March 19, 2025
Voiced by Polly

Immediately, I’m comfortable to announce the final availability of community exercise occasions for Amazon Digital Non-public Cloud (Amazon VPC) endpoints in AWS CloudTrail. This characteristic lets you file and monitor AWS API exercise traversing your VPC endpoints, serving to you strengthen your information perimeter and implement higher detective controls.

Beforehand, it was arduous to detect potential information exfiltration makes an attempt and unauthorized entry to the assets inside your community by VPC endpoints. Whereas VPC endpoint insurance policies could possibly be configured to forestall entry from exterior accounts, there was no built-in mechanism to log denied actions or detect when exterior credentials had been used at a VPC endpoint. This typically required you to construct customized options to examine and analyze TLS visitors, which could possibly be operationally pricey and negate the advantages of encrypted communications.

With this new functionality, now you can choose in to log all AWS API exercise passing by your VPC endpoints. CloudTrail information these occasions as a brand new occasion sort known as community exercise occasions, which seize each management airplane and information airplane actions passing by a VPC endpoint.

Community exercise occasions in CloudTrail present a number of key advantages:

  • Complete visibility – Log all API exercise traversing VPC endpoints, whatever the AWS account initiating the motion.
  • Exterior credential detection – Determine when credentials from outdoors your group are accessing your VPC endpoint.
  • Knowledge exfiltration prevention – Detect and examine potential unauthorized information motion makes an attempt.
  • Enhanced safety monitoring – Achieve insights into all AWS API exercise at your VPC endpoints with out the necessity to decrypt TLS visitors.
  • Visibility for regulatory compliance – Enhance your capability to satisfy regulatory necessities by monitoring all API exercise passing by.

Getting began with community exercise occasions for VPC endpoint logging
To allow community exercise occasions, I am going to the AWS CloudTrail console and select Trails within the navigation pane. I select Create path to create a brand new one. I enter a reputation within the Path title area and select an Amazon Easy Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket to retailer the occasion logs. Once I create a path in CloudTrail, I can specify an present Amazon S3 bucket or create a brand new bucket to retailer my path’s occasion logs.

In case you set Log file SSE-KMS encryption to Enabled, you have got two choices: Select New to create a brand new AWS Key Administration Service (AWS KMS) key or select Current to decide on an present KMS key. In case you selected New, it’s essential sort an alias within the AWS KMS alias area. CloudTrail encrypts your log recordsdata with this KMS key and provides the coverage for you. The KMS key and Amazon S3 should be in the identical AWS Area. For this instance, I take advantage of an present KMS key. I enter the alias within the AWS KMS alias area and go away the remaining as default for this demo. I select Subsequent for the subsequent step.

Within the Select log occasions step, I select Community exercise occasions beneath Occasions. I select the occasion supply from the checklist of AWS providers, akin to cloudtrail.amazonaws.com, ec2.amazonaws.com, kms.amazonaws.com, s3.amazonaws.com, and secretsmanager.amazonaws.com. I add two community exercise occasion sources for this demo. For the primary supply, I choose ec2.amazonaws.com possibility. For Log selector template, I can use templates for frequent use instances or create fine-grained filters for particular eventualities. For instance, to log all API actions traversing the VPC endpoint, I can select the Log all occasions template. I select Log community exercise entry denied occasions template to log solely entry denied occasions. Optionally, I can enter a reputation within the Selector title area to establish the log selector template, akin to Embody community exercise occasions for Amazon EC2.

As a second instance, I select Customized to create customized filters on a number of fields, akin to eventName and vpcEndpointId. I can specify particular VPC endpoint IDs or filter the outcomes to incorporate solely the VPC endpoints that match particular standards. For Superior occasion selectors, I select vpcEndpointId from the Area dropdown, select equals as Operator, and enter the VPC endpoint ID. Once I develop the JSON view, I can see my occasion selectors as a JSON block. I select Subsequent and after reviewing the picks, I select Create path.

After it’s configured, CloudTrail will start logging community exercise occasions for my VPC endpoints, serving to me analyze and act on this information. To research AWS CloudTrail community exercise occasions, you need to use the CloudTrail console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), and AWS SDK to retrieve related logs. You too can use CloudTrail Lake to seize, retailer and analyze your community exercise occasions. In case you are utilizing Trails, you need to use Amazon Athena to question and filter these occasions primarily based on specific standards. Common evaluation of those occasions may also help you keep safety, adjust to laws, and optimize your community infrastructure in AWS.

Now obtainable
CloudTrail community exercise occasions for VPC endpoint logging give you a strong device to reinforce your safety posture, detect potential threats, and acquire deeper insights into your VPC community visitors. This characteristic addresses your crucial wants for complete visibility and management over your AWS environments.

Community exercise occasions for VPC endpoints can be found in all industrial AWS Areas.

For pricing data, go to AWS CloudTrail pricing.

To get began with CloudTrail community exercise occasions, go to AWS CloudTrail. For extra data on CloudTrail and its options, check with the AWS CloudTrail documentation.

— Esra