News

Tripwire Monitors Hybrid AWS Environments for Security Risks

• By David Ramel
• 06/14/2017

With cloud security (or the lack thereof) in the news of late, Tripwire Inc. has launched a new service to provide critical security controls for hybrid cloud environments that leverage the Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) cloud.

For that task, the company announced its Cloud Management Assessor service, extending to the AWS cloud the functionality of its Tripwire Enterprise solution, which reportedly provides real-time threat detection and security automation.

The tool targets "hybrid enterprise" implementations where physical, virtual, and private and public cloud environments are blended together to provide operational flexibility -- while possibly complicating an organization's security landscape.

"Tripwire Enterprise with Cloud Management Assessor provides extended visibility and security configuration management to cloud management interfaces," said CTO David Meltzer in a statement yesterday. "The solution also manages this information in the same system being used to maintain security for on-premise environments, providing a consolidated and comprehensive approach for maintaining cybersecurity best practices and compliance for organizations adopting Amazon Web Services."

Cloud platforms including AWS have lately been singled out in multiple reports as posing security vulnerabilities, especially on the back-end systems that support mobile apps, for example. These vulnerabilities are primarily caused by human error -- such as user misconfigurations -- and not by any inherent issues with the platforms themselves.

For example, earlier this month, we reported that firm found terabytes of unsecured data -- including personal information -- on cloud back-ends. And just before that, we covered a security firm that reported 82 percent of public cloud databases weren't encrypted. These reports added to cloud security woes exposed by recent ransomware attacks that held hostage unsecured databases, such as MongoDB.

Tripwire didn't specifically indicate that its new AWS service would address such user-error issues, but the Tripwire Enterprise site says the solution provides security automation and remediations, stating: "Configuration errors need corrective measures. Tripwire Remediation Manager delivers automation and guidance for rapid repair of broken or security misconfigurations, and integrates with SIEMs, IT-GRC, workflow systems, change management systems and more."

Configuration was also listed as one of the topics of a Tripwire presentation at the recent Infosecurity Europe 2017 conference, for which the description reads:

Ben Layer introduces the Cloud Management Assessor, an integration for Tripwire Enterprise which adds the ability to assess Amazon Web Services management interfaces for a secure configuration. The rapid rise in popularity of Amazon Web Services leaves many users asking the questions, 'Is my Amazon management account securely configured, and if not, what do I need to do to secure it?' The Cloud Management Assessor enables the user to answer these questions by leveraging the included Center for Internet Security AWS Foundations Benchmark policy. The Cloud Management Assessor ties in Amazon Web Services configuration and compliance monitoring right alongside the rest of customers' Tripwire-monitored assets.

Besides configuration issues, the company says its enterprise security offering provides real-time change audit and threat detection and proactive configuration hardening based on compliance requirements, among other functionality.

Tripwire said Cloud Management Assessor is available now and invited those interested in the service to contact the company.