These Cisco Terms of Use (this “Agreement”) between You and Cisco cover Your use of the Software and Cloud Services (“Cisco Technology”) obtained through this site. The Cisco Technology is intended for use by business users. Definitions of capitalized terms are in Section 11.
You agree to be bound by the terms of this Agreement through (a) Your download, installation, or use of the Cisco Technology; or (b) Your express agreement to this Agreement. If You do not have authority to enter into this Agreement or You do not agree with its terms, do not use the Cisco Technology.
Section 2. Using Cisco Technology
2.1 License and Right to Use. Cisco grants You, for Your direct benefit during the Usage Term and for the full scope of Your Entitlement under this Agreement, a non-exclusive, non-transferable (except with respect to Software as permitted under the Cisco Software Transfer and Re-Use Policy) (a) license to use the Software; and (b) right to use the Cloud Services (collectively, the “Usage Rights”).
2.2 Use by Third Parties. You may permit Authorized Third Parties to exercise the Usage Rights on Your behalf, provided that You are responsible for (a) ensuring that such Authorized Third Parties comply with this Agreement; and (b) any breach of this Agreement by such Authorized Third Parties.
2.3 Free Service. Cisco is making this Cisco Technology available to You without charge, up to certain capacity limits as described in Section 10 below, and subject to the terms of this Agreement. You agree that Cisco, in its sole discretion and for any or no reason, may terminate Your Usage Rights (or any part thereof) and that any termination may be without prior notice and without liability to Cisco. Cisco may, for example, suspend or terminate Your Usage Rights if (i) Cisco has reason to believe that You engaged in any fraudulent behaviour as it relates to the Cloud Services, or (ii) You use Cisco Technology beyond Your Entitlement. You are solely responsible for exporting Your customer data from the Cisco Technology prior to termination, and, except as required by law, Cisco will provide You a reasonable opportunity to retrieve such data.
2.4 Upgrades or Additional Copies of Software. You may only use Upgrades or additional copies of the Software beyond Your Entitlement if You have (a) acquired those rights under a support agreement covering the applicable Software; or (b) You have purchased the right to use Upgrades or additional copies separately.
2.5 Interoperability of Software. If required by law and upon Your request, Cisco will provide You with the information needed to achieve interoperability between the Software and another independently created program, provided You agree to any additional terms reasonably required by Cisco. You will treat such information as Confidential Information.
Section 3. Additional Conditions of Use
3.1 Cisco Technology Generally. Unless expressly agreed by Cisco, You may not (a) transfer, sell, sublicense, monetize, or make the functionality of any Cisco Technology available to any third party; (b) use the Software on second hand or refurbished Cisco equipment not authorized by Cisco, or use Software that is licensed for a specific device on a different device (except as permitted under Cisco’s Software License Portability Policy); (c) remove, modify, or conceal any product identification, copyright, proprietary, intellectual property notices or other marks; (d) reverse engineer, decompile, decrypt, disassemble, modify, or make derivative works of the Cisco Technology; or (e) use Cisco Content other than as part of Your permitted use of the Cisco Technology.
3.2 Cloud Services. You will not intentionally (a) interfere with other users’ access to, or use of, the Cloud Service, or with its security; (b) facilitate the attack or disruption of the Cloud Service, including a denial of service attack, unauthorized access, penetration testing, crawling, or distribution of malware (including viruses, trojan horses, worms, time bombs, spyware, adware, and cancelbots); (c) cause an unusual spike or increase in Your use of the Cloud Service that negatively impacts the Cloud Service’s operation; or (d) submit any information that is not contemplated in the applicable Documentation.
3.3 Evolving Cisco Technology. Cisco may: (a) enhance or modify the features, functionality, and capacity limits of this Cisco Technology at any time, in its sole discretion, without liability; and (b) perform scheduled maintenance of the infrastructure and software used to provide the Cloud Service, during which time You may experience some disruption to that Cloud Service. Whenever reasonably practicable, Cisco will provide You with advance notice of such maintenance. You acknowledge that, from time to time, Cisco may need to perform emergency maintenance without providing You advance notice, during which time Cisco may temporarily suspend Your access to, and use of, the Cloud Service.
