What’s New in the Ultimate Guide to Incident Response in AWS?

AWS remains a dominant force in cloud computing, but its complexity presents unique challenges for security teams. Incident response in AWS requires a deep understanding of log sources, service-specific strategies, and forensic techniques.

Our updated Ultimate Guide to Incident Response in AWS provides refined insights and methodologies to help organizations respond to security incidents more effectively. Here’s what’s new in this release.

Key AWS Log Sources – More Focus on Centralized Logging

The updated guide places a stronger emphasis on how organizations can enhance their log collection strategy:

• AWS CloudTrail & CloudTrail Insights: Improved guidance on configuring CloudTrail across multiple regions and detecting anomalous activity with CloudTrail Insights.
• VPC Flow Logs: New sections explain how to detect lateral movement and suspicious traffic using flow log analysis.
• S3 Access Logs: Enhanced recommendations for securing S3 bucket access, monitoring changes, and preventing data exfiltration.

Service-Specific Incident Response Enhancements

Each AWS service presents unique security challenges. The updated guide refines response strategies for key AWS services:

• EC2 Incident Response: More detailed steps for isolating compromised EC2 instances, acquiring memory dumps, and analyzing EBS snapshots.
• EKS & ECS Security: The guide now provides deeper coverage on securing Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), including incident containment and forensic data collection.
• AWS Lambda Forensics: Given the rise of serverless attacks, the guide expands on forensic techniques for investigating Lambda function compromises.

Automating Incident Response – Expanded AWS Playbooks

Security automation is more important than ever, and the guide now includes:

• AWS Lambda for Evidence Collection: Automating forensic data collection from EC2, S3, and CloudTrail logs using Lambda functions.
• Security Hub & GuardDuty Integration: Streamlining threat detection and response workflows by integrating AWS Security Hub with GuardDuty findings.
• Using Amazon Detective for Root Cause Analysis: New insights into leveraging Amazon Detective to correlate log data and reconstruct attack timelines.

Addressing AWS-Specific Incident Response Challenges

AWS introduces unique challenges, such as multi-account environments, data volatility, and cross-region visibility. The updated guide includes best practices for:

• Automated Log Archival: Ensuring critical logs are preserved before resources are terminated.
• Cross-Account Incident Response: Best practices for managing incidents across AWS Organizations and Security Hub.

The latest Ultimate Guide to Incident Response in AWS delivers an even more comprehensive approach to AWS security. With enhanced log collection strategies, deeper service-specific response techniques, and expanded automation guidance, security teams can stay ahead of emerging threats. Download the guide today.