Increase AWS Security with MITRE D3FEND, Engage, ATT&CK
Engage, ATT&CK, D3FEND
Connecting MITRE threat detection and mitigation frameworks to AWS security services. Amazon Web Services may benefit from MITRE ATT&CK, MITRE Engage, and MITRE D3FEND controls and processes. These organised, publicly available models explain threat actor activities to assist threat detection and response.
Combining MITRE frameworks completes security operations lifecycle strategy. MITRE ATT&CK specifies threat actor tactics, strategies, and processes, essential for threat modelling and risk assessment. Additionally, MITRE D3FEND proposes proactive security controls like system settings protection and least privilege access to align defences with known attack patterns.
With MITRE Engage, security teams can expose threat actors, cost them money by directing resources to honeypot infrastructure, or mislead them into divulging their strategies by exploiting appealing fictional targets. D3FEND turns ATT&CK insights into defensive mechanisms, unlike Engage. Integrating these frameworks informs security operations lifecycle detection, monitoring, incident response, and post-event analysis.
Depending on the services, the client handles cloud security and AWS handles cloud infrastructure security. This is crucial for AWS-using businesses. AWS cloud-scale platforms have native security capabilities like these MITRE frameworks.
Amazon Web Services follows MITRE security lifecycle frameworks:
Amazon Inspector finds threat actor-related vulnerabilities, Amazon Macie finds sensitive data exposure, and Amazon Security Lake collects logs for ATT&CK-based threat modelling and risk assessment.
AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) provides application-layer security, while AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and AWS Organisations provide least privilege when implementing preventative measures. Honey tokens are digital decoys that replicate real credentials to attract danger actors and trigger alerts. They may be in AWS Secrets Manager.
Amazon AWS Security Hub centralises security alerts, GuardDuty detects unusual activity patterns, and Amazon Detective investigates irregularities. GuardDuty monitors AWS accounts and workloads to detect attacks automatically.
AWS Step Functions and Lambda automate incident response, containment, and recovery. Real-time DDoS mitigation is provided with AWS Shield and WAF. AWS Security Incident Response was introduced in 2024 to prepare, respond, and recover from security incidents. Threat actors may be rerouted to honeypots or given fake Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) files.
Security Lake and Detective conduct post-event forensic investigations, while Security Hub and IAM policies use historical trends to improve security. Observing honeypot interactions can change MITRE Engage strategies.
GuardDuty and other AWS security services provide threat intelligence and details on detected threats to MITRE ATT&CK. GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection intelligently detects, correlates, and aligns signals with the MITRE ATT&CK lifecycle to find an attack sequence. A discovery report includes IP addresses, TTPs, AWS API queries, and a description of occurrences. The MITRE strategy and method identification of an activity is highlighted by each discovery signal.
Malicious IP lists, dubious network behaviours, and the AWS API request and user agent can be included. You can automate answers by downloading this extensive JSON data. Interestingly, AWS and MITRE have updated and developed new MITRE ATT&CK cloud matrix methodologies based on real-world threat actor behaviours that target AWS customers, such as modifying S3 bucket lifespan restrictions for data destruction.
Companies may automate detection and response, build security operations using industry-standard procedures, maintain visibility throughout their AWS environment, and improve security controls by aligning AWS security services with MITRE frameworks. Companies can better identify, stop, and fool threat actors using this relationship, boosting their security.