Cisco reserves the right (a) to end the life of this Cisco Technology, including component functionality, (“EOL”), and/or (b) to incorporate all or some of the features and functionality of this Cisco Technology into a Cisco paid offer at any time, in its sole discretion, and without liability (“Cisco Offering”). Any new Cisco Offering will be subject to its own terms and conditions.
3.4 Protecting Account Access. You will keep all account information up to date, use reasonable means to protect Your account information, passwords and other login credentials, and promptly notify Cisco of any known or suspected unauthorized use of or access to Your account.
3.5 Use with Third-Party Products. If You use the Cisco Technology together with third-party products, such use is at Your risk. You are responsible for complying with any third-party provider terms, including its privacy policy. Cisco does not provide support or guarantee ongoing integration support for products that are not a native part of the Cisco Technology.
3.6 Open Source Software. Open source software not owned by Cisco is subject to separate license terms as set out at www.cisco.com/go/opensource. The applicable open source software licences will not materially or adversely affect Your ability to exercise Usage Rights in applicable Cisco Technology.
Section 4. Confidential Information and Use of Data
4.1 Confidentiality. Recipient will hold in confidence and use no less than reasonable care to avoid disclosure of any Confidential Information to any third party, except for its employees, affiliates, and contractors who have a need to know (“Permitted Recipients”). Recipient: (a) must ensure that its Permitted Recipients are subject to written confidentiality obligations no less restrictive than the Recipient’s obligations under this Agreement, and (b) is liable for any breach of this Section by its Permitted Recipients. Such nondisclosure obligations will not apply to information that: (i) is known by Recipient without confidentiality obligations; (ii) is or has become public knowledge through no fault of Recipient; or (iii) is independently developed by Recipient. Recipient may disclose Discloser’s Confidential Information if required under a regulation, law or court order provided that Recipient provides prior notice to Discloser (to the extent legally permissible) and reasonably cooperates, at Discloser’s expense, regarding protective actions pursued by Discloser. Upon the reasonable request of Discloser, Recipient will either return, delete or destroy all Confidential Information of Discloser and certify the same.
4.2 How We Use Data. Cisco will access, process and use data in connection with Your use of the Cisco Technology in accordance with applicable privacy and data protection laws. For further detail, please visit Cisco’s Security and Trust Center.
4.3 Notice and Consent. To the extent Your use of the Cisco Technology requires it, You are responsible for providing notice to, and obtaining consents from, individuals regarding the collection, processing, transfer and storage of their data through Your use of the Cisco Technology.
Section 5. Ownership
Except where agreed in writing, nothing in this Agreement transfers ownership in, or grants any license to, any intellectual property rights. You retain any ownership of Your content and Cisco retains ownership of the Cisco Technology and Cisco Content. You acknowledge and agree that any questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, feedback or other information about this Cisco Technology provided by You to Cisco (“Feedback”) are non-confidential and Cisco may use any Feedback You provide in connection with Your use of the Cisco Technology as part of its business operations without acknowledgment or compensation to You.
Section 6. Warranties and Representations
To the extent allowed by applicable law, Cisco expressly disclaims all warranties and conditions of any kind, express or implied, including without limitation any warranty, condition or other implied term as to merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement, or that the Cisco Technology will be secure, uninterrupted or error free. If You are a consumer, You may have legal rights in Your country of residence that prohibit the limitations set out in this Section from applying to You, and, where prohibited, they will not apply
Section 7. Liability
Neither party will be liable for indirect, incidental, exemplary, special, or consequential damages; loss or corruption of data or interruption or loss of business; or loss of revenues, profits, goodwill, or anticipated sales or savings. The maximum aggregate liability of each party under this Agreement is limited to $5,000 USD. These limitations of liability do NOT apply to liability arising from (a) Your breach of Sections 2.1 (License and Right to Use), 3.1 (Cisco Technology Generally), 3.2 (Cloud Services) or 9.7 (Export). These limitations of liability apply whether the claims are in warranty, contract, tort (including negligence), infringement, or otherwise, even if either party has been advised of the possibility of such damages. Nothing in this Agreement limits or excludes any liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law. These limitations of liability are cumulative and not per incident.
