At DFX5, we aspire to capture every event by logging and monitoring all actions. In our experience protecting financial institutions and retailers, we have seen how hackers are able to overcome access control systems, however it is extremely difficult to bypass logging and monitoring systems. For an unauthorized user to perform a cloaking or stealth action would require a complete breakdown of all cloud security systems, which would have triggered a battery of alerts and notifications to the security team. Thus, while even the most secure access point can be penetrated, it would require additional support to hide a trail of actions in multiple security logbooks.

When operating with both outside and inside users, an enterprise must always face the challenge of balancing access with security; yet logging and monitoring should not be left to choice. Logging is a mandatory task that must be configured, protected, and analyzed.  Fortunately, AWS provides a great mechanism for logging and observing all provisioned resources. Configure or create your own key performance indicator (KPI) or metric to track in real-time. The metrics captured are processed using data analysis to identify suspicious behaviors. The AI team at DFX5 designed a tool called Logan that identifies cases of fraud in credit card transactions by analyzing logs and monitoring key metrics. Additional uses of machine learning can be implemented to logging systems for cost optimization. Define your own custom alarm based on metrics and their thresholds, to provide a 24/7 (365) monitoring service. Additionally, automatically configure your cloud environment to take corrective actions without human intervention if certain events are logged. Thus, creating an event-triggered model in which your system will automatically apply corrective actions.

Keep all the logs in a low-cost archive format that can be searched for audit purposes at any time. At DFX5, we configure the service called AWS CloudTrail to log all events and processes that occur within your cloud environment. We accomplish the best practices to deal with observability of the cloud and it’s provisioned resources by using automated responses that provide self-healing mechanism. The simplest way how to ensure that your cloud infrastructure is under control is via DFX5 Managed Services. In this case DFX5 monitors and take care of your infrastructure and you can fully focus on your business.