Introduction

Ensuring the security of your AWS EC2 instances is paramount in today’s digital landscape. Amazon Inspector is a powerful tool that helps you identify potential vulnerabilities and security issues within your EC2 instances. By setting up alarms, you can promptly respond to these vulnerabilities, thereby fortifying your security posture and preventing a security breach. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps to set up alarms for detecting vulnerabilities on EC2 instances using Amazon Inspector.

What is Amazon Inspector?

Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS. It automatically assesses applications for vulnerabilities or deviations from best practices. Amazon Inspector produces a detailed list of security findings prioritized by level of severity.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

  • An AWS account
  • EC2 instances running on your AWS account
  • IAM roles with necessary permissions for Amazon Inspector
  • Basic understanding of AWS CloudWatch

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Set Up Amazon Inspector

  1. Log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the Amazon Inspector dashboard.
  2. Configure Assessment Target:
    • Go to Assessment targets.
    • Click Create and specify a name for your assessment target.
    • Select the EC2 instances you want to include in the assessment.
  3. Set Up Assessment Template:
    • Navigate to Assessment templates.
    • Click Create and provide a name.
    • Select the assessment target you created earlier.
    • Choose the rules packages to run (e.g., Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE), Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks).
    • Configure the duration and specify any SNS topics for notifications.

2. Run an Assessment

  1. Run the Assessment:
    • Go to Assessment templates.
    • Select the template you created and click Run.
  2. Review Findings:
    • After the assessment completes, go to Findings.
    • Review the findings and note the severity levels.

3. Set Up CloudWatch Alarms

  1. Create an SNS Topic:
    • Navigate to the SNS dashboard.
    • Click Create topic and configure the topic details.
    • Note the ARN of the SNS topic for later use.
  2. Create CloudWatch Alarms:
    • Go to the CloudWatch dashboard.
    • Select Alarms and then Create Alarm.
    • Choose the Amazon Inspector metrics and select the metric related to findings (e.g., High severity findings).
    • Configure the conditions for the alarm (e.g., threshold value for high severity findings).
    • Set the action to send a notification to the SNS topic created earlier.

4. Automate Remediation (Optional)

For enhanced security, consider automating remediation actions using AWS Lambda. Here’s how:

  1. Create a Lambda Function:
    • Go to the Lambda dashboard.
    • Click Create function and configure the function details.
  2. Configure the Lambda Function:
    • Add the necessary code to remediate the detected vulnerabilities (e.g., applying patches, terminating instances).
    • Set up a trigger for the Lambda function to respond to CloudWatch alarm state changes.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you can effectively set up alarms for detecting vulnerabilities on EC2 instances using Amazon Inspector. This proactive approach ensures that you are immediately alerted to potential security issues, allowing for swift remediation and maintaining the integrity of your AWS environment.