Section 8. Termination and Suspension
8.1 Suspension. Cisco may immediately suspend Your Usage Rights if You breach Sections 2.1 (License and Right to Use), 3.1 (Cisco Technology Generally), 3.2 (Cloud Services) or 9.7 (Export).
8.2 Termination. Cisco, in its sole discretion and for any or no reason, may terminate Your access to this Cisco Technology or any part thereof and any termination may be without prior notice and without liability to Cisco. Cisco may, for example, suspend or terminate Your access immediately if You breach Sections 2.1 (License and Right to Use), 3.1 (Cisco Technology Generally), 3.2 (Cloud Services), or 9.7 (Export). Upon termination of this Agreement, You must stop using the Cisco Technology and destroy any copies of Software and Confidential Information within Your control.
Section 9. General Provisions
9.1 Survival. Sections 4 (Confidential Information and Use of Data), 5 (Ownership), 7 (Liability), 8 (Termination and Suspension), and 9 (General Provisions) survive termination or expiration of this Agreement.
9.2 Third-Party Beneficiaries. This Agreement does not grant any right or cause of action to any third party.
9.3 Assignment and Subcontracting. Except as set out below, neither party may assign or novate this Agreement in whole or in part without the other party’s express written consent. Cisco may (a) by written notice to You, assign or novate this Agreement in whole or in part to an Affiliate of Cisco, or otherwise as part of a sale or transfer of any part of its business; or (b) subcontract any performance associated with the Cisco Technology to third parties, provided that such subcontract does not relieve Cisco of any of its obligations under this Agreement.
9.4 U.S. Government End Users. The Software, Cloud Services and Documentation are deemed to be “commercial computer software” and “commercial computer software documentation” pursuant to FAR 12.212 and DFARS 227.7202. All U.S. Government end users acquire the Cisco Technology and Documentation with only those rights set forth in this Agreement. Any provisions that are inconsistent with federal procurement regulations are not enforceable against the U.S. Government
9.5 Modifications to this Agreement. Cisco may change this Agreement or any of its components by updating it on Cisco.com and/or the Documentation page, which can be found at https://community.cisco.com/. Cisco will exercise commercially reasonable efforts to provide notice of any material changes to this Agreement, and within three (3) business days of posting changes to this Agreement, they will be binding. If you do not agree with the changes, you must discontinue using the Cisco Technology at that time. If you continue using the Cisco Technology after that time, you will be deemed to have accepted the changes to this Agreement.
9.6 Compliance with Laws. Each party will comply with all laws and regulations applicable to their respective obligations under this Agreement. Cisco may restrict the availability of the Cisco Technology in any particular location or modify or discontinue features to comply with applicable laws and regulations.
If You use the Cisco Technology in a location with local laws requiring a designated entity to be responsible for collection of data about individual end users and transfer of data outside of that jurisdiction (e.g., Russia and China), You acknowledge that You are the entity responsible for complying with such laws.
9.7 Export. Cisco’s Software, Cloud Services, products, technology, and services (collectively the “Cisco Products”) are subject to U.S. and local export control and sanctions laws. You acknowledge and agree to the applicability of and Your compliance with those laws, and You will not receive, use, transfer, export, or re-export any Cisco Products in a way that would cause Cisco to violate those laws. You also agree to obtain any required licenses or authorizations
9.8 Governing Law and Venue. This Agreement, and any disputes arising from it, will be governed exclusively by the applicable governing law below, based on Your primary place of business (or primary residence, if you are not a business) and without regard to conflicts of laws rules or the United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods. The courts located in the applicable venue below will have exclusive jurisdiction to adjudicate any dispute arising out of or relating to the Agreement or its formation, interpretation or enforcement. Each party hereby consents and submits to the exclusive jurisdiction of such courts. Regardless of the below governing law, either party may seek interim injunctive relief in any court of appropriate jurisdiction with respect to any alleged breach of Cisco’s intellectual property or proprietary rights
Your Primary Place of Business Governing Law Jurisdiction and Venue
Any location not specified below
| State of California, United States of America | Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara and Federal Courts of the Northern District of California
| Australia | Laws of the State of New South Wales, Australia | State and Federal Courts of New South Wales |
| Canada | Province of Ontario, Canada | Courts of the Province of Ontario |
| China | Laws of the People’s Republic of China | Hong Kong International Arbitration Center |
| Europe (excluding Italy), Middle East, Africa, Asia (excluding Japan and China), Oceania (excluding Australia) | Laws of England | English Courts |
| Italy | Laws of Italy | Court of Milan |
| Japan | Laws of Japan | Tokyo District Court of Japan |
| United States, Latin America or the Caribbean | State of California, United States of America | Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara and Federal Courts of the Northern District of California |
If You are a United States public sector agency or government institution located in the United States, the laws of the primary jurisdiction in which You are located will govern this Agreement and any disputes arising from it. For U.S. Federal Government users, this Agreement will be controlled and construed under the laws of the United States of America.
