VPN in line […]
How to enhance Amazon CloudFront origin security with AWS WAF and AWS Secrets Manager
Whether your web applications provide static or dynamic content, you can improve their performance, availability, and security by using Amazon CloudFront as your content delivery network (CDN). CloudFront is a web service that speeds up distribution of your web content through a worldwide network of data centers called edge locations. CloudFront ensures that end-user requests […]
How to add DNS filtering to your NAT instance with Squid
September 23, 2020: The squid configuration file in this blog post and associated YAML template have been updated. September 4, 2019: We’ve updated this blog post, initially published on January 26, 2016. Major changes include: support of Amazon Linux 2, no longer having to compile Squid 3.5, and a high availability version of the solution […]