Title

AWS re:Invent 2022 - Cloud compliance, assurance, and auditing (COP304)

Summary

• Andres Silva, Karthik Vishnath, and Suchita Verma presented advanced features of AWS services for cloud compliance, auditing, and assurance.
• AWS Config and CloudTrail are central to managing compliance and auditing, with new features enhancing their capabilities.
• AWS Config now supports drift detection, simplifies rule authoring with DSL, and introduces proactive compliance to evaluate resources before creation.
• CloudTrail Lake is a managed audit data lake that aggregates and stores AWS activity data, offering a turnkey solution for auditing and security investigations.
• Audit Manager automates evidence collection for audits and now includes Evidence Finder, which allows targeted searches and grouping of results for assessment reports.
• The session included demonstrations of creating custom rules using AWS Config, proactive compliance, CloudTrail Lake integration with AWS Config data, and using Evidence Finder in Audit Manager.

Insights

• Drift Detection in AWS Config: This feature helps detect changes in the config recorder's tracked resource types, allowing for immediate action if unintended changes occur.
• Simplified Rule Authoring: AWS Config now supports CloudFormation Guard for writing rules in a domain-specific language (DSL), reducing the complexity of rule creation.
• Proactive Compliance: AWS Config introduced proactive compliance, enabling the evaluation of resources for compliance before they are created, integrating with CI/CD pipelines and CloudFormation.
• CloudTrail Lake: A managed solution that captures, aggregates, and stores AWS activity data, providing a SQL-based analysis layer and eliminating the need for ETL processes.
• Audit Manager Evidence Finder: A new feature that simplifies the search for specific audit evidence across accounts and regions, integrating with CloudTrail Lake for backend data storage.
• Integration with AWS Services: The new features in AWS Config and CloudTrail Lake show a trend towards tighter integration between AWS services, providing a more cohesive and streamlined experience for managing compliance and auditing in the cloud.
• Shift Left for Compliance: The proactive compliance feature in AWS Config represents a "shift left" approach, embedding compliance checks earlier in the development lifecycle, which can save time and reduce security risks.
• Scalability and Automation: The session emphasized the importance of scalability and automation in compliance and auditing, highlighting AWS's commitment to providing tools that can handle the scale at which AWS operates and manage infrastructure.