9.9 Notice. Any notice delivered by Cisco to You under this Agreement will be delivered on Cisco.com. Notices to Cisco should be sent to Cisco Systems, Inc., Office of General Counsel, 170 West Tasman Drive, San Jose, CA 95134.
9.10 Force Majeure. Neither party will be responsible for failure to perform its obligations due to an event or circumstances beyond its reasonable control.
9.11 No Waiver. Failure by either party to enforce any right under this Agreement will not waive that right.
9.12 Severability. If any portion of this Agreement is not enforceable, it will not affect any other terms.
9.13 Entire agreement. This Agreement is the complete agreement between the parties with respect to the subject matter of this Agreement and supersedes all prior or contemporaneous communications, understandings or agreements (whether written or oral).
9.14 Translations. Cisco may provide local language translations of this Agreement in some locations. You agree that those translations are provided for informational purposes only and if there is any inconsistency, the English version of this Agreement will prevail.
9.15 Order of Precedence. If there is any conflict between this Agreement and any Cisco policies expressly referenced in this Agreement, the order of precedence is: (a) this Agreement; then (b) any applicable Cisco policy expressly referenced in this Agreement.
9.16 Language Election for Purchasers in Quebec. You confirm Your Agreement that this Cisco Technology is currently provided in English only.
Section 10. Additional Terms
10.1 Restrictions on Use by Minor Children. This Cisco Technology is not intended for use by persons younger than the age of consent in their relevant jurisdiction (e.g.,13 years old in the United States under the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or 16 or 13 years old in the European Union as per Member State law) (“Minor Children”). Minor Children are not permitted to create an account and You will not authorize Minor Children to access the Cisco Technology.
10.2 Capacity Restrictions. Your right to access and use this Cisco Technology is currently limited to five (5) nodes dedicated to applications/microservices.
10.3 Limited Community Support. This Cisco Technology is provided on a free-of-charge basis, as-is, and without support. Cisco has no obligation to maintain, repair, or upgrade this Cloud Service and Cisco will not provide user support services in connection with this Cisco Technology. User can refer to self-service help materials that cover a range of topics or reach out to our community forum to engage in community support discussions on our Documentation page at https://community.cisco.com/. Cisco makes no representations about and has no liability for these community support resources. All use of these resources, and the advice and guidance therein, is at Your own risk.
10.4 No Competitive Analysis. By agreeing to these terms, You represent and warrant that you will not use this Cisco Technology or its Documentation to (a) copy ideas, features, functions, or graphics; (b) develop competing products or services; or (c) perform competitive analyses.
10.5 Beta Functionality. User acknowledges and agrees that all or some components or functionality of the Cisco Technology may be in beta stage and may not have been (and may not become) productized or commercialized. You acknowledge that Your use and evaluation of this Cisco Technology is at Your own risk.
Section 11. Definitions
“Affiliate” means any corporation or company that directly or indirectly controls, or is controlled by, or is under common control with the relevant party, where “control” means to: (a) own more than 50% of the relevant party; or (b) be able to direct the affairs of the relevant party through any lawful means (e.g., a contract that allows control).
“Authorized Third Parties” means Your Users, Your Affiliates, Your third-party service providers, and each of their respective Users, permitted to access and use the Cisco Technology on Your behalf as part of Your Entitlement.
“Cisco” “we” “our” or “us” means Cisco Systems, Inc. or its applicable Affiliate(s).
