Amazon GuardDuty is a machine studying (ML)-based safety monitoring and clever menace detection service that analyzes and processes numerous AWS information sources, repeatedly displays your AWS accounts and workloads for malicious exercise, and delivers detailed safety findings for visibility and remediation.
I like the characteristic of GuardDuty Runtime Monitoring that analyzes working system (OS)-level, community, and file occasions to detect potential runtime threats for particular AWS workloads in your surroundings. I first launched the overall availability of this characteristic for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) assets in March 2023. Seb wrote concerning the enlargement of the Runtime Monitoring characteristic to supply menace detection for Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) and AWS Fargate in addition to the preview for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) workloads in Nov 2023.
Immediately, we’re saying the overall availability of Amazon GuardDuty EC2 Runtime Monitoring to develop menace detection protection for EC2 situations at runtime and complement the anomaly detection that GuardDuty already supplies by repeatedly monitoring VPC Circulation Logs, DNS question logs, and AWS CloudTrail administration occasions. You now have visibility into on-host, OS-level actions and container-level context into detected threats.
With GuardDuty EC2 Runtime Monitoring, you’ll be able to establish and reply to potential threats which may goal the compute assets inside your EC2 workloads. Threats to EC2 workloads usually contain distant code execution that results in the obtain and execution of malware. This might embody situations or self-managed containers in your AWS surroundings which can be connecting to IP addresses related to cryptocurrency-related exercise or to malware command-and-control associated IP addresses.
GuardDuty Runtime Monitoring supplies visibility into suspicious instructions that contain malicious file downloads and execution throughout every step, which can assist you uncover threats throughout preliminary compromise and earlier than they develop into business-impacting occasions. It’s also possible to centrally allow runtime menace detection protection for accounts and workloads throughout the group utilizing AWS Organizations to simplify your safety protection.
Configure EC2 Runtime Monitoring in GuardDuty
With a couple of clicks, you’ll be able to allow GuardDuty EC2 Runtime Monitoring within the GuardDuty console. On your first use, it’s worthwhile to allow Runtime Monitoring.
Any clients which can be new to the EC2 Runtime Monitoring characteristic can strive it for free for 30 days and acquire entry to all options and detection findings. The GuardDuty console reveals what number of days are left within the free trial.
Now, you’ll be able to arrange the GuardDuty safety agent for the person EC2 situations for which you need to monitor the runtime habits. You possibly can select to deploy the GuardDuty safety agent both mechanically or manually. At GA, you’ll be able to allow Automated agent configuration, which is a most popular possibility for many clients because it permits GuardDuty to handle the safety agent on their behalf.
The agent might be deployed on EC2 situations with AWS Methods Supervisor and makes use of an Amazon Digital Personal Cloud (Amazon VPC) endpoint to obtain the runtime occasions related together with your useful resource. If you wish to handle the GuardDuty safety agent manually, go to Managing the safety agent Amazon EC2 occasion manually within the AWS documentation. In multiple-account environments, delegated GuardDuty administrator accounts handle their member accounts utilizing AWS Organizations. For extra data, go to Managing a number of accounts within the AWS documentation.
If you allow EC2 Runtime Monitoring, you will discover the lined EC2 situations listing, account ID, and protection standing, and whether or not the agent is ready to obtain runtime occasions from the corresponding useful resource within the EC2 occasion runtime protection tab.
Even when the protection standing is Unhealthy, that means it’s not at present capable of obtain runtime findings, you continue to have protection in depth to your EC2 occasion. GuardDuty continues to supply menace detection to the EC2 occasion by monitoring CloudTrail, VPC circulation, and DNS logs related to it.
Take a look at GuardDuty EC2 Runtime safety findings
When GuardDuty detects a possible menace and generates safety findings, you’ll be able to view the main points of the wholesome data.
Select Findings within the left pane if you wish to discover safety findings particular to Amazon EC2 assets. You need to use the filter bar to filter the findings desk by particular standards, similar to a Useful resource sort of Occasion
. The severity and particulars of the findings differ based mostly on the useful resource position, which signifies whether or not the EC2 useful resource was the goal of suspicious exercise or the actor performing the exercise.
With at present’s launch, we help over 30 runtime safety findings for EC2 situations, similar to detecting abused domains, backdoors, cryptocurrency-related exercise, and unauthorized communications. For the complete listing, go to Runtime Monitoring discovering varieties within the AWS documentation.
Resolve your EC2 safety findings
Select every EC2 safety discovering to know extra particulars. Yow will discover all the knowledge related to the discovering and study the useful resource in query to find out whether it is behaving in an anticipated method.
If the exercise is permitted, you should utilize suppression guidelines or trusted IP lists to forestall false optimistic notifications for that useful resource. If the exercise is sudden, the safety greatest observe is to imagine the occasion has been compromised and take the actions detailed in Remediating a doubtlessly compromised Amazon EC2 occasion within the AWS documentation.
You possibly can combine GuardDuty EC2 Runtime Monitoring with different AWS safety companies, similar to AWS Safety Hub or Amazon Detective. Or you should utilize Amazon EventBridge, permitting you to make use of integrations with safety occasion administration or workflow programs, similar to Splunk, Jira, and ServiceNow, or set off automated and semi-automated responses similar to isolating a workload for investigation.
If you select Examine with Detective, you will discover Detective-created visualizations for AWS assets to shortly and simply examine safety points. To be taught extra, go to Integration with Amazon Detective within the AWS documentation.
Issues to know
GuardDuty EC2 Runtime Monitoring help is now out there for EC2 situations operating Amazon Linux 2 or Amazon Linux 2023. You’ve got the choice to configure most CPU and reminiscence limits for the agent. To be taught extra and for future updates, go to Stipulations for Amazon EC2 occasion help within the AWS documentation.
To estimate the day by day common utilization prices for GuardDuty, select Utilization within the left pane. In the course of the 30-day free trial interval, you’ll be able to estimate what your prices might be after the trial interval. On the finish of the trial interval, we cost you per vCPU hours tracked month-to-month for the monitoring brokers. To be taught extra, go to the Amazon GuardDuty pricing web page.
Enabling EC2 Runtime Monitoring additionally permits for a cost-saving alternative in your GuardDuty price. When the characteristic is enabled, you received’t be charged for GuardDuty foundational safety VPC Circulation Logs sourced from the EC2 situations operating the safety agent. This is because of related, however extra contextual, community information out there from the safety agent. Moreover, GuardDuty would nonetheless course of VPC Circulation Logs and generate related findings so you’ll proceed to get network-level safety protection even when the agent experiences downtime.
Now out there
Amazon GuardDuty EC2 Runtime Monitoring is now out there in all AWS Areas the place GuardDuty is offered, excluding AWS GovCloud (US) Areas and AWS China Areas. For a full listing of Areas the place EC2 Runtime Monitoring is offered, go to Area-specific characteristic availability.
Give GuardDuty EC2 Runtime Monitoring a strive within the GuardDuty console. For extra data, go to the Amazon GuardDuty Consumer Information and ship suggestions to AWS re:Put up for Amazon GuardDuty or by your regular AWS help contacts.
— Channy