“Cisco Content” means any (a) content or data provided by Cisco to You as part of Your use of the Cisco Technology and (b) content or data that the Cisco Technology generates or derives in connection with Your use. Cisco Content includes geographic and domain information, rules, signatures, threat intelligence, and data feeds, and Cisco’s compilation of suspicious URLs.
“Cloud Service” means the Cisco hosted software-as-a-service offering or other Cisco cloud-enabled feature described in this Agreement. Cloud Services include applicable Documentation and may also include Software.
“Confidential Information” means non-public proprietary information of the disclosing party (“Discloser”) obtained by the receiving party (“Recipient”) in connection with this Agreement, which is (a) conspicuously marked as confidential or, if verbally disclosed, is summarized in writing to the Recipient within a reasonable time period after disclosure and marked as confidential; or (b) is information which by its nature should reasonably be considered confidential whether disclosed in writing or verbally.
“Delivery Date” means the date on which the Cloud Service is made available for Your use or, when Usage Rights in Software and Cloud Services are granted together, the earlier of the date Software is made available for download, or the date on which the Cloud Service is made available for Your use.
“Documentation” means the technical specifications and usage materials officially published by Cisco or available on https://community.cisco.com/ specifying the functionalities and capabilities of the applicable Cisco Technology.
“Entitlement” means the specific metrics, duration, and quantity of Cisco Technology that You acquire from Cisco under this Agreement.
“Software” means the Cisco computer programs including Upgrades, firmware and applicable Documentation.
“Upgrades” means all updates, upgrades, bug fixes, error corrections, enhancements and other modifications to the Software.
“Usage Term” means the period commencing on the Delivery Date and continuing until expiration or termination of the Entitlement, during which period You have the right to use the applicable Cisco Technology.
“User” means the individuals (including contractors or employees) permitted to access and use the Cisco Technology on Your behalf as part of Your Entitlement.
“You” means the individual or legal entity using the Cisco Technology.
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Top AWS Terminology to Understand AWS Security Concepts
Panoptica Team
Monday, May 24th, 2021
Ever feel lost in a sea of AWS terminology, acronyms and AWS cloud security concepts on Amazon web services? You’re not alone! Let’s take a look at some of the most common AWS terminology that you’ll hear when you’re learning about Amazon Web Services, and getting to grips with AWS cloud security, and get an overview of what they mean for your own unique cloud security environment. Consider this your cheat sheet! .
IAM is AWS terminology that stands for Identity and Access Management, and it’s the way that Amazon web services allows you to control access to all of your resources on AWS. You’ll use the terms authenticated and authorized. Authenticated means that the user is signed in, and authorized means that they have the permissions that they need to use any given resources.
IAM is used in many ways to manage access in AWS. You do this by creating IAM identities, such as users, groups, or roles, and then attaching policies to these identities. This will define the permissions for each identity.
The root user will be the initial person that created the AWS account, and this is one single sign-in identity who will have access to all of the AWS services and resources that are in the account. AWS recommends that you only use this root user to create your first IAM user, as these access permissions are far too loose.
It’s important to note that defining policies using IAM logic doesn’t always mean that your environment is secure. In fact, even by design, some configurations can open you up to risk. Read more about AWS IAM and AWS Authorization logic.
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
If you’re using AWS services on the cloud, you’ve probably heard the term Virtual Private Cloud or VPC. The way this works is that instead of using the internal and external IP addresses that are allocated by Amazon, you can assign your own IP address and numbers from subnets, and choose which of your AWS resources will be public facing, and which will be private. This is a great option for customers who need more granular security, and don’t want to have all of their AWS cloud services on the public cloud.
Using Amazon Virtual Private Cloud is not the same as using elastic IP addresses. An elastic IP address is an IP number that you can reserve for your public cloud, even through situations where it would usually change, such as restarting the instance. Elastic IP addresses are usually used for fault-tolerant software or instances, and are still public.
There are two ways that Amazon Virtual Private Cloud VPC can support better security best practices than relying on AWS cloud’s public resources. First, security groups. These are used to control traffic at the instance level, while ACL access control lists are used to control communications at the subnet level, like a firewall might be.
You can also create dedicated instances on hardware, which would make these instances physically isolated from any other instances in the AWS cloud. It might be worth reading our article, There is no Private in your Public Cloud for more information on ensuring that you are managing applications, instances and web services in the most secure way possible.
AWS Relational Database Service
AWS Relational Database Service is a managed service that provides the tools and technology necessary to work with relational databases such as Oracle in the AWS cloud. A relational database works by storing data in columns and rows, and is queried using the SQL language. Non-relational databases are therefore known as No-SQL databases, and will need a different AWS service to manage data storage.
In a relational database, attributes are shown in columns, and the rows will represent the records. These relational databases can be used for finance, warehousing, CRM applications, ERP technology, and many other transactions, however they won’t be suitable for any dynamic AWS resources and applications, or those that need high-performance. If you have large amounts of data that is unstructured, or you’re looking to use it for machine learning or to train algorithms, you’ll want a No-SQL database.
Familiar relational databases include Amazon Aurora and DynamoDB, as well as Amazon RDS, which stands for relational database service. There are six database choices from within RDS, including Oracle, but also PostgreSQL, AWS MySQL, MariaDB, SQLServer, and also Aurora itself.
As the customer, you’ll need to consider whether you want to manage any of these database engines from a CLI, via API calls, or with your centralized management console. The main point of using a relational database service like this is to automate much of the administrative work that needs to be done, such as provisioning, back-up, updates and initial set up.
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda makes it easy to run code without any of the overhead and work of managing and provisioning servers. Think about time-consuming tasks such as integrating events, managing runtimes, or building scaling logic. This is all eliminated with a serverless compute capacity service like AWS Lambda. You might be asking yourself, what does the common term serverless mean according to AWS? Well, with AWS Lambda, you can write your code in any language, and then simply upload your code as a container image or a ZIP file, and Lambda will allocate the amount of power, and run the incoming request or event, at any scale.
Terms that you might hear when you’re reading about AWS Lambda include Functions; which are the scripts or program that run in Lambda, processing the event and returning the response, Runtimes; which allow you to run functions which have been written in various languages on the same environment, Lambda Layers; that helps you to manage your development function code and distribute your functions, and Log Streams; that allow you to add custom logging statements to analyze the flow and performance.
AWS Elastic Computing (EC2)
Amazon EC2 stands for Elastic Compute Cloud, and offers secure, scalable virtual servers that can be used to run AWS resources and applications. You can configure your Amazon EC2 instances exactly how you like, including with memory, storage, CPU and networking requirements.
In order to secure Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon web services suggests you use identity federation, IAM users and roles, implement rules according to least privilege, and ensure that your OS and applications are patched and up to date. However, this doesn’t cover all the risks on the cloud. One good example is managing SSH key pairs, which are often used for multiple instances, opening an organization up to risk.
At Panoptica, we offer a free, open-source Red Detector that can be used to scan your Amazon EC2 instances to find vulnerabilities using Vuls, as well as for signs of a rootkit using Chkrootkit. You can also use this tool to audit your EC2 instance using Lynis to find misconfigurations.
Amazon Elastic File System
Amazon Elastic File System is also known as Amazon EFS, and makes it easy to manage AWS resources without manually provisioning or deploying your space on the AWS cloud. The service creates elastic files that automatically scale as files are added, removed, or burst to a need for higher throughput. Files that are accessed less frequently can be automatically moved, which can save you a lot of money from your monthly AWS cloud spend, which is really important if you have a low cost strategy for your cloud environment.
In terms of security, the AWS terminology you’ll want to think about here is your VPC security group rules, and your IAM policies, both of which are discussed further up in this article. While Amazon virtual private cloud will offer security group policies that control the traffic that moves in and out of your file system, you can also use Identity and Access Management policies to your file system, which will help you dictate which clients can access your EFS and what permissions they have. Head to the EFS console if you want to see what policies you can add, but these are usually items like disabling root access, encrypting all connections, or enforcing read-only access and permissions. Of course, these are “one size fits all” policies, and won’t look at your requirements with any business context.
S3 Bucket
Amazon S3 buckets are storage, used to hold objects on Amazon web services. Objects are data, files, metadata and so on. After creating a bucket, you will need to select a tier for your data, which will vary in terms of redundancy, price, and how often you can access the objects inside. You can have a single bucket that stores objects across multiple tiers.
AWS IAM service helps you to assign the right privileges and permissions for all the objects in any given S3 bucket, including creating access control lists. However, these can quickly become complex to manage. In addition, the access options from AWS don’t always allow you to ascertain whether your objects are public.
AWS Key Pair
A key pair is a set of security credentials that users need to access their instances, and is made up of a public and a private key. The public key is stored by Amazon web services, and you create and hold the key which is unique to you. In that way, it works like a password to access your buckets and objects.
As your cloud environment grows, it becomes harder to manage these pairs, and like with password misuse, many companies and users share their keys across different instances. However, when organizations use the same key pairs for multiple instances, attackers can access all of these servers by uncovering just the one credential.
Panoptica maps and visualizes all EC2 instances, highlighting those that are using the same key pair, and prioritizing these by real-world attack paths, so that you can easily mitigate any misuse that is opening your business up to risk.
AWS Least Privilege
The principle of least privilege (PoLP) is a concept that means all users have the permissions and access that they need to do their job, and no further. This means that if an attacker compromises an account, they are limited in terms of what they can access. This term was built for on-premises environments, and does not carry over entirely to cloud security.
There are a few reasons for this disconnect. First, on the cloud an attacker only needs one or two permissions to gain complete control over an account. Second, AWS least privilege isn’t always possible because of pre-set rules that can’t be amended by the user. Lastly, attempting to create the number of policies needed for least privilege creates a huge amount of work for DevOps teams.
AWS CloudFormation
Infrastructure-as-code makes it easy for DevOps to easily run, model, provision and manage a collection of AWS resources. This is what AWS CloudFormation does, using templates. You can create resources with dependencies, and then configure these as one single stack, instead of needing to handle the individual parts. On AWS, these stacks can be used across multiple user accounts, and even across regions, too.
This not only saves time for DevOps, by allowing them to automate best practices, but also ensures they can then roll any updates out quickly and easily across projects, at low cost.
AWS Security Hub
AWS Security Hub brings all of your alerts together from all your AWS accounts into a centralized location so that you can easily run your security settings from a single place. It is where you manage alerts that come in from your security tools, such as endpoint protection or firewalls, or compliance scanners for example, both for integrated AWS services, and also for solutions that come from within the AWS Partner Network. Integrated with SIEM or SOAR tools, or with AWS tools such as Amazon Detective, you can also take steps towards remediation.
The challenge is that organizations today have so many security tools, both that fall under these categories and those which do not, that alerts have escalated past what can be managed within AWS Security Hub alone. Security teams have hundreds of alerts per day, and many of them are impossible to prioritize without context. This leads to alert fatigue, and security teams who simply ignore many of these alerts as they don’t have the information required to make contextual decisions, and therefore leave their companies exposed to risk.
Amazon EKS
EKS is how Amazon web services runs the Kubernetes control plane across AWS availability zones to provide highly available Kubernetes clusters on AWS. You can start, run and scale your K8 applications either on-premises or on the cloud, and get all the benefits of the container orchestration system, in terms of deployment, management and scale.
There are many security considerations for companies running Kubernetes on AWS. For example, some of the AWS defaults can be overly-permissive or open you up to risk, and attackers can also exploit the K8 control plane to attempt account takeover.
AWS Cross-account Access
Using the AWS console, you can set up cross-account access so that users can obtain access to objects from buckets belonging to other users. This is usually done using cross-account IAM roles with a trust policy, and setting up an AWS credentials file.
There are three steps involved in setting up cross-account access. First you create the necessary IAM role, defining the other account as what’s known as a “trusted entity” and specifying the correct permissions policy. For example, is it a read relationship, or will you want the other account to be able to update or edit?
Second, according to AWS, you modify the IAM group policy so that Testers don’t have access to the role of UpdateApp. This is in the scenario where they have PowerUser access, and it’s important to ensure you’ve explicitly denied that role for their use.
Finally, it’s time to test whether the cross-account access works. Using your Developer role, try to UpdateApp, and check to see if it has worked. This should update in real time.
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